Arlene - The door banner project
I had an old beaded curtain that I wasn't using any more. Looked kinda like crap, too. The bottoms of the strands were all scraggly, the twine was weak, and prone to breaking. It could have been done a lot better. It sat in a dark corner, bundled in saran wrap, just... aging. Several times, it nearly found its way to the dumpster, still in its translucent shroud. Every single time, I was holding it in my hands, wondering if I would ever 'get to it'. Ever do something with it again. And I'd sigh, remember what it looked like, and put it back on the shelf. 'Another day', I'll get to it. Always another day. I got around to it. It was lying around for *just* too long for me. And I couldn't just... discard it. Something had to be done. These beads were meant to be a door. But the door they made was shit. Fine, if you can't be a door, you can be a door-cover. There's tea-cozies, there can be door-covers. And besides, this at least has a use. My door doesn't close. I always have a cat or two around, they have full-reign over the bedroom, so the door will never need to be closed. Or if it does, y'know... move it or whatever :P. And it acts as a nameplate on my door, because why not? There's plenty of blank space on there, may as well fill some of it up with something. Kinda debated whether to throw a few other things into there, but I've got a ton of beads to use, and most of 'em are black. I'm still gonna have more left over from the curtain after this yet (this is 23022 beads), so we'll see what comes to mind. I was originally going to be make a time-lapse of the entire project, but as it's around 160 hours worth of video saved to YouTube, we'll see if I get around to re-downloading and re-processing all of that video. To be honest, likely not since that sounds unbelievably time consuming and debatably worthwhile. The project throughout had few problems, but the few problems it had were challenging. In the pic below, you can see where I 'missed' a pixel (4 beads) in the large Metroid above TANNIS, and didn't catch it until about 20 rows down. I ended up snapping the incorrect beads out from the middle of the banner one at a time, snapping apart four white beads, and re-gluing them together around the ribbon in the correct manner to replace the incorrect ones. Then model paint was applied overtop of the adhesive (JB Weld, which dries grey), and the beads were then rotated as best possible to hide as much of all that as possible. All in all, that repair came out great :) I also towards the end added a flat-black heart, to match my signature on the opposite side in the same colour, just for funsies :). I also took a rubber sink plug, sliced it in half, and drilled a few holes in it. That way, I could attach them to the edges of the banner right where it hangs over the door (beside where it spells ZEBETHTEBEZ), protecting both the door frame, door, and the banner by acting as a bumper and stopping a closing door from attempting to scissor the banner in half :P All in all, 160+ hours of labour, 23022 (or 23026, if you count the four that were replaced) beads, making over 8 feet of banner... I'm very happy with how it came out. A far better, more displayable creation than the curtain it was originally borne from. I've named the banner Arlene :) As a follow-up here, I eventually changed my name to KatieLynne. However, the banner was lost over the years and various moves, so it unfortunately can't be recreated with my correct name, but the memory of the banner lives on.