we chose to beautfy places in our city that we walk past on a regular basis, almost daily.

dull.
drab.
gray.
brown.
forgotten.
unnoticed.
spaces.

AND, we were lucky enough to be able to borrow lucid's co-worker's camera for the night to document the whole process. (he liked it, which was a surprise to her!)

here's the recipe:

1. get some tracing paper, water proof markers, scissors, corn starch, a cheap paint brush, a jar with a tight fitting lid, a spoonfull of sugar... (seriously)

2. draw on the tracing paper. whatever you want. we had our locations in mind prior to creating the drawings, so we made drawings specific to the sites we had in mind-- we wanted them to interact with their locations.

3. cut out your drawings.

4. make wheatpaste:
4.1mix 4 tablespoons of cornstarch into just enough cold water to cover. mix well, so that there's no lumps
4.2 bring two cups of water to a boil
4.3 drop the water down to low and add in the cornstarch/water mixture slowly, stirring the whole time (we used an eggbeater)
4.4 simmer the mixture for about 20 minutes, until it thickens and turns from milky white to slightly more translucent (ours looks a bit milky still because of all the air bubbles mixed in by the eggbeater)
4.5 stir in the spoonfull of sugar, for extra sticking power
4.6 let the mixture cool
4.7 if there's clumps in your wheat (corn) paste, strain it. we strained ours through a tea strainer
4.8 pour into a jar, screw on the lid and you're ready to go

5. while your wheatpaste is cooling, roll your drawings into cylinders, from TOP TO BOTTOM (see the photos)

6. head out to your site, with all your supplies (we did this at about 1am, but sometimes broad daylight is best-- no one expects it)

7. when at your site, coat the entire area you want to beautify with the wheatpaste

8. take your drawing, which you have rolled into a cylinder and place the bottom of the drawing where you would like it to be

9. unroll the drawing

10. take the brush and lightly go over the surface of the paper to coat is with a thin layer of wheatpaste.

11. leave the scene

so we did this a couple of times. check out the photos and the text that goes with them for visuals and more narrative. (for security reasons we did not take photos our ourselves in the act, and returned in the morning to take the after shots.)