My Art Projects

This weekend we worked on a couple of big things — lots of lawn and garden work, and the beginnings of the art car.

Dunno if I’ve written much about the Art Car Project – it’s something Stephanie has been wanting to do for a long time, and now is a great opportunity for her to tackle it. She has a couple friends who have Art Cars, and in 2005, we visited Louisville, Kentucky for their annual Art Car Weekend:

[ See the whole set of photos ]

We’re replacing Stephanie’s 1993 Honda Accord, which is her currently daily driver, with a new little Smart Car, which should arrive sometime here in April. The Honda is in pretty good shape, but just turned 200,000 miles and essentially has no trade-in value.

So it make sense for her to hold on to it and have some fun doing something creative. Stephanie toyed with several different design ideas, but finally arrived at an intersection of the art car she’s always wanted, and her childhood love of bottle caps. Her dad even dug her original collection out of the garage attic and brought them to us.

We’ve been collecting and sorting bottle caps all winter long, with the help of friends and the nice folks at the restaurant Ralph’s Great Divide, who have contributed many of the caps.

Stephanie prepped and adhered the first 70 caps to the car. This was basically a test run to see if the adhesive works and if the caps stay on; so far, so good. They stayed overnight an were still there this morning.

[ See the whole set of photos ]

Since they seem to be holding up quite well, we’re getting ready to scale up production; I’ll prepare the caps with Rustoleum, while Stephanie uses a high temperature glue to secure them in place.

We also did a ton of raking (our leaves come down in mid-December, so we never got them completely raked last year), bought 20 bags of mulch and started spreading it in the front flower beds, and mowed the lawn for the first time. We did a lot of physical work this weekend, it was very nice out and felt good.