So today I happened to meet up with someone who is doing shadow puppetry and is new to the whole thing. We had a long chat about puppets, etc, and she's going to the summit as well so it was a great meeting-of-the-minds.
As it happens I was planning on making my trip out to this new arts supply store afterwards, mentioned that I was doing so, and we ended up going together.
Boy, we had a lot of fun. The place is a medium-sized shed (bigger than your garden variety that's for sure) filled to the brim of various offcuts of... well, practically everything. There were aisles of various quantities, sizes and shapes of: dowel, foam core, poster board, folders, papers, rolls of vinyl and papers, fur and material scraps, cardboard boxes and tubes, 'bits and pieces' (beads, fake phones, bottle heads, etc), bottles, foam block (polystyrene and polyfoam), paints, twine, magnet sheets, rubber, photo frames, .... you name it they had it. I even found offcuts of the exact same plastic sheeting that I've been ordering from the manufacturer (sadly not in any size I could use, but still).
I didn't have a camera, but you all would have loved it.
Here's what I ended up buying:
- one long cardboard tube
- one long rectangular piece of polystyrene foam
- one large cardboard box
- 2 rubber wheel chocks (
http://www.clarkrubber.com.au/wheel-chocks.html), which I'll use as sandbags/stands
- one large 'photo album' cover thing. This is like, the size of an A0 piece of paper, but imagine a photo album cover - two thick boards hinged together which make it perfect for standing up on a table. I'm going to turn it into a table-top shadow puppet screen
- 2 rolls of white elastic, probably a couple of yards in total
How much?
For all this, and I got the box for free.... $7.
The place has this thing where you grab a plastic bag or one of their recycled paper bags from shops - you fill it, and if you do it will cost you $30. Anything larger, or the bag is not full, they calculate on checkout. There were no price tags anywhere. The only signs were about only taking a certain amount of the rarer items in the shop. And when I checked out, the woman took a very quick overview and just went "oh I'll charge you $7". I would have bought more stuff, but I really only wanted to get what I needed, rather than what I wanted. My new friend also bought some things, so we both came away happy and swearing we'll be stopping by again (and again

)
This is the place:
http://www.reversearttruck.com.auThe website sucks, but the shop itself is awesome. And the people were very friendly.
... This relates to my super secret project because I've been thinking I need to redesign the way I'm building my screen/frame to make it easier to transport and set up. The cardboard tubing will be for me exploding specks idea, the box for my screen, the foam for standing my puppet whilst I do something else. The elastic, album cover thing, and the chocks, will be for if I get to do some market stall selling.
Sigh, I think I'm in love with this shop
