I tweeted a picture of my micro machines wall mural recently and it got a lot of interest, so I thought a blog post about how it was made might be worth writing. If not, move on, nothing to see here…
I decided late last summer that I wanted to produce something for my office wall with a car theme and spotted at a business we do a lot of work with some clever wall adornment fashioned from tiny cars. So, I admit, the idea for this wasn’t entirely my own, but all the best ones are ‘borrowed’, aren’t they?
I remember collecting Micro Machines – tiny toy cars around 15mm long for the non-toy geeks among you – when I was a child.
My three brothers and I would badger my mum to buy us the packs of five they came in from the supermarket toy aisle while she was doing the weekly shop – God only knows how much we bumped up her weekly bill by…
As time moved on and we moved out (and we wondered who would iron our clothes in the future), our collection of tiny cars went the way of the tip. My dad never did like to hang on to ‘junk’. I remember him taking my older brother’s £400 BMX to the Council Area For Unwanted Stuff because he’d left it in the garden for two weeks, but that’s another story…
Anyway, back to the cars…
The first job was to source the Micro Machines. They’re hard to get hold of these days so the hunt was confined to eBay. Prices varied wildly and the fact I needed so many of them didn’t help.
In the end I bought – in varying different package sizes – more than 300 of the little cars. Prices varied from £12 for 20 to £60 for 50. I bid on as many as I could and lost more auctions than I care to remember.
The prices all depended on when the auction finished – one minute a pack of 25 would go for as little as £12, the next day a similar sized package would go for more than £35. It was more than a little strange.
At this point I must apologise to serious Micro Machine collectors because I’m pretty sure I single handedly bumped up the price of the tiny cars by around 10 percentage points for the last quarter of 2013…
In total the cars cost around £300. The next thing needed was something to mount them on. Originally I planned a canvas, but when buying that the assistant suggested using acrylic. A Saturday morning hunt online and I’d soon found and ordered a 1200mm x 1200mm square for £144, drilled and complete with fixings.
It wasn’t until it turned up a week later that I realised just how big 1200mm x 1200mm really is. The problem was apparent: I needed more cars – so back to eBay I went.
When they’d arrived it was time to get cracking. I bought a glue gun – like you used to use in CDT at school – and laid out the cars. This took a LONG time and made me feel like a giant in a massive shiny car park.
It was at this point my OCD took over and the jumbled coloured line of cars just wouldn’t do. It needed ORDER. So I started again, this time colour co-oridinating the cars in bowls first and Blue Tak-ing them in place first to ensure I got the lines right.
After that I laid them out in rows, emulating a spectrum, and it seemed to work better. It satisfied my OCD at least. Lining them up was a combination of using an old floor board as a ruler and eye.
It wasn’t as easy as it sounds. I swore. A lot.
The gluing took hours. Quite literally, hours. I was completely paranoid about ruining the lines so painstakingly put each one in place. The good news is the glue seems to be holding too – I only lost a few in transit from home to office.
Ok, so a few more fell off when we attached it to the wall, but it gave me an excuse to get the glue gun out again. And yes, I know my plant is wonky…
Now it’s up on the wall I’m chuffed to bits with how it looks – it’s brought some welcome colour to my otherwise brown office. It’s also inspired me to do something else.
But before then I just need to tweak a few lines. You see they’re not ‘quite’ straight. And my OCD does NOT like that… Now where’s the glue gun?