Every year at my office, there is a fundraising campaign for The United Way and other charities. I am one of the canvassers, and I get involved in different ways. This year I decided to participate in the Tacky Tie contest. We were provided with thrift stores ties, and told to go crazy. The ties will be voted on with purchased tickets, and the two winning ties will be worn by executive.
I chose a clip-on tie so that I wouldn’t have to worry about how the tie would be tied after a lot of unbendy hot glue was attached to it. Turns out this was a really smart move. Here is a picture of the back of the tie (I forgot to photograph before starting to paint on the front), one with the first coat of paint, and one with the final blue (although purple sparkle was added to give the impression of a night sky).
Stages of the tie
Now the fun part… attaching all the tacky goodness. I decided to make a tree, and one of my coworkers had the wonderful idea that I should make it three dimensional. I used gold foil and silver pipe cleaners to build the tree, first cutting a hole in the tie for the string of lights/leaves to come through. I found some reindeer ornaments in the dollar store, so I took one apart, and attached the two halves to the base of the tree. I found that the gold was just too, well, gold, so I added some black paint to the “bark”. It was a little too tiger-y, so I added some muted gold sparkle paint… Success – it became much more bark-like.
Almost done
The reindeer weren’t standing out enough, so they got a coat of paint/sparkle as well. Another coworker provided me with some wooden animal cutouts, so I tried to turn a rabbit into a cat… it might have turned into a squirrel.
And here is the finished product… It doesn’t bend, and could probably be used as a weapon, but it was sure a lot of fun to make!
Finished!
Smudge was very patient through the whole process (she only tried to eat the foil once or twice, and only walked over the wet paint a few times), and was “rewarded” by being put into a Princess of Darkness costume. I’m sure she was wishing she had misbehaved a little more if this was a reward…
Smudge, Princess of Darkness
