green fairy project

Frantic with ‘excitement’, on the evening of Tuesday 20th April, I finished all the miniature models. Not sure what time in the morning I finished as I was a little delirious at this stage, but at least Pritt Stick doesn’t give off the kind of fumes that would have had me flying.

I began by building all the honeycombs in order to hone my technique before tackling the more fiddly bees. The hexagonal shapes are not the easiest, but I developed a method that seemed to work, by gluing all the side around the top/front and then squeezing in the base/rear (as this would not be visible in the final display and therefore its appearance was less critical, even if I wasn’t) and hoped I’d scored the hexagons accurately. You may judge whether or not I was successful for yourself:

After a short Marlboro Red break, I then commence to assemble the bees. Gluing these little fuckers was very messy, so after botching a couple I decided to experiment with gluing the insides instead, allowing me to squeeze non-sticky tabs into the prism. This worked a treat and I was soon happily assembling my squadron. I then lined them up for inspection:

Happy with the troops, and having consumed another cigarette or two, it was time to give them their wings. Able to take to the air, I lined the squadron up for manoeuvres – observing them in formation and poised for attack. Well satisfied with the chaps, I decided to call it a night:

And so did they, retiring to the hive to await orders:

Working to my favoured production-line principle (based on complex time and motion studies beyond the understanding of mere mortals and which take longer to formulate than actually getting on with the fucking job in the first place), on Monday 19th April I now scored all the folds on the bee, honeycomb and wing nets that I had cut out the previous day. Like a crazed man, I continued until all had been delicately knifed.

As there is nothing to show by way of production photos, the scored nets looking almost identical to the naked eye, here is a nice picture of a horse having fun:

On Sunday 18th April, I spent the entire day cutting out all the bee, wing and honeycomb nets. Well, apart from the time I spent smoking and contemplating cutting out all the bee, wing and honeycomb nets. However, it’s reasonably therapeutic (as is the smoking) and allowed me to ruminate on the fact that no matter what job you do, there are going to be repetitive elements. It’s just that some people are lucky enough to be able to do other things in between and the repetitive elements only involve scalpelling some daft bee models. Life’s not so bad.

Tempting as it was to procrastinate, once I get the bit between my teeth, I tend to plough on until the job is done and at the end of the day I could consider the “day of rest” to have been reasonably productive:

Following on from the previous evening’s success, miniature honeycombs began rolling off the production line. Well, I made four. On Thursday 15th April, I was about to print off a few more template sheets when I realised that it might make more sense to see if I could actually make a bee to fit inside each of them before I ended up with dozens of reasonably attractive but ultimately useless models patched together with a scalpel and some glue (a bit like Katie Price).

Firing up Adobe Illustrator once again, I reduced the honeycomb template to two-thirds of its original size, thereby making the outer edge of this new net the same size as the tabbed hole in the honeycomb and allowing the bee to slot inside. A quick bit of re-colouring, the addition of eyes, mouth and a wing template finished the job and now I could get back in the ring with my Epson, which after several nozzle checks, head-cleans, replacement of three cartridges depleted by the head cleans, re-replacement of three cartridges due to the printer rejecting them first time around, much profanity on my part and a couple of calming Marlboro Reds produced the following:

More nifty scalpelling and more or less nifty Pritt Stickery and a tiny bee emerged:

Not tiny enough though, as I discovered when trying to force the fucking thing into the honeycomb. So, back into Illustrator, reduce the whole thing to 95% and hey presto! Still not quite small enough. 90% did the trick and now the bee slotted in perfectly – success:

I reckon I’m getting a little bit quicker with every model, without sacrificing quality, but I foresee a busy weekend at the cutting mat. Not sure yet how many bee/honeycomb combinations I am going to produce in order to demonstrate the tessellation principle (I’m guessing about twenty), but what the hell – I’m enjoying myself…

With Easter now done and dusted, I sat down on the evening of Tuesday 13th April to begin constructing small models of the honeycombs to demonstrate clearly how they would tessellate and stack like, well, honeycombs. This is in order to convey the brilliance of this idea to the members of the council who would be considering it and also because Gary and I had been encouraged by Adam to select from our massive project the thing we would most enjoy doing. Whilst ringing round garden centres to obtain free sunflower seeds might have some merit, it isn’t nearly as much fun as cardboard engineering, so I plumped for making tiny bee stuff instead.

Having previously designed the net for the prototype honeycomb using that notable drawing software “Microsoft Word for Windows” (if that doesn’t get me ejected from the course, nothing will), I decided I should probably use the altogether more suitable Adobe Illustrator. For a start, it’s a genuine drawing package, and secondly I could do with becoming more familiar with its operation. With a little fiddling and pedantic use of X and Y coordinates to get everything matching perfectly, I had a reasonable looking net. Then I had the usual frustrating wrestling match with my Epson Stylus Can’t-Print-For-Shit machine until what I had created on-screen appeared on a piece of thin white card:

I then began hacking away with my trusty scalpel, thinking all the while how Wrexham in Bloom’s gain is surgery’s loss:

Once the net was separated from the sheet, a delicate score along each of the creases made for easier folding:

Now it was time to make a mess. I have two forms of glue in my possession (not counting the big bottle of Art Attack PVA that has been waiting over three years for me to begin my papier mache sculpture using the frightening number of Rizla “only ten papers left” warning slips I have collected over the weeks and months). Each has its own advantages and disadvantages:

PRITT STICK – easy to use, relatively mess-free, good for sticking paper but cumbersome and lacks precision for fiddly bits.

UHU – can be applied in little blobs, but then forms a huge mozzarella-like string back to the tube when you pull it away. Gets fucking everywhere. Probably better inhaled deeply from a plastic bag than used to make tiny cardboard models (especially if using products supplied by Epson).

In consultation with resident modelling expert Dave, apparently Super Glue with an activator (as used in the building trade to stick wood and MDF) is perfect for this kind of thing. Spray activator on both surfaces to combat their porous nature, one drop of Super Glue and they are instantly bonded – no waiting and no strings. I shall have to try this when I get my hands on some.

However, for the time being I plumped for Pritt Stick and the results were not too shabby at all. The prism model is about 40mm tall and 15mm along each edge of the hexagon: