The Bathroom Hallway and other TJ's Projects of Fall 2011

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.

Halloween 2011

Life has been crazy so I'm pretty behind in posting. A nasty case of bronchitis has finally given me that minute of rest I needed to remedy this. Let me start making a couple of quick catch-up posts that are short and sweet. First we have the rest of Halloween. Here is my jack o'lantern for 2011: "The Brain Sucker."



Next is my Chupacabra costume, complete with stuffed dead goat that actually "bled" wine or sangria out of his neck, depending what I decided to stash in him that night. It was a great way to sneak alcohol into public and not rake up such an expensive bar tab.


Next we have the Little Red Riding Hood Werewolf outfit. I had picked up this beautiful vintage velvet cloak from an estate sale in Savannah earlier that year and I just couldn't let it go to waste. I also won $25 worth of drinks from the yacht club with this costume.


The last ensemble is what Martyn and I wore to the annual Halloween masquerade ball at the Fernbank. The theme this year was "80's prom gone wrong" and they were showing "Carrie" on the Imax, which was pretty neat to see. Unfortunately I spent a little too long on my makeup and we ended up missing the costume contest. Bummer too because the general reaction people gave us when we arrived indicated that we might have won. Ah well, maybe next time.



So I guess that pretty much sums up Halloween. Next year is going to kick even more ass, but I will elaborate on that in the posts to come.