Before - Stinky!

After

After - Detail

THE BACKSTORY: The story of the “Stinky Mushroom” gets its origins from the Greek “Fungus foulsmelicus.” Actually, this do-it-yourselfer’s-dream sprouted up on Ebay for $10 and it was love at first sight. “It will go perfectly with our new Thomas Wold Mushroom Table!” I thought to myself… but unfortunately it wasn’t love at first sniff when I opened the box 2 weeks later! It smelled heavily of smoke and had stains all over it, but you get what you pay for! So the day dawned on a new project…

THE PROCESS: After the fabric was removed we found that the foam was in pretty bad shape as well and was pretty much THE source of the nasty smell. So we went down and bought some 6″ thick foam from the local craft store and carved it with an electric turkey knife to the correct shape. For the fabric we used an Urban Outfitters tapestry in Birdie Stamp which we cut and sewed from the pattern of the old fabric. For the top of the mushroom we just placed the foam atop the particle board circle and covered it with a little batting to smooth out the jagged edges. Then we just stretched the fabric over the top, gathered it at the bottom and stapled it down. For the bottom we just re-stapled the fabric to the inside of the tube.

Custom laser cut plywood wall frame, in its finished and unfinished stages.

With so many cool prints out there I found myself buying a few for my boyfriend this Chrismukkah. What I didn’t take into account at the time was that prints need to be framed. Naturally, they sat around in their cardboard sleeves for most of the year until enough was enough and we decided to tackle this problem we face whenever we need custom framing: how does one frame a print design to hang on a wall when the vast majority of custom framing options are boring?

Materials: Fleet Street Scandal’s “Afternoon Tea On Threadneedle Street”, optically coated glass, picture clips, a trustworthy laser cutting facility, plywood, wood stain, skull pendant

Process: The answer came in the form of laser cut plywood. After designing the outlines in Adobe Illustrator, we were able to have the frame cut directly from our outlines. We had a few extra “L” shaped pieces cut that we glued on the back to create a framework to hold the print in place along with some picture clips we stole from an old frame to hold the artwork in. To finish it all off we stained the plywood with a medium wood stain, affixed a brass skull pendant at the top, and went to our local craft store to have museum glass cut.