So much time has passed since my last post! So, what happened? Thanksgiving. Gingerbread (of course), and then the holiday parties. All of that is behind us now and I finally get to wrap up the gingerbread posts.
That said, where did I leave off? Ah yes, the buildings (still).
As I mentioned before, we had the awesome luck of having three dimensional models of all of our buildings on Google Earth. I was able to use a measuring tool in the program to measure every angle and rescale them to fit our gingerbread world. Painstaking, yes. But not as bad as guessing.
Our first thought was to try to replicate the building's texture and colors as much as possible. One Times Square is pretty much black with long columns of windows in the front and wall-to-wall billboards on the back side.
We used a Dremel router to cut the window columns with the intention of filling them with isomalt.
I used the airbrush to spray the building pieces black. What comes next is too graphic to post. We poured the isomalt in the columns. Nice. We assembled the building. Nice. We dropped the building. Not so nice.
Well, it turned out to be the beginning of a long line of set-backs. However, each set-back seemed to lead us in a better direction. I guess what I'm saying is that the black building with the isomalt kind of sucked. It needed to be dropped. I was making the same mistake that I made with the replica of the club. I tried too hard to make it look exactly like the original. Gingerbread projects needs to be colorful! A candy freakin' carnival! So, we put Humpty Dumpty back together and started with a fresh look.
Ok, so it didn't go back together
exactly how it was before (you can see by the not-so-plumb line of the walls), but I was at the point that a little compromise would be necessary to complete the project on time.
After "spackling" the cracks in the building with royal icing, I realized how much it had in common with drywall joint compound. So I decided to cover all of the buildings with it. Sure, it took away any visible gingerbread from the project, but this is the concrete jungle! Right? But really, it gave us a more consistent surface area to bond the candy to.
After the buildings were lowered into place and Jon finished up the dimensional details, the process of getting them adorned with candy began.
For the windows, we used Jolly Ranchers that were melted in a silicone mold.
We thought that KitKats would help to define the vertical lines on One Times Square, since we lost our vertical isomalt windows in the accident.
Jon worked feverishly to get the buildings complete so we could move on to some of the more technical aspects of the project: the lighting, and the parade floats.
Luckily for us, Target was having a sale on Pez.
Yes, this was as painstaking as it looks.
Now, I mentioned set backs, right? The KitKats and Jolly Rancher windows were working out great, until we had a spike in temperature with some rain. Humidity reared its ugly head. The windows began to weep and the chocolate started falling off. So, we had to scrape it all off and rethink it.
In the meantime, we continued to work on the Pez building, this time covering the windows with plastic, to prevent them from absorbing any moisture.
Cory and Lee took on the very detailed project of windows and panes.
Robbie became a fast expert at producing the windows. Timing was everything.
After scraping off the first round of melting windows and KitKats, I recovered them with a colored royal icing.
We finished One Times Square with purple windows and black licorice panes. Looks like someone got a haircut. Yes, I got a lollipop and yes, I cut it up with band saw and used it on the house.
The Bertelsmann Building or the blue building was covered with blue Jolly Rancher windows and blueberry candy canes.
Next time that you see Lee, ask him how many candy canes that he cut for this.
After all of the candy was complete, it was time to move on to the lights and the billboards that really define Times Square.
It was our plan to use edible rice paper to print the billboards on. This is the same material that they use to put a photo on a cake. The Virgin Records sign, however, was neon. That took a little more thinking.
I decided to use a technology called "edge light refraction" to recreate the neon sign. Basically, an image is reversed and traced onto plexiglass using a Dremel carving bit. LED lights are placed into a notched-out section of the sign. As the light passes through the plexiglass it searches for a way out; any imperfections in the surface will allow light to escape. The etched out Virgin logo offers a perfect escape route for the light.
After wiring in the red LEDs, I used black electrical tape to create the black background. I mounted it and flipped the switch to test it.
Sorry for the poor quality photo, I had to use my phone for this one. I was pretty pleased with the results. Of course, it looks so much cooler with the lights out.
On to the billboards:
It was important to us to get the billboards that inspired us to do this project in the first place into the actual project.
We used corn syrup to glue the rice paper to the royal icing.
On to the NASDAQ sign.
So it just so happens that 4 Times Square is the home of NASDAQ. HUGE sign out front, constantly changing with different ads, stock ticker, American flag. So many variation that they have a web cam that allows people to see what is on the sign at any given time. How could we recreate this? Well if you asked me a month ago, I would have said that we would project some images onto it from behind it using scrolling LCD screens. Well, since at this point we have 48 hours to turn it in, I'm going with the K.I.S.S. principle.
We used an empty caramel popcorn canister to recreate the sign. I sanded it down to optimize light refraction. I say that because it sounds better than saying I sanded down because it was gouged with a putty knife while removing the stubborn sticker on it. Another happy accident.
After Jon put some some finishing touches on the sign, I installed one of our multi colored puck lights. I had to rewire it, so that we could plug it in. Last year, everything was battery powered. What a pain.
Ok. So, the signs are up, the LCD screens are mounted, the buildings are complete! So all we have left are the streets, the gingerbread people and the floats. That's a tall order for a 24 hour window. Something had to go. We decided to change the concept to New Year's Eve. It was an easy decision to make since One Times Square is the building that the ball drops from at midnight. That, and the fact that there was no way that we were going to be able to pull off constructing the floats in time. If we were going to embrace the New Year's Eve theme, then we were going to need a giant glowing ball for the top of our building. Faye and I worked on a prototype using a clear round ornament that we stuffed with a strand of LED lights. She then glued tiny plastic jewels to the outside of it to achieve more of that...you guessed it, refraction!
Well, in the process of determining if it was the right ornament for the job, we questioned whether or not the ornament was made of glass or plastic. It seemed like plastic when I rapped it with my ring finger. You know where I'm going with this, right? So she finished it, we fired it up and wow! What a sight to behold. It was perfect. Well, almost. It was really big by the time she put all of the jewels on it, which incidentally kept falling off every time we handled it. Apparently, it wasn't meant to be. It was accidentally knocked off of the table during a very late night clean up by a person who shall remain nameless (Lee). Oh, and by the way, it was glass after all. One step forward, two steps back. I think we have a new name for our blog.
Clairvoyant Faye decided to pick up a smaller, plastic ornament on her way to work the next day, not aware of the original ball's fate. So, we made it better, faster, stronger, and smaller.
Cory and I spared Faye the trouble of remounting the jewels on the new ball by trading off the duties. Besides, someone had to relieve 300 Teddy Grahams of their ears.
We used Nerds to pave the streets and flattened white Tootsie Rolls for the sidewalks. Yeah, I didn't know they made white Tootsie Rolls either. Now, on to the tree. We improved on our concept from last year by using a hollow cardboard structure for the tree, rather than a styrofoam one. We also hard wired the lights so, once again, no dead battery issues.
After wiring up the Christmas tree, we had to see what it looked like with the lights off. Oh yeah!
I don't think that we could have improved on the technique that we used last year to pipe on the tree needles, so we didn't try. I did, however, forget how long it took. Geez.
Cory and Lee put all of the details on the gingerbread party goers.
We just squeaked it out.
How did we do? Well, check out that blue ribbon there in the bottom left of the picture! We won for best professional entry. Not too shabby. Thanks to everyone for all of their hard work. And thanks to all of our ladies who put up with the late nights and the fling that we had with "Ginger".
