Hello there my darlings! Did you miss me? Well the big reveal went off without a hitch. It was friggin’ packed!!!!! I didn’t know that many people could fit into the library! Yours truly was interviewed for not only the radio but also the TV news as well (of course I am the only person who didn’t get to see myself *pout*). THE PROJECT TURNED OUT FAN-FLIPPIN-TASTIC if I do say so myself.  Sorry, just had to shout it to the world just then. The only problem is that I still have another movie to post that for some reason I cannot get off my silly camera. The trusty flip cam locked up on me at the very beginning so I had to use the recorder on my digital camera while I sorted it out. It’s all nice and long with all the thank you’s from all the important people involved. Well, my lucky ducks that’s about all I have to say for the moment. I enjoyed this journey with you all and will now pass the mantel off to the next fabulous GA. Ta ta for now!!!!!!

Hullo there my darlings!!!! This is my last blog (and very fitting that it should be late huh?). (By the way, bonus points if you know where the title of this blog came from. More if you can sing it!!!) So class ended last week (yeah I know, geez way to wait huh Annette?) Last week we pretty much finished one of the panels that will be shown. What!!?? A real life panel that has been finished and stuff? Yep, you can see it in all of its glory in the pic gallery. We also had Joey with us this week for the final class. It’s very stressful doing the final piece. When you have to put on those evil vinyl letters and all that Velcro stuff perfectly the first time, blah, and no room for mess ups! Katie, Susan and Joey rocked it though! I did some of the Velcro and stuff myself *glee face*. This class was really bitter sweet in a way. On the one hand you have the sigh of relief that every student is familiar with (because it’s ended) but then you also have that little empty space. The one where you are going to actually miss your class mates and professor. You’ll actually miss the work you did and even though it might have not been so fun at the time (please see other blogs about vinyl letters) you’ll look back on it and realize the fun you had.

Enough with the sappy stuff. This is the last time you shall here from me on this project (because I got an even better job, WOO-HOO). Hopefully the next person to take this over will have my wonderful wit and charm and be able to keep all you faithful readers glued to your seats for the next exciting installment of the happenings during the Glenwood Project (was that a bit much?).

In all seriousness though I have had an amazing time with this and have learned so much it isn’t funny. Mark is a fan-friggin-tastic professor and can really make a girl understand the beauty of panel building and vinyl lettering (I still hate it though). Everyone has worked so hard this semester from Dr. Lassiter and Gabby to  everyone in Dr. Peyton’s class and Dr. Peyton himself to Dr. Maslowski and of course Mark and all of us in his class (really the professors have been working on this a long time already) to everyone who has been involved thus far. Well I’ll stop with the acceptance speech now and let you all get back to your exciting lives.

Don’t forget to come to the opening of the project and a Happy Christmas to everyone! I hope you all get spoiled rotten this year (and don’t forget what I said about silly drivers, we are all over the place during the holidays!)

Love,

Annette “the blog princess” Conner

Hello peoples! I hope you all had a good turkey break! How was mine you ask? Why it was splendid! Ok, that’s enough exclamation points for now. So tonight we learned how to do vinyl letters and also did some wallpapering. And after doing that I have discovered that both are pretty stressful. You have to right on the money with both because as Mark would say “if you are off even an eighth of an inch the whole thing gets thrown out of whack”. My letters were nowhere near the line that I had drawn and when it came to the wallpaper part I must admit that I let Katie and Susan deal with the better part of the wallpaper alignment. I just don’t have the patience I guess to be all meticulous and stuff. Personally I would rather just use paint, but I have to admit that it looks very, Very good. As you can see from the pictures they did an awesome job with the whole lining up thing. I did the gluing a little bit at least (but really, if you think about it logically, I’m supposed to be taking pictures for this spiff-tastic blog so it was better for them to do the line ups anyhow). We also did some more dry mounting and that was cool. And that’s about the gist of it really. We worked a good bit tonight (and goofed off some too. But hey, it’s cathartic!)

Hello lovelies! Sorry I didn’t get to blog last week (I know that all of you were just on the edge of your seats waiting to hear what happened!) we didn’t have class last week so therefore no blog. But this week we were back with a vengeance *grrrrr*. Anyhoo, on this week’s agenda was dry mounting. Dry mounting is a nifty little process where we make the scripts and informative little captions that go under photos and pieces of art that you see in museums. You have to use this machine that heats up to like a million degrees or something, foam core and a special tissue paper that sticks them together.  It was actually a lot easier than I initially thought it would be. It mainly seems to be just time consuming. After you are done with the sticking togetherness you then have to cut out the captions. This is the part where I suck. For some reason I cannot cut foam core to save my life. It’s just plain evil is what it is.

Another point I shall mention to all my readers (I’m sure most of you know about it, but just in case) the opening of the project has been moved back to January. Just in case you didn’t know. Also I wanted to tell you all that since next week is break and there is no class (WOOT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!)  You are all charged with stuffing yourselves silly with turkey or ham or tofu (for the veggies reading this) and all the trimmings that go along with it. I could say something nice and classy about how thankful we should be about everything and all that, but that isn’t my style. So have a happy turkey day (for those of you who celebrate it) stuff yourselves fuller than ticks (for those of you who can) and for Pete’s sakes be careful on the highways and motorways if you are traveling, there’s a lot of crappy drivers out on the holidays (and I should know, I’m from Ohio!)

Panels, panels, PANELS!!! Jesh, does that chick ever talk about anything else!?? Seriously, the panels are coming along quite superbly if I do say so myself. And tonight we painted one of them! Woo-hoo! And to be truthful dear readers this is the first time your lovely hostess has ever used a rolling brush. It was pretty spiffy. As you can tell from the pictures some of the panels are to be painted the fan-flippin’-tastic color scheme that Mark picked out (looks like a big old candy bar huh?) while others are going to be wallpapered. We also found out that we have some of the information to be put up onto panel 1.

In other news Susan earned a gold star tonight because she showed us a program (one that she used in library school, nifty huh?) that tells you what reading level you are typing at. This is going to be very beneficial (I believe) when it comes to the finished project. Because let’s face facts people, not everyone reads at the wonderfully high level that us Master’s Degree students do.  The information has to be accessible and understandable to one and all, and what with this being a traveling exhibit and all that that knows who might wonder in and start to read. (Well, here’s to hoping that a lot do at least!)

Other than that I don’t have much to report. Tonight being election night and all that. Which reminds me I hope all of you voted!!!!!!!!!

Hello my darlings! So tonight we found out that the wallpaper gluing stuff we did last week sucked. Not on our part, but on the wallpaper’s. the glue didn’t hold so they had to be redone (see above pictures of glue and stuff…) so tonight we learned the proper way to glue wallpaper with some awesome stuff (it’s no wonder it didn’t work, please see below pic of silly instructions…).  Also tonight we had some special guests, Mark’s puppies Sweetie and Spunky (I believe that’s their names). They were a hoot! After the new wallpaper applying (and the spiffy new trimming trick Mark told us about) we decided to put some of the molding on so we could see how it is done. Not too hard really, you just need to make sure your drill is going the right way and stuff.

Once we understood how that part was put together we then decided to put two of the panels together with hinges to see how the final section will look. And as the pictures will show you it doesn’t look too shabby. The panels are only primer covered right now but soon enough they will be painted and done up all pretty like! We got a little goofy by the end of the class, but it was all in good fun. This was a totally productive evening. As you can tell we got a little picture happy, but supposedly a picture is worth a thousand words (or so I’ve heard at least….)  

so the instructions say no babies and kittys, but what about the burrito looking thing?

Hello my lovelies! So tonight we put on the paintable wallpaper on the bottom of the panels. And let me tell you all that it looks REALLY good, hooray! We got two of them done and now we just have to let them dry, trim them up a bit, and then paint them. Mark is going to put some molding at the top of the wallpaper part to make them look more like walls and to also hide the icky top part. Speaking of icky, that stuff is slimy! Also I would just like to take this time to let everyone know that the instructions that came with these things were the stupidest that I have ever seen. I just thought about it now, but I should have taken a picture of them. It looked like the people were making bread or something! We definitely knew that we were supposed to keep babies and cats away though, due to the circle with a line through them on the instructions. Nothing about dogs though…. I guess its puppy friendly. But I digress…

I guess that is just a part of the process when it comes to exhibit work. You gotta figure stuff like this out. We got it though and had fun in the process. We also learned about the evils of the bureaucracy that one can encounter when working for a state run agency (like a museum or something hint, hint).  But I guess that is to be expected everywhere really. See, not only are we learning how to build spiffy stuff and all kinds of fun facts about Glenwood but we are also learning about the ins and outs of the museum world. Good stuff!

Hullo there my darlings!!! Did you miss me? It’s been a bit since I last wrote. There was an unfortunate incident with some puppies and also a clay center event that has prohibited me from writing. But now we are back with a vengeance! *insert triumphant HA HA here*

So today in class (by the way it’s Saturday so it was a super special class) we collaborated with Dr. Peyton’s class. For those of you not in the know Dr. Peyton’s class is giving us the information that we are putting on the panels that our class is building. They are doing all the research and stuff that will enlighten the minds of the exhibit viewers. I have taken a hand full of videos so people who were not able to attend can see what went on. You can also view the lovely pictures as well. We went over a lot of stuff today. Things like the title, our target audience, the wallpaper that may (or may not) adorn the panels and some delving into more of the history of Glenwood itself and the West Side.  Also in class today we had our elusive fourth classmate Joey (you’ll see him on the videos and pics. He’s in the green) I never talk about Joey but he is in our class and works just as hard as the rest of us (he lives rather far away and coming every Tuesday night isn’t always an option. Usually he comes on Saturday s and helps Mark build and do manly stuff). The others there (besides the students, duh) were Dr. Lassiter, and Dr. Maslowski and of course Mark and Dr. Peyton.

OK, everything is uploaded now so enjoy them. The only sad thing is that i had to cut them down so they would fit. Apparently they can be only so long or youtube will not take them.

Hello there dear readers! Tonight we did some actual building and made a panel (I would like to take this time to thank Gabby and all of her loveliness because without her and her ability to release the funds then this panel building would have had to wait, so big props to Gabby! WOO-HOO!). We also added some pics to the board so that is getting more and more full (fuller? Would that word be correct here?) So tonight my darlings I shall let the pictures tell the story dum, dum, DUM…..