[The Good Ship Ragu and the Pasta Pirates]

Where to begin... I wanted something unique, using the recommended supplies, and came up with this crazy idea. One summer, I helped my younger brother build a real working cedar strip canoe from scratch. I got to thinking that the cedar strips were very much like fettuccine. So, why not construct a model ship out of pasta. Muahahahaha.

I used an drawing program to create forms on paper, transfered them to cardboard, and cut out the forms. I hot glued the forms to a sheet of cardboard, which was roughly the size of the deck of the boat. Then, I started hot gluing fettuccine to the forms, to make the hull. The fettuccine was rather flexible, and took to the forms fairly well.



Once the hull was mostly intact, I proceeded to make decking out of Popsicle sticks. I trimmed the sticks, so that it had the appearance of woodflooring.



After I was happy with the hull and the decking, I spray painted the hull with a brown spray paint. I then took two wood dowels and hot glued them to the deck, making the two main masts. Once the masts were in place, I took some gimp, and started hot gluing the gimp to the masts, for the rigging.



I then fashioned more rigging out of gimp, a rudder out of Popsicle sticks, and sails out of muslin cloth. The piece de la resistance are the Pirate Flag on the main mast and the Figurehead on the bow of the boat. The end product, is what I call The Good Ship Ragu and the Pasta Pirates. I probably should have called them the Hot Glue Pirates since I used 5 small sticks of hot glue in the construction of the ship.

Here is a collection of pictures of the final product.






I hope you enjoyed my Craft Challenge 12 Entry...

Kappy

My wife is the crafter in the house, and I am more of an ideas/concepts person. I have aided her on some of her projects, but am not really into crafting. So, long story short, after seeing some examples from previous swaps, I had an idea for something unique, but my wife had other ideas. Hence, she forced me to do my own crafting.   Hehehe.

The concept was to not necessarily alter the art, but turn the art into something functional. So, I found this print of a sea scape at one of our local thrift shops. It was a pretty good find, considering the thrift shops here don't have too much variety. Since the picture was a sea scape, I went to Michaels and bought some stickers, shells, and charms. I went to Bed, Bath and Beyond and bought a small lamp shade. Here is a picture of my starting materials.



For the lamp shade, I peeled off the fabric, so that I would have a template to trace onto the picture for cutting the picture to fit the lamp shade. After cutting the picture to fit, I hot glued the picture to the bottom of the shade, pulled the picture taut, and hot glued the picture along the top of the shade.

Once the picture was affixed to the shade, I hot glued shells along the top and bottom of the shade, to give it some type of border. I had originally thought about beading, but decided against that, and kept with an ocean theme. At this point, I wasn't quite happy with the product because it was a little too plain. So, I went and bought some Sea Oat like plant from Joanne's. I trimmed the oats to size and hot glued them along the bottom of the shade. Then as a finishing touch, I took little charms (starfish, shells, seahorses, etc...) and hot glued them between the oats.

So, here is the finished product.

This first picture is with the camera flash on. This is so you can see the details.



The second picture is with the camera flash off. As you can see, it looks like a sunset, and you can still make out the landscape from the painting.



I hope everyone enjoys.

Kappy