Tuesday, November 27, 2012

FIRST NIGHT Temecula, The Great Temecula Grape Drop & NYE Celebration


TEMECULA FIRST NIGHT,
And how to grow glowing, fake grapes from Styrofoam.

That original cage was sort of easy to create.  Take three six-foot metal garden trellises from Home Depot, a package of zip ties, chicken wire, a few carabiners and a few feet of chain, and well two petite ladies created seven feet of grapes.


LeAnn and I did it in my over packed garage and it took about 24 hours of trial and error.
This year was more challenging. First... there was no such thing as a 5x12-foot garden trellis. It would have to be welded - I did think of MORE POWER TOOLS ... but for the sake of the budget opted to take my design to Mikes Precision Welding. He welded a cage out of aluminum that weighed less than 20 pounds. (Lightweight was a criteria.)

Then we had to create new leaves - again WEATHER RESISTANT. This is done with Dino goo, a 2-part coating for foam and other products, that becomes sandable, drillable, paintable, and rain resistant. Problem - our previous incarnation with this product was difficult to manipulate and a bit heavy. We would need 6-8 leaves for the new bunch.. Note the leaves are 1/2 the size of our old bunch.

Then we had to find bigger balls. Eh... wrong - there are no larger purple sequined balls. 8" is as large as you can find and ... oh no .. the product is discontinued. So punt. First we found 10" and 12" Styrofoam balls... problem $35 apiece. The 8" were $7 with sequins. Plain white balls larger than 8" where 5 times more than I had budgeted for when estimating the cost to double the grapes back in APRIL. AND, BACK IN APRIL, purple sequined balls were still made.

So we bought plain white smooth foam balls ($5). This meant we had to somehow make them purple and my thought was to spray them purple, then spray adhesive to put glitter and sequins on them.

Oops... the prototype took spray paint, the smooth foam created an incredibly shrinking purple ball, that sizzled and foamed into a pimpled small ball.

ARG.
Solution - AIR BRUSH... We had 20 new sequined balls, needed at least 48.  We ordered 28 balls and spent a day air brushing them.
Then, another day of spreading MODGE PODGEMod Podge CS11302 Original 16oz Glue - Matte (Google Affiliate Ad) on the balls, and ultramarine and fuchsia glitter.

And we got: This is phase one. If you notice there are some areas that catch the light better ... these have purple small sequins on them. NOT the large ones like above... by the way - note above we put netting on the balls. This kept the sequins on them... and we will be netting these new balls too.

Next, a picture of the purple balls with sequins and... how we solved the purple that turns raspberry problem.


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