Hey all!
I thought I’d share something with you that I find to be helpful when you are at a festival. Festivals can get really crowded when you are on the dance floor and sometimes it may be hard to find your friends. Let’s say it’s dark out and the crowd is bigger than it was during the day and now you have to use the bathroom but you don’t want to lose your spot. There are many different scenarios I can name when I’ve lost my friends during sets. So that’s why I’ve decided to create a totem pole and I wanted to share with you how I did it all!
Find a pole –I bought from from Home depot
You’re going to need to hold your sign with something, right? There is a lot of ways you can use to hold up your artwork. It could be PVC, a broomstick, etc. I believe that the best type of pole is an extended one so you can compact it and take it with you wherever you want to on the go. The one that I found was from Home Depot, which was approximately $10 including taxes. It can extend from 3-6 ft high.
Decorate your pole
I wanted to create something funky so I bought some tie-dyed printed duct tape from Walmart. I wrapped it up and still had a lot of duct tape left. You can use the excess tape for the edges of your poster.
Your sign
The fun part is creating your sign. I wanted to create a cute sign with a fun pun so I put, “Hey llama I don’t want no drama” which refers to a song remix that says“Hey mama I don’t want no drama”. Just a fun pun.
BB alpaca art (photo)
The image was found on pinterest. It’s okay to print out pictures found on the web as long as it’s not being sold as your own art. I’ve seen a lot of people use pictures, memes, and artwork from the web to make their dream totem pole.
Print it out!
Printing can be a little pricey. If you have access to print at your work or at school, I recommend you do so since that was the cheapest option. I printed two 18” x 24” pictures of the Alpaca for $12.00. Not bad price, sometimes they are pretty pricey for just one print at your local Fedex or Officemax. I suggest doing some researching before you spend $15 for just one print. I printed out 2 for each side, one facing left and one facing right so you can see it from front and behind.
Mount it!
You want a good sturdy non bendable sign, so you should purchase a foam board or cardboard. I realized that getting cardboard was probably a better idea than using foam board because cutting it up made it look very sloppy and unclean. I also recommend you get a good xacto knife, mine was too dull. It will definitely save you some time. I used Adhesive spray to stick my prints to the board. Then I trimmed off some of the excess foam board so the sign is more shaped.
Start creating!
As you can see, I began to stencil my words and create my phrase around the Alpaca, I then filled it in with a black chunky marker. This was time consuming, especially if you’re a perfectionist like me! If you have any of the Adobe creative suites I would suggest you edit the photo and put your text on there before you print out your image so you don’t have to do it separately… but it’s okay lesson learned!
The Lighting!
Attract people to your sign. Make it noticeable and perhaps you will see it in other people’s pictures and you say to yourself “Wow, that’s my totem pole!” I recommend that you use LED strip for your sign that is battery operated. I found a good deal on these from Amazon, They come with a sticky back and very wonderfully colored lights for such a great deal.
Lastly, put it all together. I wrapped the LED lights around the whole poster. You might be surprised that it is enough to go around. Grab a staple gun and just staple along the sides so your foam boards don’t slip and fall apart due to the pole stretching it from being sandwiched between the two foam boards.
End Result.
Completely satistfied :)))
