Arts & Crap: Holiday Beardos

Ah, Christmas! A time to give, a time to love, a time to kill, and most importantly, a time to celebrate hoary old, rosy-cheeked bearded men. If you live in the world, you know that Santa is the beardo we casual Christians honor most during the holiday season and our veneration of Old Saint Nick extends to our December craft projects. When I was in elementary school, my teachers forced my classmates and I to churn out hundreds of paper plate Santas, hang said paper plates upon the walls, and then prostrate ourselves before them. "O night divine, O night when Santa was born," we would sing. 


To make your very own paper plate Santa Claus you will need:
Construction Paper (red, pink, white)
Cotton Balls
Paper Plate
Crayolas
Black Marker
Scissors, Glue, etc.


Instructions (which I basically just got from this site):
1. To make Santa's head, turn the paper plate face down (trim down the edges of the plate if you're inspired to do so) and color the paper plate peach as conventional wisdom/the media/the National Association for the Advancement of Peach People (NAAPP) tells us that this is the color of flesh.


2. Fabricate a little cone-shaped Santa hat with your red construction paper. Glue a cotton ball to the tip of the hat, so that the hat looks gangsta, and a white strip of construction paper to the base--this will be the brim of the hat. Glue the hat to the peach face.


3. Glue cotton balls around the edges of the paper plate peach face. Make sure to do this with care because this will be Santa's beard and you want him to look as sexy as possible. 


4. Draw Santa's face with your black marker. You can cut out some pink construction paper circles and glue them onto his cheeks to convey how drunk he is/the severity of his rosacea.

After completing this Santa (and sucking my glue-covered fingers clean), I got to thinking about some of the other beardy men I admire/respect/wish would come down my chimney every year, and realized that with a few minor adjustments I could honor all of them this holiday season via paper plate craft project.

Karl Marx

Charles Darwin

Papa Smurf

Willie Nelson

Morgan Freeman

The really cool thing about these paper plate faces is that you can punch two little holes into the sides, attach a piece of string/rubber band, and turn them into masks. This way you can attend your holiday functions as Karl Marx, Morgan Freeman, etc. 

Arts & Crap: So You Love "Say Anything" and Want to be Lloyd Dobler

Say Anything is an action adventure movie, not unlike The Lord of the Rings, in which Lloyd Dobler, The Key Master, boldly attempts to win the heart of Diane Court, an overachiever with an obnoxious voice whose dad is that old guy from Frasier. 


In the movie's most celebrated scene, Lloyd, played by the adorable John Cusack, stands outside of Diane's bedroom window with a jam box hoisted above his head as Peter Gabriel's "In Your Eyes" blares (pissing off local Phil Collins devotees). Though it isn't necessarily the best of Gabriel's post-Genesis oeuvre, the song is special to Lloyd and Diane because it was playing on the radio the first time they had teenage car sex (not sex with the car, but with each other while in the car). 


A lot of people watch this iconic scene and think, "Gee, I wish someone would do something like that for me." Other people watch it and think, "Where can I get a jam box like that in the 21st century?" If you fall into that second group, the answer to your question is "somewhere on the Internet," but if you're poor like me and can't afford expensive Internet goods, then I have the perfect craft project for you.

What You'll Need:

• Cardboard, tons of it. (For the frame of the radio I used an empty Pepsi Max 12-pack box, another slightly larger box, and some other piece of cardboard I had in my cardboard storage locker, which holds cardboard and is entirely constructed of cardboard.)
• Silver Duct Tape
• Black Tissue Paper
• Scissors
• 2 Small Paper Plates
• Colorful Card Stock (Optional)
• Scotch Tape/Glue (Optional)

Instructions:

1. I imagine you've seen a radio before, so you know the basic structure. I cut the Pepsi Max box in half (by the way, don't drink Pepsi Max *barf*), dipped into my cardboard reserve, cut out two squares, and covered the exposed holes. These two halves will be the speaker boxes. Then I cut the back out of the larger box, trimmed down the sides so that the width was equal to the width of the Pepsi box, and taped the back of the box back onto the front of it. This will be the center console thingy where all the thingies are.

2. Cover everything in duct tape. It'll take a while, so you should probably watch a DVD while you're doing this. I chose The Descent 2, which wasn't as good as the original.

3. Trim your paper plates down, so they'll fit onto your speaker boxes.

4. Cover the paper plates in black tissue paper.

5. Tape the plates onto the speaker boxes.

6. The rest is just detailing. You can do whatever you want here. And, no, I'm not just saying that because I'm too lazy to go through a step by step description(<---lie).

Tape the three pieces together, go stand outside some chick's/guy's window, and proudly hold your masterpiece above your head. If doing that doesn't win over the object of your affection then she/he is probably a jerk anyway and doesn't deserve your love. 


Now, let's move on to a wearable craft project. 


The trench coat has become synonymous with Lloyd Dobler but if you've seen Say Anything as many times as I have then you know that Mr. Dobler loves The Clash and wears their band t-shirt EVERY DAY. 

Some might chalk this up to lazy costuming but I think that it actually adds to the character--he only owns one shirt, which emphasizes the Lloyd-Diane class disparity. 

Vintage band t-shirts are pricey, so I made my own, using a plain white undershirt and a red fabric marker (the ink is permanent and, according to the box, the t-shirt can be washed without the ink bleeding through). The actual letters aren't as bright as they are here, I think that the color in the picture has to do with lighting or something, I don't know. 

It's okay if you mess up. In my opinion, the more bootleg the thing looks, the better. In fact, that's my motto.


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Bonus Features


Embarrassing Say Anything related anecdote: When I was in 12th grade, I went on this retreat with my class. At the end of the week we had to write these affirmations on little scraps of paper where we'd tell our friends or teachers or retreat leaders how much they meant to us or how dope we thought they were, etc. The notes could be anonymous but by the end of the retreat we'd all become so close and comfortable with each other that no one hid their identity...or their true feelings. I had a crush on this one dude and wrote him an affirmation that was basically just the lyrics to "In Your Eyes." I ended the note by saying that I wanted to "touch the light, the heat" I saw in his eyes. Ugh. Luckily, I was sort of a funny girl in high school so I think he thought the whole thing was a joke.  


Video:

Arts & Crap: So You Want to Build a Laser and/or The Flux Capacitor

I'm not crafty but that doesn't mean that I don't like to use scissors and tape crap together. Here are two low-key art projects that you can try at home.

Project #1: Laser

In Kindergarten Cop, Dominic shows Detective John Kimble the lasers he's painstakingly constructed to protect his home from the "bad people." 


No blueprints for these lasers exist. 


However, I--being the genius that I am--was able to figure out how they were made and replicate the complex design. 

What You'll Need:

• A few sheets of aluminum foil

Instructions:

1. Roll one sheet of aluminum foil up like a Fruit Roll-Up/really skinny burrito/marijuana cigarette. 

2. Place your rolled-up aluminum foil on top of a flat sheet of aluminum foil.

3. Roll the flat sheet of aluminum foil around the rolled-up aluminum foil. Now your laser is thicker, longer, and more powerful. Fact: Your laser's power increases with each piece of aluminum foil that you add.

4. Bend the tip of your laser so it looks like a candy cane/one of those cartoon hooks used to pull singing, anthropomorphized animals off stage when they fail to entertain jaded Vaudeville audiences.

And you're done! Now all you need to do is go to your local police station, pick up the appropriate laser permits, climb the electrical tower near your house, and laser that thing up.

Just watch out for birds.

Project #2: Flux Capacitor

In Back to the Future, we learn that the flux capacitor is what makes time travel possible. I'm not sure how long it took Doc Brown to build the original prototype, but it took me hella hours (one episode of Doctor Who, a couple of episodes of Kirstie Alley's Big Life, and most of Tombstone) to put mine together. So be sure to free-up your day if you're planning on making one of these.

What You'll Need:

• 1 shoebox (preferably one with a hinged lid)
• construction paper (red, black, yellow)
• 2 yellow/gold pipe cleaners
• a pair of scissors
• an x-acto/utility knife (a sharp kitchen knife might suffice)
• scotch tape
• transparent sheet (can be saran wrap, comic-book bag, overhead projector sheet, stretched out condom, etc.)
• glue stick
• pencil
• white-out/liquid-paper pen
• 1.21 gigawatts of electrical power

Instructions:

1. Cut a rectangular opening out of the shoebox lid with your X-Acto knife. (Don't throw away the piece you've cut out. You'll need it later.)

2. Tape the transparent sheet onto the back of the lid. 

3. Line the inside of the box with black construction paper.

You can put the shoebox aside for now. You won't need it again for a while. Take a break if you want and eat some delicious tater tots.

4. cut the toilet paper roll into three pieces.

5. Take one of your tiny TP rolls and the rectangle you cut out of the shoebox lid and trace three circles onto the cardboard with your pencil.

6. Cut out the circles with your X-Acto knife.

7. Tape the circles onto the tops of the TP rolls.

8. Use the bottom of one of your TP rolls to trace three circles onto the yellow construction paper.

9. Cut out the three circles with your scissors.

10. Glue the yellow circles onto the tops of the TP rolls.

11. Cut out three strips from the yellow construction paper (the width should be equal to the length of the TP roll).

12. Tape the edge of one of the strips onto a TP roll.

13. Wrap the strip around the TP roll tightly and tape down the edge. 

14. Repeat steps 12-13 for the other two TP rolls.

15. Fold your pipe cleaner into a "V" shape. (You'll probably have to trim the edges a bit with your scissors because this is eventually going to go inside of the shoebox.)

16. Poke a tiny hole into the side of one of the TP rolls with the X-Acto knife, then poke the tip of the pipe cleaner "V" in through the hole (you can tape the tip of the pipe cleaner onto the inner wall of the roll to secure it).

17. Repeat step 16 with another one of the TP rolls.

18. Cut the other pipe cleaner in half, poke a tiny hole through the last TP roll, stick the tip of the pipe cleaner through the hole.

19. Connect the two pieces together, so they form a "Y."

20. Flip your "Y" upside down (hole side up). Place two/three small pieces of scotch tape onto the inside of each TP roll (half of each piece of tape should be sticking out above the hole).

21. Tape the "Y" into the shoebox by folding the tape under the TP roll (you could just tape the base of the TP roll onto the box/glue it down, but this looks a little cleaner).

22. Cut three thin strips from the red construction paper and with the white-out pen write, "DISCONNECT CAPACITOR DRIVE" on one of them, "BEFORE OPENING" on another one, and "SHIELD EYES FROM LIGHT" on the last one. Tape/glue the strips onto the lid of the box.

Connect the finished product to your time machine (DeLorean, hot tub, et al.), go back in time, screw things up so you're never born, fix things so you're born, jam to Huey Lewis.