Monday, August 25, 2008

Foam Board and Nostalgia


A cat…a cat…my foam board model for a cat…


Seriously though. This weekend was project: see if the templates you pulled out of your ass actually fit together into a facsimile of Royce Hall.

After stocking up on some foam board, masking tape and new drafting rulers (I never pass up the opportunity to buy a new drafting ruler—I use them for everything from sewing to baking to actually measuring things), I was set to begin construction. Oh—have to give a shout-out to the Graph Aides art supply shop in Westchester. They were hopping on Saturday because the adjacent Otis Art School began classes today. Students were getting 20% off and since I live in the neighborhood and the owner guy recognized me, I got 20% off as well. Thanks artistic guy with equally artistic though geographically unidentifiable Latin accent!

It took me about two hours to measure and cut out the pieces. Let me just say that foam board is not as much fun to cut as I remember. Let me also just say that nothing gets me more in the holiday mood than cutting foam board in my 90 degree kitchen in August while sweat drips down my face. Evil as it is however, foam board is about the same thickness as gingerbread, so I didn’t have a choice. It took maybe another 30 minutes to construct the monstrosity (again, not including the roofs).

Here is what I came up with:

Front view:

Front view from side:

Side view:

Back:

Notes and lessons learned:

  • I need to decide which windows will be cut and which ones to fake-out (and how to fake them out).
  • The towers need to be increased in width by .25” for the front and back facing panels to allow for the thickness of the gingerbread.
  • Roofs will need to be measured, baked and then installed after entire building is constructed in order to get good fit.
  • I’m going to have to use some higher level geometry to figure out how to make the pyramid roofs for the front towers. Maybe I’ll take the diagram over to the math department.

Next steps:

This week I’m going to update my templates and begin cutting them out of tag board. Merry, merry!

1 comment:

Kimberly said...

You can fake them out using crushed hard candy that melts in the oven. It takes a bit of trial and error, but if you do it right it looks like leaded glass. You can also pipe on it for the trim, if necessary.

I'm very impressed with your work so far!