Thursday, December 31, 2009

John Cena Part 2

My second John Cena LO and the first one featured me and John Cena, this one is of course my son and WWE´s number one star at the moment. I usually do not do the LO´s with me before I do the ones with my son but this time I did it on purpose. The LO below I had already planned and I knew it was going to take a lot of time to make so I delibaretly waited with it since I wanted my son to be on the spectacular LO. I dont think it came out as spectacular as I had imagined but still it is a bit different!

As you can see I have been trying to create something like the old game consols you could play on in game arcades before the time of Playstations and X-Boxes and whatever they are named now that you play at home. Everything you see on the LO is hand cut, except the letters at the buttons that were created in my wife´s Gazelle. All other letters, buttons and the 8-bit John Cena figure (which is altogether 29 small paper pieces) are drawn and hand cut by me. The big John Cena-text is mounted on black 3D-cushions, the buttons are also elevated by 3D-cushion and the rings around them are stuck to the background paper at the outer part of the rings and lifted up by glue-buttons at the inner part to give it a more realistic look. Two shiny cardstock, one for the background and one for the "TV-screen", lots of Glossy Accent and patience I never thought I had (especially putting the figure together) I finally succeeded in finishing this one that has been in the making for months. It was nearly ruined by my wife´s cats who were up chewing on it on the scrapbooking table but I managed to cover some of those parts up. I guess they could not read the cat-chphrase "You can´t see me". I dont like cats (but my wife does so they are still alive and well!)!



Game on, just insert a quarter and start playning!



The 8-bit figure consisting of 29 pieces, Glossy Accent, glue and a lot of patience (and some unprintable words).



A close up of the letter and the camo-paper that was perfect for Cenas character.



The buttons with the ingenious (if I may so) rings around them with a slight leaning that was really difficult to fix!



And last but not least, the joystick built in different levels.

Kelly Kelly

Living in Sweden means that you have to go abroad if you want to see wrestling live and me and my son have done so for a quite a few years now. When we started doing this wrestling was top priority but has as the years have gone by transferred into a father and son trip where the wrestling has become more of an excuse for taking the trip than a must. Sure, we go see the wrestling event but it´s really the time we get to spend together that I really treasure and I am quite sure it´s the same for my son. Another thing we do during our trips is track down the wrestlers whereabouts, not that we are screaming hysterical fans, it´s just that the "chase" is fun and we get to play detectives. And we are quite good at it since we have not failed yet. This year in Finland we stayed at the hotel where the wrestlers had stayed previous years but not this one. Me and my son had to put our wise heads together and sure enough, a few clever guesses, gut feeling and a little luck later we stumbled upon the wrestlers again. I have a few stories from those meetings regarding scrapbooking since I had all my LO´s with me but I will get back to that in later posts. Anyway, when we do meet the wrestlers and the Divas we humbly ask for photographs with them and 99 % of them take time for a few snaps and some chatting. The last few years my son has had a camera as well so even I have featured with a bunch of wrestlers but never the Divas. My son on the other hand, he gets lucky everytime!

This LO features the lucky little thing I call my son, and he is not as little anymore since he has outgrown me, and the sweet little thing that is named Kelly Kelly. I really had no clue what to do with this one but with a name like Kelly Kelly I just had to use that. Her beeing a happy and sparkling lady I decided to do a LO just using glitter paper to match her smile on the photo. It took some time, since most of the things I do are handcut, to cut out all the letters and I had glitter everywhere, literally everywhere, over me and the scrapbooking room. I have decided to never, ever (to paraphrase the wrestler Chris Jericho) to use this kind of paper again! Kind of came out OK even though it was not as I had imagined it before I started.



Kelly Kelly Kelly Kelly...



My son who should wipe that smile off his face and the lovely Kelly Kelly



A close up of some of the hand cut letter all mounted on 3D-cushions.

The Miz

That´s me back again with yet another picture of my son and a wrestler, namely The Miz, or Mike Mizanin which is his real name. The photograph was taken in Helsinki this year (it´s still 2009 when I write this) and in the background you can see another WWE-wrestler passing by, Carlito (who will be scrapped later since I have a few other photos featuring him, me, my son and another person!).

It is getting harder coming up with new ideas so my LO´s do take longer to make now since I really have to think them through so I dont create exactly the same things I have done before. This one for instance is based on an actual storyline in the WWE where The Miz got "signed" to the RAW-brand (the WWE has three brands, RAW, ECW and Smackdown) from the ECW and he made a big fuzz about him going to the flagship of the WWE etcetera. He also has a catchphrase which is, "I am the Miz and I am awesome!". So what I did was kind of copy the RAW-logo and wrote "Miz" instead and just took the "awesome"-part and did something similar. A lot of punchinella, silver and red, to get that metal-feeling from the logo, a few extra photos (taken by me at a live event) to show off his cocky image and where one perfectly matches the A in awesome. A Basic Grey-paper in grey to continue the metal-theme and Bob´s your uncle! Quite happy with it even though I probably could have done a wee bit more. But knowing myself I stopped before I went overboard this time.

And by the way, yes, the Miz is awesome! A really nice guy even though he portrays a heel.



The Miz pointing at my son who is wearing a The Miz shirt!



Close up of the Miz-logo.



Close up of the Awesome-logo.



A closer close up just to show how I worked in different layers.