Creativity

I like to make things. I guess it’s the engineer and crafty part of me busting out.
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SOCKS! Hah! The last hurdle… seriously… it’s the one item that I hadn’t tackled in knitting.

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Noro: Split leaf shawl
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This year for Halloween (2008), I wanted to dress up as a 1920’s style gangster, but a very crucial prop was nowhere to be found in the stores. I was looking for a prop Tommy gun; easily recognizable by its circular magazine.
So using a 2 ft length 1.25″ diameter PVC piping (bought at Home Depot), Black duct tape, craft glue, construction paper, utility knife, and two pieces of foam (9″ X 12″ X 2″, bought at AC Moore), I made my own.

First, when buying the PVC piping, ask the nice people at Home Depot to cut the pipe into a 2 foot section, as it’s sold in 5 foot lengths. You can do this on your own, but it makes life easier to get it cut in the store. Using the black duct tape, a 2 foot length was completely covered with duct tape.

Next, using the construction paper, a full size template for the stock, magazine, and hand pieces for the gun need to be drawn, cut out and taped together. I sketched out the template using a photo of an actual Tommy gun; books from the library or internet image search will help.

It would have been faster to cut the foam using a hot wire, but I didn’t have the materials on hand. At the same time, cutting foam that way releases a very nasty smoke/smell, just FYI. After drawing the shape via the template, I used a box cutter to cut out each shape. Once cut, I trimmed all the shapes, adding a groove for the PVC piping (aka, the barrel of the gun), and curving all the edges so the lines of the foam looked like the lines of the real gun.

Using craft glue, I fixed the individual cut pieces of foam together, and let dry. Once dry, a final trim was done before wrapping the entire shape in black duct tape. After it was entirely covered, the PVC pipe is then taped into the groove with more black duct tape. Click here to see the prop gun held my a friend of mine.
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The Flaming Chicken pinata. Labor Day weekend, 2006