So, it's my zeroday today. I realised this a while back, and it made me think. I haven't actually done anything for absolutely ages. My last decent praxis was in October, and my score this era is almost entirely dependant on having been in Milton Keynes in the summer. True, I have things in the pipeline; I'm involved in a few large collaborations as well as smaller ones, some of which have been lying around for ages (*prods Tom*), but I haven't submitted anything good for quite some time.
Marking my zeroday was a good opportunity to break this trend.

I have not been abroad much, and could probably count the countries I have visited on the fingers of one hand. Therefore, this task was pretty open. I have in fact included souvenirs from a couple of countries I have visited as well, although the USA is big enough for each state to count separately, in my opinion.
I started off by making a few models of famous landmarks. I found some Fimo buried deep in the craft box, and got to work. It really is wonderful stuff. It is basically plasticine, but it goes hard when you cook it in an oven.


Using pictures I found on the internet, I created small models of Pisa's famously structually insecure tower, the Mayan pyramid at Chichen Itza and the sphinx with no sense of smell in Egypt. Because I couldn't resist the coloured Fimo, I also made a tree, which I can say is a souvenir from a visit to the Amazon, with proceeds going towards rainforest protection funds.


Once I was pleased with my four little models, I took them to the kitchen to bake.


The results were quite pleasing, but hardly believable souvenirs:



Thinking of what I could make next, I decided to work with a 2D format this time. I could make a set of badges collected from different parts of the world. Badges are just the sort of tacky thing sold across the globe as cheap souvenirs. I prepared a document on Publisher and fitted twelve pictures into the circles I arranged on the page.


The twelve sites on the badges are:
The Great Wall of China
Chichen Itza, Mexico
The Great Sphinx and Pyramid at Giza, Egypt
The Statue of Liberty, New York
The Eiffel tower, Paris
Sydney Opera House
Golden Gate Bridge, San Francisco
Table Mounain, Cape Town
The Taj Mahal, India
The Colosseum, Rome
The Brandenburg Gate, Berlin
Christ the Redeemer, Rio de Janeiro

I printed the sheet out, and used PVA to glue it to some card to stiffen the badges. unfortunately, the PVA did not dry as it was meant to, and when I started cutting out the circles, they started to tear a little.


After this failure, I started again, using Pritt stick this time.


They cut out without problems the second time, and I then had to waterproof them, in case the wearer was caught in rain. For this I used sticky-backed plastic.


After cutting out the now vaguely waterproof badges, they were starting to look quite nice.


I finally added badge pins to the back of them, to enable them to be worn. I tested the Golden Gate alongside the other badges on my sombrero.



For my finale... a model of the Sutro Tower, as a souvenir of San Francisco.
I found some very old pipe cleaners in the craft box to use as the structure of the tower, and once again worked from a picture.


The next stage was adding the red stripes, which was done with a felt tip pen. In the process more ink ended up on my fingers than anywhere else, as I was plucking off bits of fluff which attached themselves to the end of the pen, but eventually I had a pretty good model of the tower.



So now, despite my lack of travelling, I have a range of souvenirs from many countries around the world. Overall, I was pleased with my models and badges. In my mind at least, this praxis marks a return to decent tasking. I hope you will agree.