Kicking off the blog with an upcycling project for the Music Geek in me.
I found these 2 old (but hardly antique) end tables on one of those Facebook “Meet me at Walmart and buy my crap” pages. I was lucky to even see them, and the person just wanted them gone and sold them for $10 total. I had no idea what I would do with them, but I knew I could do SOMETHING with them. So I stared at them for a week or so. Double-decker cat beds for my furballs Tuxedo and Rigby? Meh.
Then I realized they held vinyl perfectly. Vinyl, AKA records, for all the kids out there. Before your evil MP3 player came along, the old folks jammed out to their golden oldies on vinyl. Not that I’m QUITE that old. I’m from the CD generation, but my appreciation of music makes me one of those guys who use to sift through old vinyl at every record store and flea market I could get to.
Anyway, here is what I started with.
Like i said. Old, but hardly antique. Badly in need of some paint, or new stain, or ANYTHING other than that old laminate.
Now, how to geek it out? For me The Rolling Stones cast a shadow over all other music. You can disagree, that’s just my personal taste. However, I like pretty much every kind of music, so long as I find it good. No science to it. so I hit the web and started looking for Stones photos, and good scans of their album covers. I also started grabbing scans of other albums as I went, thinking I might use the others for this project somehow.
I sat and worked out a fairly massive collage in Photoshop, and broke it up into pieces that would fit to print on an 8.5×11 sheet of paper.That’s all it is. Plain old paper. It’s laser-jet prints simply put down like stickers using Mod Podge (the miracle product), sealed with more Mod Podge after they’re applied, and a bunch of poly. After the pieces were down, I put the tongue on separately. I actually messed the tongue up quite a bit, so after I dried I just put another one down on top of it, and it looked perfect. It actually made it pop out a bit (3D effect mannnnnnnn), as it was three sheets of paper for the tongue instead of one, so it was a mistake that improved it. Being a fan, the collage was a lot of fun (though also a lot of work). Turned out nice.
All laid out, before correcting a few mistakes (like the small tear on the tongue).
I really loved how the top turned out, and decided I wanted to do a collage of other famous album covers wrapped around the tables done the same way. However, after I had put together a collection of about 300 albums, I realized a collage of all of these photos would be a hideous mess of hot chaos. So I did the math, and realized I could do two “grids” of covers that would cover each table, with 144 album covers on each one. So i had to painfully, and geekily, cut the fat and came up with 288 albums that I would make these wraps with. It was fun for this geek to tediously put these together trying to spread any colors or specific artists around in the most specifically non-random (is that an oxymoron) arrangement possible. They turned out well. Kinda like the greatest wall paper of all time. My tastes are all over, so you get Howlin’ Wolf and BB King to Motorhead and Frank Zappa. From Ray Charles and Miles Davis to Patsy Cline, Johnny Cash, and NWA. Straight Outta Compton!!!!
Each cover is 2″x2″, and the extra space at the bottom was filled with a keyboard I found. I cut it into chunks that would fit onto standard 8.5×11 printer paper. It’s kind of a pain to cut them all and get them as close to perfect as possible, but a little roughness here and there was fine, as it matched the spirit of an old record collection.
I painted all the trim, doors, and spots I thought might be visible after they’re stacked and wrapped. Black made everything really pop. After putting on all the 8×8 pieces as straight as I could get them, I slathered on a lot of Mod Podge and let it dry, then I put 5 or 6 coats of poly, allowing it to dry between coats. I may put more coats on, but it will be for the look, and not because more are needed. I also considered using some leftover epoxy resin I have on the top of this, but I don’t think I want to do it.
The wraps turned out great!
I considered a few thins for the 4 door panels on the tables (only 2 of them actually opened). But I ended up deciding to come up with a mic, guitar, bass, and drum graphic for the doors. I also considered doing the outside of the door panels with an amplifier graphic, but decided it would work the way I wanted. So I just painted the door panels black, and it all turned out exactly as I envisioned. That doesn’t happen with enough projects, even when they turn out great.
thegeekflux 