HOW TO MAKE FAUX METAL LETTERS OUT OF FOAM CORE (AND INSTALL THEM).

In October I made these cool block letters for my new daughter's bedroom. It took quite some time but when I finished I was quite happy with the outcome. Which is rare.

Not one to let things go, I started another set for my nephew's wall and documented the process. This time I took it in a slightly different direction. I wanted to mimic the metal or brushed aluminum letters you sometimes see in offices and stores.

Here's how I did it and how you can too!

MATERIALS:
-doublethick foam core (or the regular stuff)
-sharp pencil
-exacto knife, matte knife
-white glue
-paint brush
-metallic spray paint

STEP 1. GETTING MATERIALS
Get yourself some doublethick foam core. You can use the regular kind if you want but the thick stuff will save you time if you want depth to your letters. You may have to hunt for this though because it's not at your neighbourhood Staples. I snagged some from Woolfitt's on Queen St. West in Toronto.

STEP 2. DESIGNING
Use an appropriate application on your computer to map out the letters you desire and print them out. I used Adobe Illustrator and made the letters white with a .5 pt black stroke on them. You don't have to use a fancy app like Illustrator though—-heck, you could probably even do it in Microsoft Word. Now take your print out(s) and very, very carefully cut the letters out. You could use scissors but I used an exacto knife and matte knife.



STEP 3. TRACING
Lay your letters on the foam core and use a pencil to lightly trace the contours of the letterforms. Ensure that your letters don't shift at all while you trace.

STEP 4. CUTTING
This is the most time consuming part of the project——the cutting. Take your exacto knife and begin to puncture the surface along the pencil lines you just made on the foam core. This will make it easier to remain precise with the deeper cutting that comes next. Make several passes with the knife, going ever deeper until you're through.



Two things to remember when cutting out your letters are
1. to keep the cutting edge of the blade of your knife perfectly straight (the knife movements as you cut should be perfectly up and down) to avoid funny-looking letters.
2. Take your time! This is going to take a while. This part alone took me about six hours (my daughter's took about 30!).



STEP 5. SEALING
When you have all your letters it's natural to want to grab the spray can and go nuts. But wait, there's an important step that precedes this.
Most kinds of spray paint will actually eat styrofoam on contact, so we have to seal the edges. Take white glue (PVS) and your paint brush and apply the glue to the edges of the letters. This was a pain for me getting into the crook of the 'A'. Give your letters at least two coats. I was kind of lax at one point--you can see the bottom of my 'A' is a little eaten by paint.



An important consideration at this stage and for every stage hereafter is to place your letters on some makeshift 'stilts'. If you lay your 'glued' letters on a surface to dry you make come back to find them firmly stuck! I made quick risers out of extra foam core to rest my letters on to avoid sticking.

STEP 6. PAINTING
We're ready to start spraying (in a well-ventilated area). There is a method at this stage as well. You will want to ensure that the sides/edges of your letters are painted first. What I recommend is placing your letters upside down on their stilts and spray painting the edges.



Why upside down? Because when we are ready to paint the forward facing side we want to make sure that we're applying paint to a relatively smooth and untouched surface.

I applied several coats to the edges of my letters over the course of a week. Then I flipped the letters and applied paint to the fronts. This took several coats as well.



STEP 7. FINISHING
You're technically done! I inspected my letters for flaws and 'hickeys' and carefully dealt with each. Then I glued my stilts to the backs of my letters so they would have that nice effect of popping off the wall.

STEP 8. MOUNTING
Mounting your letters is another exercise altogether. Trying to perfectly mount a string of letters
in a level, straight line with perfect letter spacing (kerning) is a challenge. Now if you're dumb, you'll charge right in and step back and see your hard work anchored crookedly to the wall. Fortunately I had an idea. As with many kinds of installation we rely on scaffolding. Here's what I did. I lined up my letters on my work surface and fiddled with the spacing until I was happy with how it looked. Then I took two strips of foam core that I had cut and applied a VERY small bead of rubber cement along each. Then I carefully lowered them on to the letters and applied pressure to them by placing lightly-weighted objects on them (I used coffee mugs because they were within reach).

After 30 minutes or so I was able to pick up the entire set of letters as a single unit. I flipped it over and applied double-sided mounting tape to the stilts.

Then I stretched a leveled string across the wall to which I was installing the work and used that to line up the scaffold of letters. Then the work was stuck on the wall; bing, bang, boom. No fuss. Finally the two strips of foam core scaffolding were carefully pulled off to reveal a finished product.



And you're done! Have fun!

My Dream Job

After years of pondering the best way to serve mankind and use the skills that I have graciously been granted, I have had a breakthrough.

I want to work in an environment where 'breakthroughs' are had and then properly lionized—in the form of television commercials.

I am ready for this. My bags are packed and I haven't even sent my resume yet. I'm determined to head to the white halls of the Oral-B Institute where teams of scientists, engineers and designers clad in bright white coats and safety glasses hold clip boards and nod approvingly. Billions of Oral-B customers have each contributed with the purchase of a toothbrush to finance the creation of one of the world's most hi-tech facilities.

Well-lit white halls with tall ceilings lead to spacious laboratories that are filled with striking team members from every race who oversee giant working holograms of space-age motorized brushes dislodging plaque from between teeth. In adjacent labs, scaled up representations of molars are lowered from cables into crystalline vats of coffee, wine and other liquids that stain teeth before traveling down the line to have their snowy colour restored by king-sized toothbrushes with neon-green gum massagers. I want to join the ranks of the Experts At Oral-B!

Right now I sit and stare at a 21 inch monitor—pale by comparison to their 15 foot holographic projections—and complain as the air conditioning at my studio kicks in and thunders above my head. It sucks. The people I work with suck and there isn't a single six-foot Norwegian blonde in the place! It's subhuman.

This resume is ready to go. Get me out of this hellhole. Will someone please tell me where the Institute is and send me some contact info? Failing that, I would settle for a postion in the Loreal Hair Science department...

Oh, Liquor Store (a G-Rated Post)

My dad was a '50' man. Nope, not a hip-hop fan, a Labatt's 50 fan. I know because I saved the caps. When I was between 5 and 10 I had a sort of casual bottle cap collection. Nothing I was terribly passionate about, it was just you know, like why not? Most of them were bent in half because twist-off technology was still years away and they were green with a gold '50' screened on top. On my way to or from somewhere I'd sometimes see different coloured caps on the ground and I'd harvest them. Being the 70's and being from a town of ordinary people, that meant if it wasn't a 50 cap it was Blue, Molson Golden or OV.

I should point out that this story isn't particularly about imbibing (though at that time I was excited to some day see what the fuss was about). This is just about aging, regressing in age and a memory.

When you turned over those beer caps and smelled them, you could still smell Eau de Fifty—the cologne of the age of majority. Oddly enough, ten years later there was a guy named Dan in my 10th grade art class who came to class occasionally smelling like the same cologne. I'm getting sidetracked but I recall he also had found a way to give himself real tattoos. He may have been in my art class, but judging by his tattoos, he was never going to be an artist.

So back on track, I smelled the caps and always imagined what beer must taste like. I think my dad once gave my brother and me a sip. Our 'ids' both said it tasted disgusting but our 'egos' (which were in control of our mouths) both agreed proudly and publicly that, "yeah... I liked it". The taste was soon forgotten and it again became a mystery.

I would also accompany my mom to the liquor store on occasion. There were two striking things about the place. It was air conditioned in a time when not everything was, and it too had a distinctive smell. It's hard to describe it. It was sharp but pleasant and unlike anything I have ever had the pleasure of smelling. I'm not sure if it was just this store or all of them, but that place was the only one I've ever known to have that bouquet. I'll call it a bouquet because it's what I imagined liquor or wine would taste like. Now, having tasted my fair share I can safely say, I was smelling something other than the products in that store. But here's the clincher and why I'm even writing all this:

I have just returned from the liquor store with some beer and an urge to write. Why? Here's why. I've been legally purchasing alcohol for nearly half my life, but EVERY time I walk in to a liquor store I EXPECT it to smell like that little place in Ridgetown. And every time I draw that first breath inside I feel 5 to 10 years old. And when my brain registers a 'no match' on the smell, I'm returned to my present age a little let down. Odd isn't it? How my mind has paired a place and a smell.

Oh liquor store smell, I'll find you again if I have to vist evry liqor stroe in this coutry.

35 Years of Wisdom

On this 35th wedding anniversary of my parents, Arend and Willa Dale, something has occurred to me without a lot of thinking. That is, that you never outgrow your need for your parents. I’m not talking about your need for family, no, that’s a given. But I’m talking about the wisdom of someone who’s been through it all before you have. When you’re a kid you need them—naturally. Yet even through those years as a teenager when you try to strike out on your own and indeed in college and beyond, you find an affirming guidance in your folks—at least if you land a set like I did.

When I was filling out my application for university, my dad mentioned in some sort of off-hand way that I should consider getting a truck license. When I scoffed at the suggestion, saying something to the effect of that being below me and counter to the whole notion of actually GOING to school, he simply replied, “There’s no shame in being a truck driver”. I guess I wasn’t expecting that response, certainly not from a man with a PhD. Maybe it was the profundity of the moment or the simple truth of the statement, but that has stuck with me for the last 15 years. A little bit of wisdom when I thought I no longer had need for the words of my father. Since then I’ve gone through the usual dips that one experiences in life, but I have always been able to find happiness with what I have and to recognize that truck driver is in it for the same reasons I am and indeed could teach me a thing or two.

Now, as Rhonda and I shift our focus to having kids of our own, as well as beginning to participate in the lives of some of the kids around us, I’m reminded of a similarly obscure moment. I must have been 12 or something and completely fascinated with video games. So much so that I would sneak over to the arcade even though it was expressly forbidden. Time and time again I would turn around to see my mom standing furious at the door of the arcade and on one particular occasion I remember getting dragged out and escorted home in my big rubber rubber boots. I’m not sure why I remember that detail … perhaps because the memory was closely paired with the other part of the story: the fact that all my friends saw me get busted by my mom.

It seemed so unfair. I’m not sure who was madder at whom that day. But now as I look back I know it was the right thing. These aren’t influences I want my children having … if I can help it. With a child’s future on such a fine balance I hope Rhonda and I can provide fruitful and constructive outlets for ours. And if it comes down to it, embarrass them in front of their friends. For an only child like my mother to successfully raise four boys, each with a different personality, I think she did (and continues to do) a remarkable job.

So on this 35th anniversary I want to say that I am humbled by my parents’ accomplishments and wisdom. Thanks Mom. Thanks Dad.