New Elastic Park Partners
Thanks to everyone that's been helping us in trying to get a Pepsi Refresh grant. We've got a little over three more weeks to keep the votes going. It's been fun to see so many people rally behind us. In fact, we have two big partners that I need to thank for all of their support, both in this campaign to get the grant and in the products that make these projects possible. Pioneer Balloon Company (Qualatex Balloons) and Glue Dots International. I'm excited to have both of them pushing for us. And to make things better, they've both announced new things that I'll be using. I haven't gotten any of the new Glue Dots Dot N' Go dispensers yet, but I've been wanting a convenient dispenser for these things forever. Right now I'm just buying the big industrial boxes of dots. We use that many of them on the big projects that I suppose the industrial boxes aren't a bad thing. But something small to carry in my balloon bag will be nice. On the Qualatex front, my order of mocha and blush 321s just arrived. Yeah!
We're doing reasonably well on the campaign to get the grant, but still a bit behind where we need to be. Over 200 projects appear in our category and we've been holding our own, hovering just below the top ten. Unfortunately, we need to be in the top ten at the end of the month. With just a little more of a push, we can move up a couple of spots.
So thanks to the community that's always been there for me. All of the BalloonHQ members and guests have been doing an enormous amount of work in pushing this. Please, keep voting on a daily basis.
Of course, I realized yesterday how silly it was to just be calling people, tweeting and asking for votes when the whole point of this was to make an art project possible. The fact is, the phone calls, tweets and requests for support were stopping me from actually creating art. When that idea struck me, I forced myself to take a break from my desk and actually create something new. It's small and fairly simple, and far from the 30-foot long version of this cretaceous creature that Elastic Park will show, but it is a dinosaur. I've spent so much time over the last few months on plans for the big exhibit, I never actually stopped to make any small dinosaurs. So, here we are. A cute little triceratops. A few heart balloons, a few twists, and I felt much more relaxed. I have to remember, I left my life as a programmer because art made me feel so free and relaxed. Gotta focus on doing more art.
Of course, always wanting to get things right, I finished this and then wondered if I picked the right color for my little triceratops. After all, there was just a paper published (well, at least one that I just read about) on dino colors. At long last, it seems that we have real scientific clues as to the coloring of the prehistoric dinosaurs. I may have to do a little more research before some five-year-old points out my errant creation. At least I know most five-year-olds will take a little time to get up to speed on the new color information since most of them aren't reading the New York Times. But who knows. They put some pretty cool things in the Weekly Reader these days and dinosaurs are always a hot topic among kids. Maybe I don't have much of a head start on them.
Don't forget to vote daily for Elastic Park, the multi-thousand-square-foot dinosaur exhibition made entirely out of balloons.
Vote for us to get $50,000 in funding to launch this traveling show.