I volunteer with a non-profit industrial arts organization in Oakland called Kinetic Steam Works, and last weekend we went to Maker Faire. If you've never heard of Maker Faire, it is a kind of geek DIY festival with all sorts of stuff that people make, from musically synchronized Tesla coils to art cars to giant pyrotechnic sculpture. If you make something, you belong at Maker Faire. Our organization brought a 1917 Case traction engine and other steam engines and etc. We had a setup where a small steam engine was used to power a snow cone machine, thus creating steam-powered snow cones.
My part of Maker Faire prep was to improve our signage and merchandise display. My BF and I built these metal stands out of steel tubing and catwalk material, and I painted signs for merchandise prices and the snow cones. The signs are painted on masoninte (tempered hardboard) with gesso and acrylic paints. I used dowels as pegs to hold the individual numbers so we could change prices around if desired. I used the same technique to attach the listed flavors of snow cone. That way if we ran out I could just pull the sign for the flavor; I can also change flavors if we get different flavors in the future. This isn't the best picture, but it is the only one I took of the display and it shows everything together. That's not me in the picture by the way, it is two of the KSW crew, Laurel and Dan.
My display items helped our setup look better, but the real stars of the show were the traction engine and the snow cone machine built by Troye, shown here in progress in our backyard.
Another crew member, costume designer Bree Hylkema, made the lovely tablecloths.
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