Did Somebody say CAKE??

Is this not one of the coolest art installations ever??  I saw this in a coffee shop months ago and just had to take a picture.  I stored the idea in my little brain and thought about it now and then and how I could do the same thing on a smaller scale in my house.

But where?  And what drawing?  I think a giant bird swooping down in my little house could just send someone over the edge.  Alfred Hitchcock I am not.

After deciding that the kitchen wall above my island, though smallish, was the ideal spot to implement this project, I set out to figure the best way to execute it.

First I measured the wall and picked which books I didn’t mind losing to the project.  I laid them out to see how it could look.  I once had the famous phrase by Marie Antoinette  “Let Them Eat Cake”  laser cut from vinyl and applied to the bulkhead in my kitchen in a former home.  I really loved that quote there and thought it would be appropriate to repeat it in my kitchen now.  We all know you can never have too much cake…

      

I played around with the layout, with the amount of books and how and with what I would apply the words.

Husband graciously drilled the holes in all four corners of each book for me (let me just add here that I am totally capable of drilling holes in books myself, but he offered so I accepted.  We roll like that sometimes.)

  I used these nuts and bolts, sometimes the WRONG way (nut on the SAME side as the bolt). My husband had difficulty with that one.  He kind of argued that I shouldn’t really do it that way.  Really, husband?  Will the Nut and Bolt Police come arrest me??  Team, if you learn nothing else from me today, it’s RELAX.  There is no wrong way to do your art.  Who cares if someone thinks you are doing it inappropriately!  It’s your art so you get to set the rules.  Some of the books didn’t even end up with matching nuts and bolts.  Some are even a different colour! I’m not kidding.

I added a good gob of hot glue gun glue on the back of the nut/screw/bolt/washer/whatever to secure it to the pages and book cover and to semi protect the wall from the scratching bits.

      

I thought about painting all the words and drawings on the pages in black craft paint, but I was concerned the wet paint could warp the pages. I ended up colouring in what needed colouring with a good old Sharpie, and did that shading the back of the drawing thing with pencil lead so you can trace the drawing you want on to paper.  The retro woman I pilfered from the free clip art images on the internet.  I could have drawn her, but why mess with perfection?  The cake and the first two words however, are freehand.  If you make a mistake or aren’t crazy about how a drawing looks, TURN THE PAGE!  You have a multitude of chances to get it right.

Here’s the next step.  These 3M products that I got at the Home Depot are currently my best friend (sad, isn’t it?).  Follow the directions exactly.  Using these, I  mounted them on the wall without any fear of damaging the paint job and they can be removed easily without a trace that they ever even existed.  Like dinosaurs.  Except there IS evidence for dinosaurs.  So never mind.

  After measuring to find the centre of the wall – a little math but I got through it, I placed the tape strip to guide where I wanted to start and stop and how high. Did you know there’s an App that works like a perfect bubble level?   I did, and I used it.  It was free.  My favourite thing.

Laying the books in front of the wall I chose in the order they were to go helped me visualize the job ahead.

Up they went.

And there you go.  Let them eat cake.  Figuratively and literally!