Poster Rig

 For The City and The City, at Lifeline Theatre we had the interesting challenge of attaching fliers and posters to the walls over the course of the show, and then needing to take them down halfway through. We experimented with various poster putties and sticky dots, but they either didn't reliably stick to the walls (nothing like pieces of paper randomly falling during serous moments to distract actors and audience members), or they stuck too well and took paint with them when they got pulled off quickly.

 For our final solution we ended up using magnets. I purchased these tiny, super-strong magnets at Michael's.

 We printed the posters on card-stock so that they could last the abuse of the run without getting destroyed

 And I attached the magnet to the back of each poster by placing it underneath a large strip of clear packing tape.

 I added slightly larger silver screws to the walls in the places I wanted to hang the posters.

 The magnets were strong enough that as long as the actor started by lining up the poster close to the correct spot, the magnet would grab the screw and leave the poster easily hanging in position.

 From a distance the screws completely disappeared on the textured "concrete" wall.

And here it is filled with posters

 I was a bit worried about how to do the same trick on the brick side wall of the theatre, but as it turns out, there had been plenty of concrete anchors installed in the wall for various shows over the years.

 I picked to anchors in spots roughly where we needed posters, and screwed in a washer to make the spot visible to the actor.

They were able to stick posters to the brick wall just as easily as the built set wall.

Resealable bag

For Disconnect" at Victory Gardens, I needed a cheap disposible bag of party whistles to be easily resealable.

 To do this I used the original bag and cardboard header from the whistles, a bit of magnet and some metal plumber's strap.

I glued the plumbers strap inside the cardboard, and then the bag on top of that. The magnet glued to the other side is strong enough to hold the cardboard closed through the two thin layers of plastic bag.
As a bonus, this rig added some weight to the bag, which helped the actors to toss it across the stage like they needed to.

Awesome

One of the many many reasons why I love shopping at American Science and Surplus- Best labels ever!

Christmas Magnets

This in another one of my holiday projects. I started out making a set of these glass marble magnets for my boyfriend for a housewarming gift.

They were so easy and so popular with the friends who came to the house and saw them that I am now selling them through one of the local comic book stores.

They're really easy too, can be done with any images and use supplies that can be purchased at any craft store.

I start with clear flat marbles like these (lots of people put them in the bottom of fish tanks)

I then use the marbles to scan for the right image and trace them.

It is important to individually trace each image because the marbles vary in shape and size. After tracing I cut them out on my cutting matte with my exacto-knife. Because the marble curves in from where I trace I usually make my cut about 1/8" in from the line I drew.

I laminate the image onto the marble with elmers glue.

Attach the magnet to the back with a heavy duty adhesive.

I'm pretty happy with how they turned out.

You can make them with any images, but I found that the comic books were working by far the best. Clean lines, bright colors and interesting shapes. If I were to do anything else I would probably start looking at brochures, magazines or other media with high quality images.