Fail du Jour

Meet Chairman Bob:


He's been leering at me from my bathroom garbage can for some months.

I'm probably the last person on the planet to try last summer's trend of melting plastic bags to create...melted plastic. I had visions of Wahol-esque dozens of Chairman Bobs on a single sheet.

Found a tutorial that suggested using the "rayon" setting. First try with plain white. Ick:

It took about half an hour of increasing the heat all the way past "wool" before anything melted. Instead of being a smooth sheet like the various pictures around the web, it feels more like that crumply plastic with the sanitary lining the grocery store puts between the meat and the styrofoam tray. Blecch.

Multiple Bobs:

Looked OK before the fusing; afterwards--ick.

Line of Bobs:

Not as exciting as the image in my head. And the toner from the Unwanted Printout I was using to keep melted plastic off my iron transfered on to the piece. Bah.

Solo Bob:

From a distance he looks like I could use him, but there's visible cat hair in it. There was an incredible amount of static electricity generated by the bags, and the cat hair that gravitated toward the bags while they were in storage was impossible to remove, when I could even see it under three layers of plastic.

So much for Warhol Bobs. I'm not terribly distressed, since the whole project is probably a copyright violation. But I don't have any interest in jumping on the "repurposed" plastic bandwagon--it's too tacky.