A menu and a personal project

Hi there Paintedbus fans!

So far this week, I have two things to show. First is a menu for a fancy dinner in. Beau Macmillan of Iron Chef fame is a friend of a friend. He is making the dinner this Friday at the James Beard Foundation in NYC. The theme of the dinner is "Holiday in Paradise." And though Beau is a Boston native, his restaurant is located in Arizona so that's what I went with here.

(Click for larger images)

Also, lately I have been getting a little frustrated with doing all this computer work. So even though I have a lot of birthday and Christmas jobs to work on, it was time to stop and do a project for me. My bus is currently stranded in CT, so I can't work on it in person. BUT... I can take bits off of it and carry them home to my studio. This is what happened here. Last weekend I grabbed all the door and kick panels out of my bus and got around to re-covering them today.

My original panels were in surprisingly decent shape, so I stripped them of their torn and dirty vinyl and recovered them in burlap. Burlap is cheap ($2.99 a yard) and durable. Plus, it fits with the organic aesthetic I will be going with in my bus. Eventually I will be re-doing the seats to fit with theme, but for now I think that these will make a big improvement! A bonus is that my friend and vw wrenching partner (Hi Dave!) said he has a whole pile of old coffee sacks that I can use... So look forward to seeing them used around my bus for various other things.

Anyway, on to the pictures!

Here is what they looked like before... Sad, falling apart and filthy.

And here they are now!

Its like my bus is in my studio!

Note that to get these to fit with the long plastic air vents (that are missing in the before picture,) I will have to modify my seats a little (ie. remove a couple arm rests.) But thats ok by me. As I said above, they will be getting re-upholstered soon anyway.

Thanks for looking! ...and I will post the installed pics up here soon!