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After the madness of Halloween came the annual retail hell/Christmas crisis. I won't even go into the failure of humanity that is Christmastime at Trader Joe's right now as it is entirely too depressing and too soon to revisit at this point. Luckily I did not become deathly ill until much later this year (ie now) so I was able to get some work done for myself before the shit truly hit the fan. Behold: THE CLEAN ART ROOM.
The new shoes I bought for myself as a reward. Custom Keds from Zazzle. The pink stitching and interior was my personal modification.
And lastly, the Christmas cacophony. The theme for the flyer was Polar Express. This one was mostly designed by my friend on the art team, Jen. I guess the book has a lot of sentimental value to her. Since it's a classic, pretty alright children's book and the movie was creepy as fuck we decided to stick to the book for our inspiration. I made this sign for the entrance/vestibule using the usual paint markers on foam core plus a little chalk pastel to capture the fuzzy outlines of the book illustrations.
The rest was pretty much all Jen. Check out the mountain train setup she built from scratch for this candy display. 
That little train was so cool, but SUCH a pain in the ass in terms of maintenance! I won't even go into all the times when we thought it had broken down for good--at one time I was hanging snowflakes above it and accidentally played Attack of the 50-Foot Woman when I almost fell on top of the entire mountain and impaled one of my fingers on a miniature pine tree--but somehow that train still made it through to the end (despite the accusations from Jen that I did it on purpose and was trying to destroy Christmas.)
By the way, I don't actually hate Christmas. I just became sick of being disappointed by how increasingly lame it has become to me in recent years. That, and my Grandparents and my Dad now being dead as of this year, and the watching shoppers tear each other apart over material things in a frantic mob of bad will to the tune of sappy Christmas carols that I have already heard that day on the radio at least five times a piece...let's just say, it was rough. Sometimes I found little things to amuse myself. For instance, in protest to all the Santa hats surrounding me in the store I decided to come to work as the Krampus. In case you never heard of him, Krampus is like Santa's evil counterpart in some parts of Germany and Northern Europe. He looks like this, a big demon with horns, hooves and a long, lolling tougue.
Krampus comes down the chimney brandishing a whip and chains to kick all the naughty childrens' asses before dragging them to hell as his slaves. Kids in Germany don't just have to worry about getting lesser quality gifts when they've been bad. This was my Krampus outfit for work. The nametag says "Krampus" and I was wearing these knee-high clunky death metal boots, not pictured here.
I also had a whip I made of cinnamon sticks, which I later donated to my neighbor's cat as a Christmas gift.
After all the Christmas hoopla at work I didn't even feel like decorating our tree. Since Christmas is Martyn's favorite holiday we eventually managed. We were even occasionally able to find some comic relief as we tried to muddle through.
Yes, that is the Dumbledore ornament from my old Harry Potter set introducing himself to the "Pornament" Martyn purchased from The Junkman's daughter last year. We are very mature and classy people, after all.
So with full expectations of Christmas being a total letdown once again, I was somehow proven absolutely wrong on Christmas day...but that is a story for my next post!
The subject of this post is the major projects I was doing at work all by myself around the same time as Halloween. You can see how things were crazy. First pictured is the mega project: THE BATHROOM HALLWAY. I had painted the plain beige bathroom doors to look like wooden doors on an old ship, portholes and all, a year or so before. This project was to transform the plain pale blue walls of the bathroom hallway to match the old sailing ship feel of the doors. I did a layered faux-weathered paint job with some seaworthy accents for the walls and made or found all of the artwork and decorations myself. The Kraken tentacle is painted directly onto the wall.
For instance, the jackalope I found on Ebay but I found/painted the wooden mount for him myself. The curio cabinet I made entirely out of foamcore, laminated cardstock cutouts of objects that stick inside with velcro, and acetate that I misted with spray paint for that dusty fogged antique glass illusion. Some of the items inside are actual Trader Joe's products that have more mysterious sounding names, others are inspired by mythology or simply pulled out of my imagination/ass. 
Here are a couple more detail shots of all the crap on the wall. I was going for the busy, cluttered early museum of natural history aesthetic.
In case you didn't know, lame jokes are a staple of the Trader Joe's branding. Also awkward black and white artwork from Victorian times. The group portrait at the bottom is a "photograph" I made in graphite of our store art team in Victorian times.
Here's an even closer shot of that portrait. I'm the one with the badass parasol. 
This "Culinary Inventions" board has crew or customer recipes we find nifty for a time, then we wipe it clean for the next one. 
Next is the Trader Joe's Halloween Fearless Flyer, the theme of which was thought up by my friend Eeon and myself. We were going for a spooky Grimm's fairy tale haunted woods sort of look, with particular emphasis on Little Red Riding Hood. I made a five foot-something tall big bad wolf standup for the entrance, using photos of both wolves and drag queens as my reference. It was the big bad granny tranny wolf. On the right is the scavenger hunt I made featuring the same character. The red flyers are meant to be missing signs drawn up by the wolf, who tragically seems to have lost "her" granddaughter Red Riding Hood. To help/participate you are meant to look for Red Riding Hood's footprints throughout the store and write down the products that are next to where they were found. My manager asked me if the wolf was just wearing lipstick or if it was blood. I didn't really have an answer for that.
Here's a close up of the drag makeup, the scavenger hunt sign and the bunny slippers.
The demo station was decorated like the Grandmother's cottage in the woods. I can't find a picture of the whole thing right now but here's the big piece I made as the backdrop, somewhat inspired by Disney's Snow White, Tim Burton's Sleepy Hollow and Bram Stoker's Dracula (the one with Gary Oldman.) 
That's it for the work stuff. Next I'll post the personal projects I was working on.
Hello there. It's been forever since I posted here. I've made lots of stuff since. When I left off I was trying to figure out a style to make my illustrations for entry in the Trader Joe's Safety calendar competition. I didn't win, but hey, I tried my best. Here's what the illustrations I submitted ended up looking like.
Perhaps they are a bit too gritty for the Trader Joe's aesthetic, but I wouldn't have them any other way. I like the new style I've been messing around with and I'll be sure to use it again in the future with my own stuff.
I also at some point in time made another pair of almost-traditional fairy wings. They were super quick ones I call my "Earth Angel" wings, probably one of a kind since I made them for my friend Devon while watching a movie. They came out pretty nice though for something so fast and easy to make. You can sort of see them in these pictures Paige took of her.
I basically only made them because Devon was in town and we had not yet had her pose for a photoshoot. I'm still working on my own pair of wings and there will be more photoshoots on the way, but I have a feeling the ones in the nearest future are going to have a different theme to them--werewolves! Yep, I started my costumes early this year. I've already made some pretty decent Jack Goodman and David Kessler costumes from my favorite movie of all time, An American Werewolf in London. Since Paige is a short zombie lover with side swoosh bangs that likes to complain and I am a tall lumbering carnivorous lunatic with messy curls and a tendency for nudity we've always known that we are Jack and David.
I'm really surprised we never thought about this costume before. We dressed as the boys on the moors for the Little Five Points Halloween Parade this past Saturday. Our makeup was a strange mixture of drag and gore. I had never tried doing any FX makeup before so it was fun trying to come up with a way to do Jack's massive face and neck wound.
I ended up building around a rectangular neck wound appliance by Woochie called "chomped" with lots of liquid latex, pieces of sheer pantyhose, and of course fake blood. Here's my version of Rick Baker's makeup.
Reflection in a mirror, of course. Like some sort of undead Myspace profile pic.
Though the Jack makeup definitely got the most attention, I thought my David getup came out alright too.
Mmmm, that medium rare Tazmanian Devil burger was so worth the wait for the Vortex. A happy werewolf was I.
I really like the wig I found for this, it really completed the awkward young Jewish werewolf look.
Here's a shot of my dude makeup that completely fooled half the people at The Junkman's Daughter.
They had no idea who I was and I hang out with these people all the time. It's amazing how a few carefully placed marks with an eyeliner pencil can completely change peoples' perception of gender.
Sexy.
Rawr! That's me with the amazing Japanese poster for the movie, which is now in my living room. And here's a final shot of me looking lost.
I'm glad there's at least one shot of the feet so far. I can't wait wear them with my other costume as well, which will be a more involved punk-rock-shewolf or basically me as a werewolf. I'll be trying that one out for the first time this Saturday (which is of course, a full moon.) Will post pictures as soon as I have them!
I got Devon from Junkman's to pose this time with my Anarchy in Purple wings. Paige took the photos in and around my apartment.
They are now for sale on Etsy. Meanwhile at Trader Joe's I was working on stuff for the latest Flyer, which dropped yesterday. The theme was early 1960's mod, the slogan was "Be Seen on the Green." I was assigned to make the big sign for the vestibule, or front entrance. It was supposed to be some new products sunning themselves in the park with sunglasses on and avoiding the paparazzi. The color scheme was orange, avocado green, and beige. I was also meant to make two decorative pieces to flank the vestibule sign that are giant polaroid photos of the products "getting caught." This is what I came up with.
You might be able to tell I watched the movie Quadrophenia while making this. Martyn and I decided if we had lived in those days he would have been a mod and I would have been a rocker, so I guess we would have had to have had a forbidden romance. Since I seem to side with the rockers so much I had to include some of them in my vestibule sign, even though in real life mods and rockers may have sooner killed each other than relax in a park together. I guess depicting gang wars is not exactly up to Trader Joe's standards.
Speaking of Trader Joe's, recently we were promoting Goddess dressing by having two crew members dress up as Goddesses and roam the store with samples. Here they are getting ready in the break room, and why I love working in Midtown.
Stephen is the one on the left and an experienced drag queen. He had to do Danny's makeup because it was his first time. I love how nervous Danny looks in this picture.
Stephen leans back to look at his work while Danny tests it out.
The wig (or "the rat".)
Jen is in the background here "mouth breathing".
And finally, enter the Goddess!
Danny totally rocked that role. So did Stephen the following day, despite my lack of pictures.
And lastly, the Christmas cacophony. The theme for the flyer was Polar Express. This one was mostly designed by my friend on the art team, Jen. I guess the book has a lot of sentimental value to her. Since it's a classic, pretty alright children's book and the movie was creepy as fuck we decided to stick to the book for our inspiration. I made this sign for the entrance/vestibule using the usual paint markers on foam core plus a little chalk pastel to capture the fuzzy outlines of the book illustrations.
That little train was so cool, but SUCH a pain in the ass in terms of maintenance! I won't even go into all the times when we thought it had broken down for good--at one time I was hanging snowflakes above it and accidentally played Attack of the 50-Foot Woman when I almost fell on top of the entire mountain and impaled one of my fingers on a miniature pine tree--but somehow that train still made it through to the end (despite the accusations from Jen that I did it on purpose and was trying to destroy Christmas.)
Krampus comes down the chimney brandishing a whip and chains to kick all the naughty childrens' asses before dragging them to hell as his slaves. Kids in Germany don't just have to worry about getting lesser quality gifts when they've been bad. This was my Krampus outfit for work. The nametag says "Krampus" and I was wearing these knee-high clunky death metal boots, not pictured here.
