Thursday, January 13, 2011

Iron Craft Week Two--Part Two

Since I didn't have any fabric to make a door snake, I decided to use Tyvek as my fabric. Tyvek is a synthetic material that envelopes are made of (think of those FedEx envelopes that you can't tear). I use Tyvek for my large scale silhouette pieces since it is black on one side and white on the other. It acts like fabric and is waterproof (which for some reason this is important when being a door snake). Since I didn't have a sewing machine available at the moment, I simply hand stitched the Tyvek.
The bigger problem was that I didn't have any materials to fill it with. Not wanting to lug around a big bag of cat litter or aquarium gravel, I started walking around my kitchen to try and find something to use. I looked at the recycling center in my kitchen when the light bulb went off. Rather than close off the Tyvek tube, I would leave one end open and sew in a piece of elastic so that it would shut (just like the waist band of swimming trunks or sweat pants). I could then fill the tube with those plastic shopping bags from the supermarket. This way, the materials would be waterproof and I would save the bags from entering the landfill for life.

So here is the final project:


I decorated the outside of the door snake with hand cut letters (I needed to practice my scalpel skills). I thought of the first five positive verbs to use as a motivation when looking at the door snake. BTW, it is much easier to glue the letters when the snake is flat. Also, it is much easier to turn out the Tvyek if you scrunch/wrinkle the material before trying to turn it out. The material becomes much more pliable when crinkled. I was able to stuff 25 plastic shopping bags into the door snake.

The final item in place in front of the door.

1 comment:

Grandma - Bear said...

great job on recyling. Like the idea!!