Work on the unfinished Troll Screamers shown above as well as several NEW Troll Screamers will resume soon. I have several body parts ready to go for the new creations.

Thursday 24 June 2010

WHAT I DID THIS WEEKEND - 19/20 JUNE

Once again things got in the way for me (life!) & delayed this weekends gone feature. In fact i ended up with only about 2 hours on Sunday to do anything. It so happens things are still getting in the way of this what was in reality a 2 day project. So i have decided to keep at it anyway & post it as the weekend feature it was meant to be (gone) just in stages this time round. So without any more rambling here is where i am up to for the custom  foot stool project:

Using some serial box card stock i added a full flat surface to the inner top of the box as you can see here covering up the holes from where the desert tubs where held in place. I then covered that in 8 layers of large 3 inch wide news paper strips. As you can see i have not yet done anything with the outside of the box including the raised corner sections. Remember if you can't get a similar style box then an ordinary box will do simply cut it out as per the measurements given in the previous post. You can change the 'style' of the corner sections for your foot stool, or even not include them using the natural depth of the box to hold your foam in place later but wait until you see where 'my' design is going first for a better idea of where & what to do with yours.

Next i cut a 1 inch slot in one end of all the four tubes i am using for the legs. Again you can use a different shape of leg a long rectangular box from kitchen foil, cling film etc. Again how ever wait until you see where my design is going before you decide.

Next i turned the box over. As you can see i haven't gotten around to covering up the bottom of the box yet, but that's no problem i can do that later.

Now by adding a small amount of hot glue to the edges of the slots i cut out i can fix the legs to my box corners. By cutting this slot out of the tubes i have created a small but strong ridge for the corners of the box to sit in/on inside each tube. This adds no visual design to my foot stool as you will see as it develops. How ever if you intend to go with a sleek metal box & metal tube leg finished look this will be a good look/finish too. For my design as i say this is simply a strong fixing method that will be buried later in the final design.

Simply press each leg into place as you go. Give the hot glue a few seconds to cool & bond properly. By turning the box upside down as i fix each leg in place i know they will be in the right position & height when i turn it back the Right way up again.

Voila'. Now at this stage you can simply cover the whole thing in a few layers of news print strips then paint in a full metal finish or a nice wood like finish the choice is yours. I am going to go further with my final design though & add a touch of fun to the final design.

Here i have cut out a foot like shape from some of my favourite card stock 'pizza box'. When making foil forms such as i am about to this is actually a lot stronger tan simple corrugated card stock believe it or not. It WILL warp if you get it too wet with glue etc, but not as badly as corrugated card stock. Also unlike corrugated card stock it will not simply crumble away when wet. As you can see i have not added any toes at this stage. I will explain why in a moment.

Here you can see i have using simple kitchen  foil created two toe-less feet both a left & right foot to be exact.. By 'loosely crumpling the foil to 'bulk' out the initial shape i then added the final layers of foil in sheets to get a nice smooth finish.

 
I then rolled out 5 foil toe like sausages. To make them a little more toe like i then simply squashed them flat slightly with my hand.

I will make the other 15 toes later. I am not going to make anymore 'feet' however. To save foil & make sure i get the feet as close as possible to the same size & shape i am going to cover these two toe-less feet in a couple of layers of white printer paper, then foil copy 4 'new' matching feet out.

Hopefully by this coming weekend things might have settled down here so i can then get this project finished. As it happens believe me or not my wife B (Barbara) who  am making this custom foot stool for IS actually using it right NOW!. I inserted the foam i cut out for the project & then gave her it to check the height etc & she wouldn't give me it back!

More soon.

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