the christmas Bazaar

This weekend I did something unprecedented: I interacted with strangers.

As those of you who frequent this blog know I have been spending some time creating products in anticipation of My schools annual Christmas Bazaar.

I have attended this particular Christmas bazaar as a patron or a visitor for 4 years in a row and each time I see the same girly setup of jewellery and cute postcards. I figures that this year there should be an alternative for the boys and I was going to be that alternative.

So I had a whole military theme setup. In stead of the white tablecloth provided for me by the school, I had brought a greet tarp and spray painted with the words “kick-ass Christmas”, I had adorned a Sargent hat I once bought in Berlin and I had my pretty damn hardcore merchandise. I was feeling good.

Now is the time that I should tell you that I either sold more than I had ever imagined or that I failed miserably, but neither is true. I sold pretty good, but not spectacularly. Mostly the experience reminded me why I decided on design in the first place, because sitting there interacting with people, I was bored out of my mind. I can’t count the times that I wanted to open my notebook and just start drawing, Or maybe just hop on facebook for a second, but I couldn’t.

The whole experience was a profoundly boring way of making a little extra money for the holiday season, but at the very least no one will be able to accuse me of not trying.

a skill I didn’t know I had

I don’t consider myself a weird person, at least not overly so, I always enjoy it when someone really goes “there”.

That is why, when one of my friend asked I would help him cover the local graffiti hot spot in print paper, I immediately said yes. Not only was this an amazingly bizarre thing to do, but he promised that he would give beer and pizza to anyone who helped, so I was all in.

now, before I start, I just want to say a few words about this graffiti hot spot.

I live in a small town, where the only real cultural life that exists is crated by the students at the design-school. Because the town in so relatively quite and the school is the only escape, it becomes sort of cultural hob. Sadly once in a while that culture spill over and manifests itself in terms of graffiti, which the local government sees as an act vandalism.

Because they were seemingly powerless to stop it, and it was becoming kind of expensive to keep removing, they decided to designate a tunnel leading under the railway as a graffiti hot spot. Basically, you can paint as much as you want there without any repercussions, which was nice because the place was basically covered wall-to-wall anyway.

The place itself is however not particularly enticing. It is a somewhat broad but dank and “rapy” place that you kind of can’t avoid if you live in kolding.

Because of it’s central location and probably because it is one of the few places in kolding that you can do this kind of project, my friend Markus, decided that this would be the perfect place to be arty-farty.

He talked allot of his friends into joining him in this bizarre assignment, which really isn’t that hard for him because he is both hot and charismatic. I, of cause, was one of the friends who showed up at 4 pm on a cold windy November afternoon to paste up copy-paper to the wall.

It was a pretty straight forward job and it should have been boring as hell, but strangely I found an aptutute for that particular task. Yes I know it sounds weird, but I was the fastest person in my group to paste up pieces of copy paper to a concrete wall in a dank tunnel.

I guess I can add that to the list of incredibly dumb tasks at which I excel.

It was really quite exhilarating to get compliments all the time and show off this skill I didn’t know I had and I stayed much longer than I had planned, but in the end, the cold did get to me and I ended up leaving before the job was done.

I know that is not very gentlemanly of me, but if you have ever been outside on a windy, rainy November day in Denmark, you would understand.

Paper-doll batman

As I mentioned earlier this weekend is the anual Christmas bazaar at my school. If you scroll down a bit you will even be able read that I am participating this year. I am going to be selling decorative Christmas ornaments and this bad boy.

This is my Batman Paper-doll.

Before you judge me to harshly let me this odd idea and where it came from.

I was a weird kid. I loved to play with Barbies and did so till much later than what was socially acceptable. By the end of my Barbie obsession I was 14 years old and had collected some 70 odd dolls (some of which were actual collectors items that I still have lying around somewhere). My rosy pink and delightfully feminine inclinations were quenched when I , as a 14 year old boy finally found an appropriate obsession: play station.

Through that amazing device I was let into a new world of zombies and warfare and blood and gore and surprisingly I loved that just as much as I did the Barbies.

While I never did get back into Barbies again, they never left my heart, and I still have a soft spot for the plastic figurines to this date (plus a somewhat extensive knowledge on the small buggers.)

So where am I going with this? I will tell you.

When I was trying to come up with something I could sell at an annual event like the Christmas bazaar I thought back to that 13 year old gay boy and said to myself “wouldn’t it be great if, just for one day, the world of blood and gore could meet with the world of Barbies and dresses”.

And thus, the batman paperdoll was born.