disney – Fad I Had

In June 2016, I moved to a new room at work which has an entire whiteboard wall. For the first few weeks the wall was covered in work from the previous team and I wasn’t allowed to touch it. In those weeks my colleagues and I named the room ‘The Chic Suite’ and talked about how we would use the whiteboard wall. We wanted to bring a bit of fun and colour to the room, by drawing around each others bodies. The day we were told we could wipe that wall clean, we did.

One evening when everyone had gone home, I was packing up to leave when I turned and looked at the empty white wall. I decided to write ‘Welcome to The Chic Suite’ in the centre of the wall using different colours, so that when someone came into the room, it would be there right in front of them.

welcome to chic suite

The day after during lunchtime we started to draw around each others bodies. There were only four of us in the room at the time, so we had three of us to the left of the wall on one on the right, with the ‘Welcome to the Chic Suite’ in the middle. Tracing around each other was fun, though the traces were not accurate to our body shapes, one person had a big unnatural hand and another had an extremely slim leg. We just laughed at the figures we’d drawn and didn’t bother changing them as they were unique, like us! We decided to each be a Disney characters, so we had an Alice, Belle, Pocahontas and Aladdin and we all had fun drawing the outfits on each other. The Alice and Belle looked very similar in blue dresses, so to tell them apart, I thought I’d try and draw Lumière (the candle) next to Belle. I found a picture on Google using my phone, grabbed an orange whiteboard pen and started to draw. When I was finished I was really surprised how easy it was and how similar the drawing was to the original picture. I had a sudden urge to do more! So I took to google again to find an image of Meeko (raccoon) for Pocahontas and started drawing. When I’d finished drawing Meeko lunch was nearly over and I had to wait until the end of the day to carry on! That evening I added a Cheshire Cat, I found a picture of the cat lying on a tree branch and as Alice was on the far left of the wall, it was perfect!

I really had the bug for drawing now, so for the Aladdin (that was the fourth body trace on the right side of the wall), I added Abu (monkey) and the Genies lamp. I also drew Mini Mouse with the words ‘Walt Disney lives here’ underneath, as the wall was pretty much all Disney!

Here’s a picture of the wall (it’s the only one I have!) :

One evening I was curious to see what else I was able to draw and I called a friend to give me a challenge. She asked if I could do the famous drawing of Cosette from Les Misérables. Challenge accepted! The original drawing of Cosette consists of lines, so I started from the top and worked my way down copying every line as close as I could from the picture on my phone. Once I’d gotten to the end of Cosette’s face it had been over an hour and the ink in the pen was becoming faint. I was not leaving until it was finished, so I put the pen in an up right position for fifteen minutes, then continued. I finished the neck by just doing lines and not copying the original as my arm was getting achy. All that was left after that was the hair, which wouldn’t have taken that long to do but the ink was faint and it was past ten o’clock, again I didn’t bother looking at the original image and just drew from memory to get it done. Here it is:

Les mis

I added a drawing of Aladdin a week or so later, along with a body trace of our fifth team member. This was done underneath the ‘Welcome to the Chic Suite’ and in a sitting pose. This person soon became Esmeralda from the Hunchback of Notre Dame, holding a tambourine and a potato (inside joke relating to the person). Sadly I don’t have a picture! But I have one of the Aladdin:

Aladdin

I’ve made a slideshow of some of the Disney drawings close up!

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

At the beginning of December 2016, I wiped all the drawings off to start fresh. As it was the holiday season and I was feeling festive, I decided to do a Christmas morning! I grabbed a ruler and drew a window, which took me a couple of hours. The next evening I started the stone fireplace. On top of the fireplace I added Clogsworth, Chip and Mrs Potts all from Beauty and the Beast. Overall the Christmas morning took me about four nights to do. The three Disney characters were the only drawings where I had to look at a picture. For the rest of the Christmas morning, I just let my imagination do the work!

Whiteboard wall - christmas morning

I really enjoy drawing and I learned that it was something I never knew I would be good at. I found it very relaxing and for a first, I never got frustrated during any of the drawings. I will carry on drawing on the whiteboard wall, as all the drawings above have now been wiped off and I just need to find the time! When I do have the time, if you would like to challenge me to draw something, comment below and I’ll give it a go! 🙂

RATINGS

Difficulty scale – I can’t rate this for you but for me it was easy
Time taken – on going – For the Disney characters it was about 15 minutes each
Enjoyment – LOVE IT
Would I do it again? – YES, when I have the time..

In November 2015 I was browsing online when I came across this beauty:

DIY house

It looked very easy to make and from reviews online all I needed was some UHU glue and I was good to go. I ordered it from Ebay and it came 3 days later and as soon as I got home from work, I ripped open the box eager to get started!

This is what I got inside the box:

up box contents

I also bought a Stanley knife, sandpaper, scissors and a ruler.

After an hour of sorting out all the little pieces, I decided to read the manual! There was a lot to take in and I soon realised it was going to be a bit more fiddly than I initially thought.

I started by lightly sanding the edges of the wooden pieces for the house as this would help the glue bond better. Next I then cut out all the wall paper and flooring ready for the inside of the house and stuck them to the correct walls and floors.

After the pieces had dried, the manual then instructed me to do the windows and porch on the front of the house. This consisted of little wooden white squares, that were to be glued on the out side of each wall that had a hole for the window. The main window on the front of the house was more complex and took a very steady hand to put together as it was delicate. I did snap the bottom half but managed to glue it back together, without it being too noticeable! See… 🙂

Once the windows were fixed, it was time to glue the four walls onto the main flooring and let dry. When the walls dried I then attached the front porch to the house and the main window. As there are lights to be fitted, it was now time to fit them before the roof was placed on. The lights were easy to insert into the house, though the glue was very noticeable on the walls. The circuit for the lights contained two LED lights as the house has two rooms.

The next part was the furniture! This was the bit I was looking forward to the most, decorating! I must admit, the chairs were so small, that it was very hard to cover the small pieces with fabric. Cutting the little wooden legs took a few goes as they were either uneven or kept breaking in half! Yes, this was very frustrating and I gave up at this point. Though, it was them little legs that made me leave it unfinished on the shelf for 4 months, until I had the motivation to try again.

The other room in the house was the kitchen, The main feature in the kitchen for me is the chandelier, again fiddly, but worth it! Here’s the finished kitchen and living room below:

The roof was simple to assemble and required some sanding to create a fully joined peak at the top of the roof. Once I had glued the roof parts together and added the chimney, I then glued the LED light that’s in the kitchen to the roof, as the manual had instructed. The final piece to be made for the house was the balloons, I couldn’t understand the diagrams in the manual so I just made them up to how I thought they should be. The balloons are made of coloured beads, thin wire and a lot of glue! I used way more glue than I should have and some of the colours from the beads started to run! Ooops!

Now the house was complete and the lights were working, I had to cut a clear tube to be glued underneath the house so that I looks like it’s floating. I tipped 3 quarters of the gravel stones into the bottom of the glass ball and the rest was glued onto the underneath part of the grass. After I had put the grass under the house it was ready to be inserted into the glass ball. This was very easy as the hole is bigger than the house, so it slid straight in! The battery for the lights is then hidden in the stones. The last and final piece was the white picket fence, this of course was very simple to build, 4 strips of wood glued to make a square and then placed over the house.

Here’s the final pictures:

RATINGS

Difficulty scale – Hard
Time taken – 5 months (on and off)
Enjoyment – 🙂 Frustrating at times but pure satisfaction once finished!
Would I do it again? NO

Tag: disney

Drawing – Whiteboard Art

DIY – Disney Pixar ‘UP’ House – with sound controlled lights