Australian Flag Washing Machine

At one point, I was getting so carried away with artistic fervour that I was basically painting everything that stood still long enough. (Though not quite to the extent of my former housemate James – I woke up one morning to find a live mouse in the humane trap in the kitchen, with a note taped to it saying “Do not release – gone to buy paint”. But I digress.)

It started life as just plain blue, but if you’re going to paint your washing machine, you have to go all out, you know? No point going to Woodstock but not getting stoned and dancing naked on a table. And, well, for someone who wears fluoro green and gold shoes, nothing is too patriotic.

                                                                             

My first stop was the Union Jack. I blew the dust off my measuring tape and figured out the dimensions of the machine lid, then found an image online, pasted it into a Publisher document and sized it to the same dimensions as the lid. That told me how wide the stripes needed to be, so I chalked them out and then masking taped the edges of the lines.

Pretend this photo is of the tape for the white, not the red. You get the idea. 

It’s easier to paint half on top of the tape, because if you’re running the brush along the edges then the paint is more likely to work its way underneath.

While I painted, instead of singing along with my Banjo Party record like I usually do while crafting, I had a chat with my conscience that went something like this:

INNER VOICE: So, hey, remember that time in second year when you failed your open book exam because you watched movies all night and showed up on no sleep with no notes?

ME: Yeah, so?

INNER VOICE: You have an open book exam in two days, Rach. Have you written any notes yet?

ME: ….What’s your point exactly?

INNER VOICE: Oy vey.

After more layers of paint than the Golden Gate Bridge, I repeated the measure-tape-paint process with the red stripes. (I found them harder to measure on the computer since they’re slanted, so I printed them and went old-school ruler on them.)

Embarrassingly, the process for the stars was much the same: measuring the front of the washing machine, sizing the Southern Cross and printing the stars individually. If I’d tried to paint them freehand they would have come out looking more like white-capped waves, so I stuck the print-outs on poster board and cut them out with a Stanley knife to make a stencil. 

In hindsight, I would have moved all the stars up a few centimetres, because even though they’re perfectly even, you can only really tell that they’re even when you’re sitting on the ground. I don’t spend much time on the floor of my laundry room, especially since nobody’s vacuumed in there since we moved in.

Now my only problem is how to hide it when Nan comes to visit. Suggestions?

Harry Potter Laundry Art

We’re pretty passionate about Harry Potter in our house. Insult our grandmothers, by all means, but don’t call Hermione a Mudblood. I’d been trying to come up with something to brighten up the laundry for months – frankly, hanging up a sign along the lines of ‘Wash, Dry, Repeat’ seemed more like a cruel taunt than cheerful wall art. I was deliriously excited when the idea dawned on me, and texted a friend immediately.

ME: It’s not weird to hang your used socks on the wall and call it art, is it?

HELEN: Yes.

However, my approach to criticism is pretty much the same as it is to measurements: I find out it’s not going to fit, and I do it anyway.

To build the frame I followed the same process as I did for the e.e.cummings wall hanging. (Afterwards I realised that I’d been sawing, drilling and hammering outside close to midnight, and if my neighbours had had a voodoo doll handy no doubt I’d be dead or at least severely maimed right now.)

I laid the sheet over the frame and taped out where the edges were, then took it back off and arranged the socks in a vague sort of order so I knew where my letters needed to go. If you’re confident, it’d be quicker to do it with the material already stapled, but I’d already spent hours removing staples from my craft chest until my fingers sobbed for mercy, so I wasn’t taking any chances.

For the stamps, I bought a packet of those foam letters from Chickenfeed and glued them onto cardboard backing so I’d have something to press them down with. In hindsight, this was a mistake, since once you’re finished stamping you have to wash the paint off. Cardboard, like cats, does not enjoy being bathed. A better idea would be some sort of thin plastic, or springing for actual stamps, you cheap bastard.

To figure out vaguely how many words I’d need to fit in per line, I measured how tall the letters were and divided it into the total length of the frame minus the socks. Once I knew I had four lines, I counted up the number of characters in the words (since some words are longer than others) and divided them roughly evenly. (See, high school maths was useful for something after all. Well, primary school maths, anyway.)

                            

Once the paint was dry, I safety pinned the socks on, and lost several fingernails and a good chunk of sanity to the cause. Plus, two months later I’m still stepping on safety pins bent like Twisties that I cast aside in rage. It depends how thick the material is as to how easily they’ll pin, but a decent roll of duct tape will do the job just as well.

Please note that washing the socks first is not essential, but may be advisable. What are you, some kind of greasy Slytherin?