Planet in a Pail

I realize that normal people probably don't really get what I do for a living. I am the "paint shop manager" for an events company. But unless you've worked in the entertainment field you probably have no concrete idea what I do on a day to day basis other than maybe paint stuff.

There are many daily tasks that are specific-project-related (painting the actual pieces of scenery for any given trade show, for example. Or bringing in over-hire painters to do that painting if we're busy enough to need extra hands.) but there are also the basic maintenance tasks like cleaning or ordering shop supplies. Today I did one of those odd kind of tasks that don't make sense to most people outside of my industry (or theater scenic artists, which is my background anyways).

I mixed up a bucket of back paint. And it was pretty (at least it was until I stirred it all up. After that it was just kinda brownish green)

It's okay if you're confused. Allow me to explain...

Most of the scenery we build is used in trade shows or corporate special events, often held in hotels or convention centers. The rules and laws vary from state to state, but many of them require that there not be any bare wood on any of the pieces... This usually has to do with fire codes (bare wood will catch fire much faster than painted wood, both due to properties of the paint as well as simply the fact that the splintery rough surface has been smoothed down when it is coated). So this means I paint the back side of everything, because even if the particular place it is going doesn't require it, there's always the possibility that it could be used again elsewhere and really... better safe than sorry. So any paint used just to cover the backs of things is referred to as "back paint" (crazy logic there, eh? I know.)

The way I make back paint is by recycling all the little leftover paint colors from past shows. Each time we send out a set, I put together a touch-up kit with small containers of pretty much any paint color that was used. That way if anything gets dinged up on the truck or during an install, the project manager will have any color necessary to do a quick fix. When it is all over and everything comes back to our warehouse, the touch up kit (often unused) returns as well. All those deli cups full of paint have to be disposed of somehow... I don't want to pour them down the sink or toss them in a landfill (I'd have to dry out the paint by putting sawdust in it or some other drying agent first anyways as per our local disposal laws). But since it doesn't matter what color the back paint is (nobody's going to be seeing the backs except the guys installing the show) it becomes a perfect way to re-use all that paint instead of letting it go to waste. I often use it as a base coat for some things as well, depending on the final color I'll be using.

Today's particular bunch of little paint cups was so many bright pretty colors and dumping them one by one into the big bucket kinda took on a Jackson Pollack artsy quality:

Although over the years (I used to do this as a theater painter too... then it was often as much about saving money on buying paint for the backs of things as it was about not having an easy way to dispose of unwanted liquid paint) I've realized that no matter how pretty the colors you start with are, the back paint pretty much always ends up some shade of baby-poo brown. (I'll spare you the visual on that one.)

This time I was inspired to take photos because it reminded me of a lush green planet. The magic of photoshop makes it even more so:

This is certainly not the strangest job task I've done. (That would probably be back when I built theater props for a living and my answer to "What did you do today?" was "I painted fake carrots to look more like real carrots then attached them to sticks as spear heads." Extra credit will be awarded to anyone who can name the show I was making those for). But it is certainly something the average office worker doesn't do. And that my friends, is why I love my job.

Truffle FAIL

Let me begin by saying that this was NOT my first time making truffles. I consider myself a fairly seasoned truffle maker in fact.... Oreo-Cream-Cheese Truffles have been a staple of my gift-giving repertoire for several years. But I now realize that I always make those to give out at Christmas. They are most certainly a winter baking treat... and that's where I ran into trouble.

It began with my wanting to find something to make out of the insanely prolific patch of mint in my garden. The internets led me to this recipe for fresh mint chocolate truffles and I instantly thought "Oooh, sounds tasty! I can totally make those. No problem!" (this is in fact exactly how I talk to myself in my head.) If you go look at the photo on the recipe link you'll see what I was aiming for. As you'll see shortly... I missed. By a LOT.

Things started out well. I cooked up the cream and added the mint, mixed everything together and happily came out with a tasty right-amount-of-minty ganache.

It cooled in the fridge for a full day before I was able to take the time to roll the balls and prep for dipping in melted dark chocolate. I even made the little candied mint leaves to use as a cute garnish. (Did I mention that I'm trying to use a TON of mint? If swear the stuff grows so fast in my yard we can almost sit there and watch the sprigs forming).

Perhaps I should have been more concerned when even after "lightly dusting" my palms with cocoa powder as instructed I still ended up with gooey melty chocolate all over my hands after each little truffle was rolled. But I just chalked it up to this being a different type of recipe than the drier cookies-and-cream style that I normally would make and soldiered along.

After the rolled ganache was set hard in the freezer for a few hours I got everything set for the dipping. This is where things went terribly, terribly wrong for me. The first few went fine, but at around piece number five I realized that the candy coating was suddenly seizing up and now had the consistency of thick frosting. I quickly realized that because the room was warm (this has been a rather hot and humid summer in new england, like it has pretty much everywhere in the US) the truffles were collecting condensation... and by putting that water into the chocolate I had ruined the bowl full.

I probably should have stopped and let things cool all over again and re-thought my whole "finish making these right now" concept. But I'm just not that kind of girl. Once I get started I'm pretty much going to muddle through the mess as best I can regardless of anyone's better judgement. First I kinda used the thickened chocolate and tried to basically frost the balls of filling... really not so attractive. I believe my husband rightly compared them to something our dogs would make. (And trust me when I tell you that we don't have some special breed of talented crafty baking dogs.)



Then I figured that since my first few came out okay I could just melt some smaller cups of white chocolate and if it seizes after a few dips, at least I won't have wasted as much, right? Wrong! I got one truffle done kinda okay in the white. And I even had one of my tiny cups seize right out of the microwave as soon as I tried to stir it... Maybe the fork was wet? Maybe the air was so bloody humid it just soaked in from there. I have no clue.

Still unwilling to give up on tasty mint-chocolate treats (I was making these to bring to my sister-in-law's baby shower, by the way. So I really wanted them to look pretty and presentable in front of my mother-in-law, not to mention the aunts and cousins and everyone else.) I tried spooning the white chocolate on top of the horribly lumpy things I now created. I also tried rolling un-coated ones in powdered sugar, but it mostly just turned to mush from all the moisture sweating off of them. Here are some of my assorted attempts in all their glory:

In the end I decided to roll the most horribly lumpy ones in cocoa on the grounds that moist, sweaty poo-looking balls were more unappetizing than anything with a powdery cocoa look to it. I think that worked out okay. They were at least not a total waste of time, effort, and most importantly, chocolate!


At least I was able to present the nicest, least poo-looking ones I could to my SIL

I sorta stuck the rest on the end of the dessert table (I ended up filling about three of those tupperware containers you see in the pics) and thankfully people did find them to be yummy. I was even asked politely if I made them myself... I don't know if it was worse to admit that yes, I made something that ugly. or that someone might have thought I would actually purchase such unattractive candies. I suppose either way it was a good thing that they turned out to be so tasty!

The job description didn't say anything about heavy cleaning...

I have been at my new job for about two weeks now and I'm still enjoying it, getting my feet under me, and spending far too much of my time cleaning the shop space. This is my shop:

well, actually that is not my whole shop, it is only my spray area. Which is insanely awesome because its about 24' x 28' (larger than the entire wood&paint shop area at my previous job). This takes up a little less than half of my whole paint space, plus there's a fairly large paint storage and mixing area with two sinks off to the side.

In that picture I've already picked up and swept and shop-vac-ed the floor for the most part. It started out looking like this:

The floor surface is 4 x 8 sheets of homasote laid down over the concrete floor and just gaff taped at the seams. While the stuff does start out a shade of grey, the color of that floor is actually just tons and tons of overspray from the gray and silver paints that are the main colors used in that part of the shop. The roll of paper standing up in the back of the room in that first photo was the very first thing I purchased at this job in order to cover the floor so in the future it will be much easier to just replace the paper rather than try to clean off the flooring material ever again. (the big white cabinet is actually a safe that we use as a storage cabinet for spray paints... it is rated to be explosion proof so it certainly qualifies for use as a flammables cabinet)

On the right hand side of the shop is our air handler. I don't even want to know how long it had been since someone had changed the filters on it, and I was so grossed out when I took them out to replace that I went a little cleaning-frenzy crazy on the thing...

That's one half of the machine scraped clean (my hands have the scrapes to show for it too) and the inside walls & floor vacuumed out. Here's a closeup so you can see a little more of just how much grime was there. It was quite literally up to a half-inch build up of paint that had settled in some places.


But all that work was totally worth it to me. Because I now have a happy spray room with a clean filter system keeping the air moving. Not only will my lungs thank me later, I just work so much better in a clean space. I'm chalking it up to time well spent in a shop that is slowly but surely starting to feel like it's really mine.

Collection Time

I had my first day working at my new job today and it was busy and wonderful. And then this evening two lovely collections have appeared on Artfire including items of mine (oddly with both items placed in the same spot in each one). This was definitely a good day!

A big thanks to SomebodyStopMeVintage and PaintinByFaith!

I Want To Believe

  Curated By: SomebodyStopM...

ArtFire.com

Handmade Soap

Seeing Spots

  Curated By: PaintinByFaith

ArtFire.com

Fine Art Photography

Make your own Muppet!!

For anyone who doesn't already know, I am MAD crazy about the Muppets. They were a huge part of my growing up and the Muppet Show was the only television program that got my parents to make an exception to their "no tv during dinner" rule. I am super excited that there will be a new Muppet movie next fall. And my best friend is just as much of a Muppet geek as I am. So when she had a big birthday recently I knew the perfect gift...

I took her to FAO Shwartz in Manhattan and we made our own Muppet Whatnots!

For anyone who hasn't heard about this, you can go to the toy store and custom design your own Muppet! If you don't live near New York City (which is the only in-store location), you can actually go through the process online and they will ship your Muppet to wherever you are. But I have to say, at least half the fun was being at the store and seeing all the crazy cool decorations and all the extra little Muppety silliness.

So, here's how it works... We walked into the Whatnot Worksop area of the store and after ogling the awesome environment for a while (I took so many photos that I can't possibly post them all here :) we went up to the counter and asked to make Muppets. We each received a booklet with all the choices for bodies, eyes, noses, hair, clothing, etc. as nifty peel-and-stick labels. My friend and I then spent a good while playing with all the stickers and putting together our ideas like paper dolls.

Once we were finally happy with the awesomeness of our proposed Muppets we filled out the checklists and gave them to the very nice folks behind the counter. And being the geeky puppet-making theater types that we are, she and I just hung out and watched as they built them. Most of the face-assembling was done on the counter facing away from us so I couldn't get decent photos of that, but watching them attach the fluffy feather hair was especially amusing. To put it all together, they used that most reliable of crafty must-haves: a hot-glue gun. (who knew, right?)

It only took about 20 minutes from when we turned in our paperwork to when our wonderful new Muppet Whatnots were finally done. And we had a BLAST from start to finish. I'm totally jealous of the really sweet staff who worked on them... Making Muppets all day has to be one of the coolest jobs in the world. They were even cool enough to point out that while extra outfits are for sale, that baby clothes can also often fit them just fine. Now I'll have an extra excuse to look at cute frilly dresses in the baby section of my favorite thrift store.

This is the happy couple (we decided they're a married couple who clearly met a biker rally when her bike ran into mechanical trouble and he was there to lend a hand fixing it. Their anniversary will be the day we made them. Now all we need is names! Feel free to leave me suggestions in the comments!)

And here's us as the even happier proud owners:



Now, my more observant readers may have noticed that the "studio shot" I posted at the top of this post looks a little different, and not just because she's on a white background. Her hair is definitely PINK! No, I did not take her home and dye those feathers a different color.

Here's the story... after we left with our muppets, we headed out to catch up with another friend. While we were showing them off I was looking at her and suddenly realized that I thought I had chosen pink hair. Sure enough, looking through the packet of paperwork that also came with each Muppet (I get to play paper dolls with them as much as I want! Yay!) it was clear that the hair had indeed been done in the wrong color. I wasn't really upset, but these are not inexpensive and I really just wanted it to be the way I had designed. A quick phone call to the store and I was assured that if it was indeed built differently from the sheet I had submitted they would absolutely be willing to correct their mistake. So we headed on back to the store. And since the afore-mentioned hot-glue really isn't removable, they actually made me a whole new muppet. (So if you head to the store to make one yourself, please let me know if you see the blonde bombshell here up on that wall display... and send me a photo!)

The staff were totally sweet and apologetic and even gave us both very cool 50th anniversary pins as an extra little "we're sorry you had to come all the way back in". The fact that those pins were handed to us by a very cute blue muppet just made it all the more awesome. I have to give lots of extra credit for such creative customer service skills.