Welcome to the IT Helpdesk, how may I help you?

Let me tell you about my last customer…

Customer: I can’t connect to the wifi…

Me: What operating system are you running on your laptop?

Customer: IBM.

Me: er… It should be either Windows, Linux or OS something.

Customer: ow do i tell?

Me: Right click My Computer and select properties.

Customers: Properties is not an option.

Me: Ok, let me come downstairs and have a look for you.

I go down stairs, look at his laptop which is big, old and clunky…

Me: Um, does this have a wireless adapter?

Customer: I don’t know. doesn’t every laptop have wireless?

Me: No. Some have internal adapters, others need an external adapter that you plug into a USB slot.

Customer: Oh, ok. I think it has an internal adapter then.

Me: Riiigght. Can I offer you some advice? If you can’t tell if your laptop has wifi or what it’s operating system is then Ubuntu is probably not for you.

Customer: But i don’t want to support Bill Gates!

Me: Fair call, but you are also not a software designer or an IT geek. So go home and install Windows XP, please.

The Wedding Shoes – part 3

So here are last steps of the wedding shoe customization. I have given them to the bride now so, hopefully, I will get so photos of them being worn.

Here I have re-masked the shoes using masking tape as the sellotape was getting messy. I then painted both the heels and the sides Violet Permanent purple by Pebeo using acrylic paint. I did 2 thin coats of purple to get an even flat colour, sanded lightly with an emery board to remove any lumps and applied 1 more thin coat. You can see in this photo that I have then masked off stripes on the heel and painted over top with black – again in 2 thin coats.

Once the paint is totally dry you can remove all the masking tape and touch up any imperfections. I did big areas with paint and smaller fiddly bits with a black sharpie. This works particularly well on the satin fabric as it is flexible. Some bits of white undercoat could be trimmed off with a scalpel where they had built up underneath the tape. When working with fabric this is something that is hard to avoid due to its absorbent nature so don’t get too worried about it.

Once all the final touch ups have been done I sealed the paintwork with a clear  flexible non-yellowing varnish. There are a few on the market in matte, semi-glossy & glossy finish but I use Pebeo Acrylic Varnish in Brilliant Gloss available from Gordon Harris. Again, this was applied in 2 thin coats that I ran up onto the fabric slightly to ensure that no chipping would occur. As these are wedding shoes I also added 2 small red hearts onto the sole of each shoe and varnished over top to seal.

I then packed the shoes and flew with them in my carry on luggage to Australia since I don’t trust the baggage chuckers not to break things. The purple in these photos looks quite blue, however, it is in fact a rich “bogan” purple in the best tradition of  Fords everywhere

Colour me wonderful

Orange, mandarin, tangerine, mango, satsuma…

Find some of the featured products here:

Whimsy Jelly Roll @ Fat Quarter Shop

Tangerine Orange Leather Bucket Seat @ Designer Sofas 4 U

Tequila Sunrise yarn by Sabine @ Felt.co.nz

Midsummer Light in red by Tord Boontje @ Kaboodle

Mango Body Scrub @ The Body Shop

DOC Transformer Sofa @ Bonbon

My Little Pony 2007 Comic Con Exclusive @ Amazon.com

Fanta by Cola Cola

Orange County – the movie

Log Necklace @ Ponoko

Crazy hair Google image search

Nutmeg & Vanilla Body Butter @ The Body Shop International

Custom My Little Ponies Google image search

Absolut Vodka @ Absolut Ads

Firefly yarn by Sabine @ Felt

Chilli pendant lights @ Iconic

G1 Apple Jack My Little Pony © 1983

Orange Zune @ Zune Scene

Carrot Top hat kit @ Morehouse Farm

Satsuma Body Butter @ The Body Shop

I am sick, so this is all you get.