Monday, August 16, 2010

Our rubber band people (and their guitar playing animal companions)

Random things get left behind in the store all of the time. Like some Styrofoam holly berries and some 3D glasses that had the lenses poked out. And I get very bored at my desk sometimes. Very. Bored.

For the last couple of years, I've been collecting rubber bands that come in our daily shipment. Our store gets a LOT of rubber bands in our shipments. I don't know why they feel like sending us our orders held together with rubber bands inside bags inside of boxes. Really, the bags themselves are sufficient to keep the different items separated. So I started out collecting them on this little wire kitty I made out of some spare wire and super glue. It didn't start out as a kitty, but that's what it turned into. After a while we had a lot of rubber bands piled up on kitty. So we started a rubber band ball rather than wasting all of the rubber bands, and eventually our rubber band ball got too big for the skinny rubber bands. If I tried to put a skinny rubber band on the big ball, the rubber bands would almost always snap and pop my delicate flutist hands. So I started a second rubber band ball to be created only with skinny bands, and the large one would continue only with rubber bands fat enough to take the pressure.

The result was that the two rubber band balls have two different rubber band colors, both flesh toned. And one day somebody left the Styrofoam holly berries I mentioned, and the 3D glasses, and an idea was born.

I took the empty sticker ribbons from the price gun and curled them, then stapled them together. I made on long and big for the larger ball, and one small for the newer ball. I made two sets of eyes, and two mouths. I took the red holly berries and stapled them to the larger set of paper ribbons, and a blue ribbon that had been used to wrap a box of cookies to the other. Then I put it all together...and the result was this.

I have dubbed them Baby and Mama. They are our Rubber Band People. Notice that Mama has lighter rubber bands than Baby. Also, there is a blue rubber band that was added to Mama, and a blue one on Baby as well. They rest on recycled Starbucks Coffee Collars to protect them from rolling off. They don't look it, but they are very heavy.

Yes, they are COMPLETELY made of rubber bands. There is no ball or rock at the heart. The very center is a rubber band wound around itself and then wrapped with other rubber bands. Since I have added the faces and hair, people (not only children did this) no longer pick them up and try to bounce them. And the little stone sitting between the two of them? That's Zeta. She's a rock taken from a Zen rock garden display for our chimes. We figured the display wouldn't miss one little stone...or two, actually, since John actually made a male version that looked like a genie. But he took that one, so now I only have Zeta.

Baby and Mama and Zeta get lots of laughs, and several offers to purchase them. I've been offered as much as fifty dollars cash for the pair, which is awesome considering I haven't paid anything to make them. However, if I sold Baby and Mama, Zeta would be left alone. And so would the guitar playing animals that live next to them. They would really miss their friends. Of course, I also get a lot of offers for the guitar playing animals, but they are actually my manager's personal collection. He has no room for them on his desk anymore, and so he sent them to live at my desk. Sometimes I get a little tired of telling people not to touch them because they aren't for sale. People don't actually like being told that they can't have something. Some of them get a little nasty and insist that I shouldn't have them out on display if they aren't for sale.

But those people are stupid because I'm sure lots of people who work at desks personalize the area to make it seem less of a boring death sentence while they work there. I mean, I spend nine and a half hours a day at my desk, and if it looked all bland and boring I'd probably end up losing my mind.

Anyway, this was really just a tester to learn how to put pictures in my blog. Turns out it's pretty easy to do. Awesome.

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