duct tape projects

Who can forget the Cadbury commercials of the 1980s, with that adorable bunny hopping off a nest to reveal foil-wrapped creme eggs?

Here’s what you might get if a sheep instead of a rabbit were doing the clucking: fuzzy, felted eggs that can be used as Easter decorations or cut open to insert tiny treats.

Making them is easy, if a bit messy. But unlike dyeing real eggs, there’s no chance of staining your hands or clothing purple or green. Small bits of colourful wool roving are wrapped around inexpensive plastic eggs, dunked in water and agitated until the fibres shrink around the shape, producing a soft covering of felt.

A washing machine can be used to make a dozen at once, or tactile types can make them one-by-one by hand. And unlike chocolate eggs, these will still be around after Easter.

MATERIALS:

-plastic eggs

-duct tape or masking tape

-wool roving in assorted colours, a handful is plenty for one egg

-a large bowl of hot water

-liquid soap

Optional:

-a bamboo mat, bubble wrap or metal cooling rack

-washing machine

-old pantyhose

INSTRUCTIONS:

The hands-on method is the most basic. The alternative uses pantyhose to hold the wool roving together for the initial felting stage, and may be easier for children to handle. The third method uses a washing machine and is a good way to felt a larger batch of eggs.

HANDS-ON METHOD:

1) Fill the bowl with hot water and add a squirt or two of soap.

2) Cover an egg with tape to seal the opening and give the wool a slightly textured surface to grab onto.

3) Unwind a bit of wool roving and pull off a tuft. Lay it flat in front of you, teasing the fibres apart to make a thin, rectangular layer that measures approximately 12 by 18 centimetres.

4) Add another layer on top of the first, alternating the direction of the fibres.

5) Repeat until you have four layers. Using different colours for each layer will create a marbled effect.

6) Place the egg on top of the rectangle of wool and wrap the wool around it, as if you were rolling a burrito: fold the top and bottom inward over the narrow ends of the egg, then wrap the roving around the middle of the egg.

7) With your hands cupped around the egg, dip it in the bowl of hot water.

Very gently, and keeping your hands cupped around the egg, move it back and forth between your hands. Resist the urge to squeeze. Continue lightly patting and rolling the egg in your hands for 2-3 minutes until you start to feel the wool shrinking to the shape of the egg. Initially, it will feel like a soggy mass of fibres, then a wrinkled mess, but eventually it will shrink.

9) Once the wool has shrunk, apply more pressure and roll the egg between your palms, as if you were rolling a ball of clay or dough. If the surface gets too soapy, rinse the egg in cool water. You can rub the egg on a bamboo mat, sheet of bubble wrap or metal cooling rack to add more friction. Continue until the egg feels firm, approximately 5 minutes.

10) Rinse egg under cold water to remove soap.

11) Allow eggs to dry for 1-2 days.

12) If desired, use small, sharp scissors to cut through the felt and remove the plastic eggs.

ALTERNATIVE HANDS-ON METHOD:

1) Follow steps 1-6 above.

2) Cut a 15-centimetre tube from a pantyhose leg and tie a knot in one end.

3) Carefully insert the wool-wrapped egg into the tube and tie another knot at the open end.

4) Continue with step 7 above. After a few minutes, when you see some of the fibres poking through the mesh pantyhose, remove the egg and continue felting by hand, following steps 9-12.

MACHINE METHOD:

1) Follow steps 1-6 above.

2) Cut one leg off a pair of pantyhose.

3) Carefully insert one wool-wrapped egg into the toe of the pantyhose and tie a knot.

4) Continue adding wool-wrapped eggs, tying a knot between each one.

5) Throw the bundle of eggs in the washing machine with a little bit of laundry detergent. A lingerie bag or pillowcase is helpful for containing lint. Run through a hot-water cycle.

6) Carefully remove the eggs from the hose and allow to dry.

Technorati Tags: decor, duck tape, duct tape, duct tape projects, easter, eggs

When he’s not blowing things up, making models, or otherwise holding the job you wish you had, Adam Savage is serious about personal projects. We chatted with him about MythBusters, managing time, and other geeky stuff.

Photo by ensceptico.

Savage was raised by a father who worked as a painter, filmmaker, and animator, and a psychotherapist mother. In his own career, Savage has worked as a graphic designer, carpenter, stage designer, toy crafter, welder, and, since 1993, special-effects consultant for the film industriy, including stints with the Star Wars prequels, Terminator 3, and the Matrix sequels.

But you probably know him best from the Discovery Channel’s MythBusters, which takes those legends you’ve had Re:Fwd:Fwd’ed to you, stuck in your memory from grade school, or otherwise circulating around the realms of science and puts the screws to them—quite literally, sometimes. Savage and co-host Jamie Hyneman, along with a three-person “build team,” tear into and explain all sorts of scientific and maker-friendly topics on the show, but always with a mind for safety and education.

We spoke with Savage by phone last week, and the edited (mostly for length and clarity) transcript follows:

Lifehacker: We noticed that you occasionally like to drop into MetaFilter and a few other places around the web. Where do you like to spend time online, when you have it?

Adam Savage: There’s a lot of places, though Twitter has become one of my favorites. I know I shouldn’t say this, but, when it comes to a lot of sites, I do some self-filtering. On the show site, the Discovery forums, or anywhere that’s writing about (MythBusters), I don’t ever read any of the comments sections.

Lifehacker: I could guess why, but, why?

Adam Savage: While 90 percent of what is up there is positive, every now and then, someone posts something just nasty. And it can actually interrupt what works for me as the flow of the show … Someone in a comment once pointed out all my verbal tics in certain episodes. We were filming a week later, and I found myself editing myself ahead of time while I was talking to the camera. Why am I doing that, to prove one anonymous person wrong? A friend of mine has this tactic of, whenever someone says something intentionally difficult during a conversation, he’ll say, “You have something in your teeth.” That pretty much kills any aggressiveness that was going, and I guess I wish we had that ability online … Stuff like that is the reason I find myself gravitating toward Twitter.

Lifehacker: Why that platform, in particular?

Adam Savage: It’s just an idealized version of the comments section. It moves quickly, you’re engaged in this ongoing dialog, this general conversation between the show and the fans that I’m really enjoying.

Lifehacker: What’s your preferred computer platform? Well, to start, Mac or PC?

Adam Savage: Mac, 100 percent. I made a Tweet the other day, because someone had sent me an Excel document, I grabbed it and opened it, and watched my home machine just burn and grind trying to open it with Excel. So, I sent out, “Oh, Microsoft, is there anything you CAN do?” It’s ridiculous. I learned about OpenOffice through Twitter, and it just amazes me. On my Mac, a super-fast 17″ laptop, a video editor takes less time and power to run than an Office product.

… My main browser stays Camino. I like it, it suits me better than most things … and, yeah, it’s really fast. Every once in a while, like 1 out of 80 pages, it will have trouble with something, but it’s no big thing to jump over to Safari in those rare cases.

Lifehacker: Really? No Firefox extensions have tempted you away?

Adam Savage: I haven’t really gotten into any of that extension stuff. I haven’t even really spent the time to learn the Gmail shortcuts. As I’m cruising through 70 to 80 emails a day, I’m seeing a lot of information out there, but only occasionally learning a new piece that I really want to adapt to.

… There end up being places where I’m completely involved in adjusting my interface. My Mac desktop, for instance, I hardly ever see it. The programs I’ve always got open, Adobe Bridge, Camino, and Stickies, they’re constantly open. Adobe Bridge is the most vital management tool I have. I collect a whole lot of stuff, download it, combine it, create smaller temporary files. The desktop becomes the repository, and Bridge is how I get through all of it.

Lifehacker: What does a typical work day schedule look like for you?

Adam Savage: I have split custody with twin 10-year-old boys that I have every other week. Those weeks, I’m up at 6:30 or 7 to see them off, and then I’m usually at work about a half-hour early, to adjust to any show emails or other things. That’s also when I try to kick out any personal stuff or projects. Jamie and I also have a production manager who oversees our time for stuff that’s extracurricular to actual MythBusters shooting …

We shoot MythBusters nine hours a day, five days a week. You hear stories about Hollywood shows going for 14-hour days, but Jamie and I realized early on that we can’t work that way, and a regular schedule was really important.

Lifehacker: It’s probably a matter of safety, too. I wouldn’t want to be tired doing some of the stuff you do on the show.

Adam Savage: We take those kinds of factors very seriously. When we know we’re going to do something on the show that requires real attention, we don’t put too much before it. Your brain gets real spongy after that amount of work. Keeping regular hours ends up being totally critical to the quality and flow of the show … and the other thing for me is the twin boys. I made a personal commitment to myself, and for them. I have the odd business trip or two, and I travel a tremendous amount, but it really hasn’t cut into my family time.

Lifehacker: How do you plan out a season of MythBusters? How much can you plan ahead, and how much space do you leave yourself to explore stuff you hadn’t anticipated?

Adam Savage: The flow of the season happens very much like the flow of an episode. We’ll plot out a straight line through an episode, or a season, then it changes radically, constantly. The story list for the next full season, for example, had 60 stories. That came from a master list of about 130, 140 items, from which we’ll choose 60. As we film that season, we’ll end up following maybe 40 of those, but then 20 new items come up during shooting. All it takes is one more news story for me to realize how I could dig into something.

… There’s also room for totally randoms stuff. Jamie came up with this idea of proving you could build a working ship out of wood pulp and water, during the Alaska episode. What we built was stupendous, and what we built wasn’t on anybody’s list. It normally takes about 9 or 10 days to finish a story, but we try to be flexible. We find a story sometimes we just don’t want to sink our teeth into or, more often, need to give more juice to. We had one thing, duct tape, slotted as a three-day story, but we realized that is not a small story. We can turn on the idea that duct tape can do almost anything. So we turned out this episode that takes duct tape to the absolute edge of its performance capabilities.

Lifehacker: Like whether it can really cure warts?

Adam Savage: Ooh, no, we didn’t, but that’s a good one.

Lifehacker: One of the things that’s unique about the show is the failures, or at least the things that don’t turn out the way you guys seemed to plan it. You’ll be firing stuff into ballistics gel and, halfway through an episode, realize your first theory on something is just completely dead. It seems like everything else on TV is just so determined to deliver exactly what everyone expects.

Adam Savage: Right. One of my favorite parts of this show is that it’s an accurate depiction of how (experiments) are going. That said, we are aware that we’re telling a story, but … We were doing this myth out at Fort Mason. We’d made all these plans to perform an experiment in this specific way, we spent a full day of prep to get this experiment working in this specific fashion. Then we realized that the whole thing we’re trying to show would be visible in the high-speed camera anyways. So we ended up with an entirely different direction to take.

Does that mean a lot of the show is shaped in the editing room?

Adam Savage: Well, you should know that Jamie and I don’t have a direct hand in editing. For a typical episode, we’ll deliver 25-30 hours of footage from as many as 16 different cameras … You might notice that the show now, as opposed to earlier seasons, includes more talking to the camera directly. That’s partly because the editors would get all this footage, but we haven’t made it exactly clear what we were doing. What we get back after sending it off is a first version that’s extremely long, and then the production team has to make the hard decisions. We get a bit more involved with the rough cut before it goes to Discovery, where we can point out bits of science to include, say that things aren’t properly highlighted, advocate for a particular sequence. Then you get the responses, which explain what else has to be sacrificed to fit things in.

Lifehacker: What kinds of pet projects do you have going on at home, or on the side?

Adam Savage: I’m constantly doing little pod projects. I did a series of talks, culminating in a speech you can see on the TED web site (Note: Embedded below) about my obsession with the Maltese Falcon … about how I wanted to make a perfect one, and how I find diving into the extreme details of something like that very rewarding.

Note: Savage’s EG Conference talk also reveals a bit about his work flow and thought collection processes, and how he stocks his “CREATIVE PROJECTS” folder for the future.

Lifehacker: How so?

Adam Savage: It’s the same thing I love about model making, when I worked in the film industry. There’s a narrative going on with any object, and the object only really works if the narrative has some veracity to it. There isn’t a model maker in the world who’s created a space ship that couldn’t tell you, at least on a rough level, why all those parts and details are there, what they do, and the stories of how they got there.

… Things like owning my own Time Bandits map. Or a leather bullwhip, which I built myself because I couldn’t afford one. I always have a couple of projects going, some I’ve been working on for a couple of weeks, maybe a year, or sometimes 10 years going after I started them. My time on the internet, my time to myself, I always spend some of it doing research on everything I need to know about whatever it is I’m working on. If I’m making something, it almost always includes making two of them, start to finish, because you always learn during the first try that now you really know what you need for the full thing. It’s a self-imposed sissyphean task, I know, trying to get everything in, but it’s a hugely satisfying thing.

… One of the ways (Jamie and I) work so well together is that we’re the same way about projects—we have to get what we need to know to get going. Once I’ve got a piece of furniture really in my head, cutting up the pieces of wood to make it is trivial. But until it’s in my head, it’s just grueling. We’ve often said this, but if you measure our adrenaline levels throughout filming an episode, we’re often far more excited while researching and planning a big thing then when we’re on set and actually doing it.

Lifehacker: What can we look for in the new season? (Note: Starting April

Adam Savage: The new season’s going to be phenomenal. We did a two-hour disaster special, where we actually took on the bus turn from the movie Speed, which involved me and Jamie getting to do some terrible things to a full-size bus. The one we were doing out at Fort Mason … One of my favorite (experiment) categories over the past couple of years has been thought experiments. Things like, if a plane is on a conveyor belt, will it take off? One of those we hadn’t tackled yet was, if you drop a bullet, and fire a bullet, from the exact same height, at the exact same time, they will both hit the ground at the exact same time.

Lifehacker: That’s a classic of 11th-grade physics.

Adam Savage: Yeah, except the fired bullet is however many thousands of feet away. This is something I’ve been wanting to do for years. Last year, during a story discussion, Jamie and I hammered out a way to do it in full scale, and, last week, we tried it out. I’m not going to tell you how it turns out, but I can guarantee you, nobody else has ever wasted their time trying to get the shot that we’ve got.

Technorati Tags: duck tape, duct tape, duct tape projects, myth busters

First came the bluegrass crowd. Then the ravers and the free spirits and the fitness junkies.

Decades after toy company Wham-O created the Hula Hoop – it turned 50 last year – do-it-yourselfers are making their own hoops using a bit of creativity, elbow grease and polyethylene tubing (aka poly tubing). Instructions can be found online, and the pliable, sturdy coils of the tubing can be found in gardening or plumbing sections of home-improvement stores.

It looks pretty easy. Looks can be deceiving.

Hoop-making was born out of necessity, said Philo Hagen, editor of the Web site hooping.org, based in San Francisco. “Originally there was no other way to have them.”

Those hoops you find for $6 at discount chains – child’s play. They’re too light and too small for an adult, Hagen said. Many people who think they can’t hoop fail because they’re forcing their adult bodies into a child’s hoop.

How did adult hooping become trendy? “It started out pretty underground,” Hagen said. About a decade ago, The String Cheese Incident, a Colorado bluegrass band, began tossing homemade hoops out at concerts. Its Web site has a silhouette of a female hooper and the band hooping it up.

“That’s kind of where the second generation of hooping started,” said Hagen, who’s 44 and has “hooped” for about seven years. Hooping soon spun to other musical genres, hitting the rave scene, then Burning Man, an annual gathering/free-for-all in Nevada’s Black Rock Desert.

Today, one doesn’t have to be crafty or lucky at a concert to land a hoop. Web sites like philthyhoops. com sell hoops – sparkle, camo, basic – starting at $25. The ones decorated with skulls or flames will set you back $55, before shipping.

“There’s still something to be said about decorating it yourself,” Hagen said. “If you make a hoop that’s all about you, you’re going to be even more excited about using it.”

And the savings add up, too, if you need enough hoops for a crowd. A 100-foot roll of tubing that can yield 10 or 11 hoops will cost around $20 at a hardware store, and connectors cost $1.50 or so. Amy DuFresne, a Hot Springs hooper, estimates that she gets eight or nine hoops out of a coil. Depending on the number of hoops one gets from a coil and how fancy the decorations are, each homemade hoop will cost $4 to $5 … but that’s not counting what it costs to drive around town to find the supplies.

“When you do it yourself, you can kind of customize the size,” said Du-Fresne, 35, whose 5-foot, 10-inch frame requires a larger hoop than your average woman might need, thus the reason for buying a whole roll of tubing. Stand the hoop up and it should hit somewhere between the navel and the breastbone (measuring from the ground).

DuFresne began hooping about 2 1 /2 years ago after she spotted Hoopalicious, a performer on the television show America’s Got Talent. (Check out the clips of the golden, scantily clad hooper on YouTube. David Hasselhoff calls the routine “incredibly beautiful” and if that’s not a ringing endorsement …)

DuFresne searched YouTube early on to learn tricks. Today all manner of videos demonstrate moves. Check out the sublime (read cheesy) clip called “Guggenhoopin” in which flare-pantsclad hoopers invade the Guggenheim Museum in New York, coordinating their moves to flashing floor lights to a crowd’s delight, or at least mild amusement. A guy from Idaho named Paul Blair – he goes by Dizzy Hips and holds a fistful of world records for hooping while running and other such feats – is all over the Internet too. He can even hoop a 50-pound tire. Making hoops is certainly easier than learning such tricks.

SUPPLIES

Following instructions found at hooping.org, here’s what you’ll need to make a hoop: A PVC cutter or sharp blade 3 /4-inch or 1-inch poly tubing (the length depends on one’s height) The corresponding size insert connector Colorful tape A hairdryer or hot water Optional: water or sand for added weight or small beans or kernels for noise

GETTING READY

Amazingly, the Home Depot employee who asked if I needed poly tubing for – insert some plumbing project that may as well have been spoken in Yiddish – didn’t laugh when I explained, instructions in hand, that I was making an exercise hoop.

Not an uncommon request, he said, pointing me to a coil of 3 /4-inch tubing that cost about $18, or about $8 over my budget. No worries, the store also had tubing scraps for sale. He led me to a piece about 10 feet long, which I thought would be perfect. A few rolls of colored electrical tape and a $1.41 connector later, I was stocked – as well as over budget by $1.18.

Since the tubing was already cut, I didn’t need to buy a PVC cutter, which would have added about $12 to my tab. (A hacksaw or any old blade will work, but you’ll have wasted an excuse to buy a new tool.)

STEP-BY-STEP

Still following the instructions on hooping.org (by Berkeley, Calif., hooper Jason Strauss) but adding advice from Hagen and DuFresne:

1. Cut the hoop to the right size. With the tubing, make a circle that hits between the navel and the breastbone. Smaller hoops work well for tricks. Bigger hoops are best for jumps, DuFresne points out. If your midsection’s bigger, your hoop should be bigger too, Hagen said.

First-time hoop-maker’s confession: My 10-foot loop of tubing comes up short, in many ways, but particularly because it hits below my navel, which is the only explanation I have for being able to keep it spinning for less than 5 seconds.

2. Want a little something extra? Add some shakeys. Think of a young, earnest and somewhat out-of breath Tim Robbins in The Hudsucker Proxy hooping away in front of a company board puzzled by his new toy: “We put a little sand in to make the experience more pleasant.”

Confession 2: I used split peas, because they’re small and had practically fossilized on my counter waiting to be cooked.

3. Heat the ends of the tube for a few minutes using a hair dryer or hot water.

Hagen used a burner on his gas stove for his first hoop – without setting anything unintended on fire – but now uses hot water. It’s not any quicker than a hair dryer, but the stove does all the work. And a hair dryer might not heat the area evenly, he said.

Confession 3: I got tired of holding the hair dryer after about 45 seconds, and my husband used a hammer to bang in the connector. This is not advisable, unless one prefers a lopsided loop with a bit of a lump.

4. Insert the connector. As the tubing cools, it should vanish into the tubing, forming a strong seal. Wind duct tape over the connection for added security.

Hagen doesn’t normally use duct tape. “I found it a bit unnecessary,” he said. He also cautions do-it-yourselfers not to flatten the hoop when inserting the connector.

Confession 4: Duct tape made my lumpy connection that much more pronounced. Also, the tubing stayed in the trunk of my compact car for several days, so my hoop is not only lumpy, but oblong. As one normally kind co-worker put it: “That doesn’t even look like a Hula Hoop.”

5. Pick a color. Not familiar with the complexities of electrical tape? This may be a good time to practice wrapping skills on something else cylindrical – an old baton, an arm, a dog’s tail.

Confession 5: Despite my classic red and blue on white palette that looked more like a barber’s pole than I intended, my hoop is dreadfully ugly. The tape is unevenly spaced and crinkled, a large swath of some secret plumber’s code peeks out from underneath.

I would give my hoop to my neighbor’s child, but I don’t like seeing children cry. And, as I’ve learned, children’s hoops go for peanuts.

One thing poly tubing has going for it is that it’s white. DuFresne prefers that color, particularly for tape. She’s found that colored tape mars her ceiling.

Technorati Tags: duck tape, duct tape, duct tape projects, hoola hoop

Swainsboro High School students made national news this past weekend with their “Duck Tape” prom. Over 80 students in grades 9-12 participated in the first ever Duck Tape prom. These students worked for months and used over 1000 rolls of Duck Tape to create formal dresses and tuxedos for a night to remember. Heading the project was Swainsboro High School Art teacher, Dabney Edenfield. Mrs. Edenfield said that she was looking for a project that would get some of our kids involved in something outside of Swainsboro. Last year she found the contest that Henkel Corporation conducts on their “Stuck at Prom” website. The contest invites students to create prom attire out of Duck Tape. Each couple can then enter the competition for a $3000 scholarship. Last year SHS had about 14 couples enter the contest. This year over 80 students participated. With the increased interest, including the interest of younger students that would not be able to attend the Jr.-Sr. Prom, Mrs. Edenfield decided that there needed to be a separate prom just for the Duck Tape attendees.

As a way to highlight the event and give the students the needed publicity, a fashion show of the students in their outfits became part of the Second Saturday Art Stroll in downtown Swainsboro. Whitney Bush and Patrick Hall emceed the show as students paraded around the fountain “Ducked out in Duck Tape.”

Following the Fashion show, the students proceeded to the Cadle Barn where they were served dinner and became student investigators in a Murder Mystery Event. Community members that agreed to play the parts of the murder suspects questioned by the students were Jack McLeod, Taylor Edenfield, Steele and Sloan Knudson, Brian Rogers, Joy Coleman, and Dabney Edenfield. Allen Durden read the “Coroner’s report” and made the arrest at the end of the evening and Jerry Cadle read the will. Whitney Bush and Deana Ryan were detectives that facilitated the student investigations.

Students were also able to vote for the couple that they felt had the best Duck Tape outfits. Two couples tied for this honor. Whitney Calhoun and Tyler Lively and Jazzmin Porzio and Rocky Dennis will all be treated to dinner at 114 West Main and an airplane ride over Swainsboro.

WRDW out of Augusta and WSAV out of Savannah both ran reports of the event over the weekend. SHS student Bonnie Hall was interviewed over the phone live on CNN Sunday afternoon. CNN.com also has photos of the event.

Dabney Edenfield, Patti Hall, Teresa Davis, Jerry and Paula Cadle, Mark Williams Photography, and Ann Rogers helped to make the event possible.

Technorati Tags: duck tape, duct tape, duct tape projects, formal dress, prom

ARMAGH — Fashion was totally trashed last Friday at United High School.

The school hosted its inaugural “Trashin’ Fashion Show” with students modeling their own creations of haute couture — all made of discarded items and recycled materials.

The student response to the event was overwhelming.

According to Aaron Steinly, assistant principal at the high school, who spearheaded plans for the event, the response surpassed expectations, with 83 projects entered by 143 student designers.

“The entries were far bigger than what we had imagined,” said environmental studies teacher Bob Penrose, who was also involved in planning. He said organizers had hoped for 20 entries. “We had so many kids excited now about what they can do, realizing that they can do little things to make a change,” he said. “There was some really neat stuff.”

“This came out of a desire to make our students more environmentally conscious,” Penrose said. He said the event’s panel of judges “worked with us in one capacity or another to help us to educate our students on how they can make a difference in our environment.”

Helping Penrose plan the event was a core group of students from his first semester of classes: Jessie Bruckhart, Kim Busch and Rachael Andrasik.

“They came up with the basic idea,” Penrose said.

He then enlisted the aid of his current environmental studies classes.

“They took it and ran with it,” he said. “They did the decorations, they put together the program, helped put together the list of sponsors. They really did all of the work for it.”

The competition was open to students in grades 5-12, on a volunteer basis.

The students were allowed to compete as individuals or in teams of up to four, and they had a little over a month to design and develop their “green” garb.

There were four categories of competition: accessories, school spirit, informal wear and formal wear.

Each category had a winner in each of various age groups. A grand prize of $200 was awarded to the student or team with the highest point total, with prizes of $45 going to the winners of each age group in each category.

Event sponsors also donated gift certificates and prizes for the students involved in the planning, which were distributed through a raffle.

The students were instructed to use as many different types of recyclable materials as they could, with the intention of using their trash to create fashion. The only other stipulation was that the costumes had to fall within the school’s dress code.

“Accessories were popular because they were easy to make,” Penrose remarked.

Four people involved with United’s various environmental endeavors were chosen as judges. They were: Father Gabriel Zeis, president, St. Francis University and a United High School Green Advisory board member; Dr. Janet Blood, professor of fashion/fashion merchandising at Indiana University of Pennsylvania; Beth Bollinger, professor of environmental education at St. Vincent College and coordinator of the Winnie Palmer Nature Reserve there; and Renee Cambruzzi of Pittsburgh’s Phipps Conservatory.

Cambruzzi also acts as high school programs coordinator and director of the Fairchild Challenge, an environmental outreach program in which United School District is involved.

The judges based their decisions on a variety of factors, including creativity, use of materials, wearability and difficulty. The original plan was to announce the winners at the end of the show Friday, but the judges were so impressed and overwhelmed by the entries, they requested more time to decide. The announcement of winners was held off until Monday.

“I was so impressed by the creativity and use of recyclable materials,” Cambruzzi said. “Things like twine, milk cartons — things I didn’t think they would use.”

“It was amazing,” Bollinger said of the show, “so many different designs you would have never thought of, but things that were useful.”

The winning outfits will be sent to Harrisburg, where the Department of Education will display the ensembles in its building for the entire month of April.

Taking the grand prize of $200 were the brother and sister team of Devon and Kristen Walker. Devon, a sixth-grader, and Kristen, a fifth-grader, put their heads together to come up with materials they could find around the house.

“We tried to think of old stuff we could get to easily,” Devon said.

“We were going to use an old tablecloth (as a shirt), but then we decided to use an old deck of cards to make a vest instead,” Kristen said.

They then cut and cleaned a pile of aluminum cans they had lying around the house, folding the sharp edges under and stringing them together to create a skirt.

Adding some accessories to their ensemble, they strung together pop tabs around the cut-out bottom of a pop can. A newspaper ruffle attached to an old headband created a nice headpiece, but one of the crowning achievements of the outfit were the shoes.

Newspapers, folded accordion-style, were attached to an old pair of rubber flip-flops. Then, fitting cut aluminum cans together, they glued them to bottoms to act as makeshift “heels” for the shoes. Though they proved hard to walk in, according to Kristen, the effect was worth it.

With help from parents Joe and Shannon Walker, the pair finished the project in under five days.

They plan to split their winnings evenly. Though Kristen hasn’t yet decided what she’ll do with her half, Devon hopes to put his share toward a pair of new cowboy boots.

The Walker said they learned a lot about recycling during their project. “You can make clothing out of almost anything,” Devon said.

A team of seventh-graders — Claire Thompson, Haley Torok, Mattie Weaver and Emili Spaid — took the top prize in the informal category for their age group.

They fashioned an entire outfit out of recycled cardboard milk cartons from the cafeteria. With help from teacher Laurie Deem, they cleaned the cartons then tied them together with strips torn from plastic bags.

Seventh-graders Kristen Mack, Lyda Bartlebaugh and Cady Griffith won the school spirit prize in grades 7-8 with garbage-bag garb adorned with tissue paper in United’s blue and white colors. A large “Lions” paw print, for the school mascot, was featured on the back.

Gaige Gleaton and Frank Berkavich, both in seventh grade, were tops in the accessories competition for their age group. Using colored paper and newspaper, they shaped a shirt, adorning the front with a vintage cutout from an old United Lions sweatshirt. The sleeves were taken off the sweatshirt and attached to the paper shirt with masking tape. Shoes were created from old cereal boxes and tied together with leftover Christmas tree tinsel.

Eighth-grader Santana Meyers, with help from ninth-graders Molly Young and Brandon Baird, won the formal category for grades 7-8. The dress they made was composed of recycled newspaper with a bodice fabricated from cereal boxes and tied together in the back with old license plates.

Danielle Evans, a junior, and her team — juniors Wade Evans, Jenn Silvis, and senior Corri McGinnis — took a more organic approach to their project, which netted them the top prize in their age group in the informal category.

Coming up with an exotic Hawaiian theme, they “grew” a grass skirt from burlap sacks filled with newspaper and grass seed. The tufts of grass blossomed through the tiny holes in the burlap, creating a living, green grass skirt.

The rest of the outfit was contrived of binder twine braided together to create a weaved and fringed top, earrings with paperclip fasteners, and a necklace and anklet. Shoes were cut out of cardboard, with recycled rubber soles and braided string.

The competition was often close, according to Penrose, with one point frequently standing between first and second places.

That was the case with Leah Skedel, a ninth-grader, who took her inspiration from the fairy-tale ballgowns popular today, and missed winning the formal category in her age group by one point. The prize instead went to Katie Mehalik’s CD dress.

Working alone, Skedel searched online for design ideas and came across the delineation for her dress.

The bodice she constructed of leftover wrapping paper, while the massive bell-shaped skirt consisted of scrunched-up newspaper arranged into a three-foot train in the back. The dress itself was adorned with other recyclable materials — pop tabs replaced sequins, and wrapping paper scraps and two-liter soda labels acted as ruffles.

The dress was held together by duct tape.

The entire ensemble only took Skedel less than two hours to put together.

What she took away from the project was, “It’s just as easy to recycle stuff as it is to throw it away,” Skedel said.

Model Jamie Montgomery and friend Katie Robson, both juniors, made their dress from scraps cut from gardening magazines and catalogs.

“We found all of the magazines, and they had all of these pretty flowers,” Montgomery said. They thought cuttings from the magazines would be the perfect “green”-themed “fabric” for their formal dress design.

“Katie came up with the idea,” Montgomery said.

Using paper-machŽ, they fabricated the clippings into the shape of a form-fitting, calf-length dress, a process that took them a few hours over two days.

Also competing in the high school formal category was Bill Boring, a senior.

His prom-ready garb was highlighted by a vest made of cut-up and flattened Mountain Dew cans. “We had some cans lying around at home and I thought it would be cool to make a vest,” he said.

For pants, he used old feed sacks that he sewed together. His shoes, made of recycled car tires, he obtained with help from his woodshop teacher, Charlie Kerekes. The ensemble was completed with a tie made from scrap cardboard taken from the school’s recycling bins, and a cummerbund fashioned from a piece of old carpet that was replaced in the school’s auditorium.

Fifth-grader Caleb Walls modeled in the school spirit category with garb he fashioned with his brothers, Levi and Noah Walls, and teammates Josh Roof and Matthew Dill, all in fifth grade.

Within two weeks, the team had assembled a Lions-themed get-up, with a T-shirt adorned with a lion photo, plastic garbage bag pants — complete with a lion paw print on the back pocket — a hat made of a recycled plastic container, cardboard shoes, and the finishing touch, a necklace constructed of string threaded through bottlecaps.

“It was hard to drill through the bottlecaps,” Roof acknowledged.

Opening the show on Friday, Steinly informed the audience that he has grown tired of hearing how students today are indifferent, that “‘They’re not the same as they were 20 years ago, that they can’t make a difference.’” he said. “I haven’t seen more excited kids than the ones here at United,” inspired by the fashion show.

Master of ceremonies Marissa Rigatti, a senior, amused the crowd with a constant stream of commentary while herself adorned in cardboard suspenders bearing the names of the event sponsors.

During a pause in the walkway show, the audience was entertained by a group of four students, dubbing themselves the “Environmental Sirens.” They performed a version of Paramore’s “Decode,” but with altered words reflecting their concern for the environment.

The event was a hit with both students and faculty alike, with many “oohs and aahs” from the audience as the students took to the catwalk.

“It was really cool to see some of the creativity that these guys put into their projects,” Penrose said.

“I didn’t know so many people would do this, but our school really came together,” Robson remarked.

“There were so many great ideas,” Montgomery added.The show turned out so well, in fact, that Steinly said United is planning an even bigger event for next year, hoping to include schools from around the county and hold the show on a Saturday. “We want to show other schools what can be done, how they can teach kids about recycling, energy conservation and natural resource conservation,” he said. “You are truly going to make a difference here in Pennsylvania,” Zeis told the United students. “Schools around the world are going to be looking at what you’re doing. You’re setting the stage. You’re setting an example.

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In 2000, he left to found his own studio, Double Fine Productions in San Francisco. Its first game, 2005’s Psychonauts (originally for Xbox, then for PS2 and PC; now available for download on Xbox Live), was critically praised as well. His next project, Brütal Legend, is scheduled for release this fall for Xbox 360 and PS3.

Last week, Schafer talked with USA TODAY before unveiling the game to journalists covering the Game Developers Conference.

Q: Some details of the game have been announced, but can you fill us in on the story?
A: Brütal Legend is about a roadie for a heavy metal band who gets pulled back in time to a barbaric world where demons are enslaving humanity, and it’s actually his roadie skills that he has to use to save the day. He meets a band of humans who are trying to put together a rebellion against the demons. They are really good leaders. They are very charismatic. They are really inspiring. But they can’t get the practical details together of making the swords and doing all the things they need to do to have an army. And Eddie says, “You guys are like rock stars. You need someone to actually figure out the practical details, build you a tour bus and take it on a tour of destruction across the land.”

Q: Where does an idea for a game like this come from?
A: I always think the recipe for success for a game or any sort of a fantasy experience is to think of a character that hasn’t really been explored before, who is unique and has special abilities that not everybody has, and plop them into whatever is the most interesting situation to plop them into. Roadies are these really interesting characters, I think, because they live a rock ‘n’ roll lifestyle (but) from the grunt’s point of view. They are the guy who has to haul the amp on stage and haul it off. Plug it in, clean it all off, and they don’t get any of the credit, really.

I always thought that was a great combination of superpowers. He can fix anything with duct tape. He can tune a guitar in two seconds flat. He can make anything, fix anything, but also that kind of humility and that secret fantasy life that I like to think about him having, like, “Someday, I’d like to prove I am a hero.” And that’s what he gets to do in this game. He gets to go back to a world where he does get to prove that, you know, I really am good at a battle axe.

Q: As a fan of heavy metal, you are getting some of your favorites involved with the game, right?
A: The hard part is confirming exact bands, but I can say my favorite bands growing up have always been some of the great classic acts like Judas Priest, Iron Maiden, and Ozzy Osbourne and Black Sabbath. Some of those, and bands like that I’ve had the chance to meet through this game. It’s really just a great excuse to meet all my idols and bring them together. Lemmy (Kilmister) from Motorhead and Rob Halford from Judas Priest (are involved). There’s going to be more. You meet those guys and they are just natural-born performers. Heavy metal is especially conducive to character creation. If you go to Iron Maiden shows, there’s just a lot of theatrics. They are just natural behind-the-mic actors.

Q: How did Jack Black get involved? Did you create this game with him in mind?
A: When we started off we were like, “Let’s make a character that is as cool as Jack Black.” He’ll look a little bit like him and act a little bit like him, and when it came time to cast him, we thought, “Do we get a Jack Black imitator? What if we actually got Jack Black? No, there’s no way we could actually. But maybe, just maybe, someone could set that up with connections.” We managed to get a meeting, just me and him. I brought a big binder of concept art and I was like, “This is my one chance. My one shot. He’s going to think I’m a dork, but going to do it.” We got the meeting, it turns out, because he had played Psychonauts, our previous game, and he had liked it. He had played all the way though. He’s a real gamer. I’ve seen him online on the Xbox playing late at night. He plays games all the way to the end. He’s not faking it, which is great. He liked the game and said, “I want to do it.”

Q: For fans of your previous games who may not like heavy metal, what can you tell them to get them on board?
A: It’s exactly like the old games in that we are just as committed to making a really unique world and taking a unique character and putting him in that situation, and telling a story and have it be funny and full of detail. We pride ourselves on putting a lot of love and attention into the game. Every little detail, every interaction, has some reward for the player, and I think that is important. Adventure games are all about details — if you happen to take this one object and use it with this other object, in a really weird place, at a weird time. If you happen to write a really funny dialogue line for that, even if it didn’t solve the puzzle, people will appreciate that. We still live by that.

Monkey Island wasn’t for people who just love pirates, and Full Throttle was not just for bikers. It’s that we use the lore of pirates and the lore of bikers to create a world that is unique. There is a lot of fantasy worlds out there that are just straight fantasy, what you might call elves in tights, high fantasy. And I think that is great for people who like that. But I feel like there is no reason there can’t be another fantasy world.

Sophomore David Grano was first to answer, but he knew his answer spoke for many in the room.

“Twilight,” he said succinctly.

That was his response to a request from a reporter who asked the room full of students: “What’s cool in school?”

The question was posed to students recently at Albert Lea High School. If anyone doubts the power of a good book, even on this generation allegedly hell bent against reading, they should talk to Grano.

“If you suck, you’re really cool, actually,” said Grano, as he grinned at his play on words and his classmates’ delayed reactions to it.

As expected, the answers varied — including study parties and “little kiddie” school folders — but the runaway winner for most popular response was the teenage vampire books series by Stephanie Meyer.

Granted, the fact the movie version of the first book, “Twilight,” recently arrived in theaters adds to its cool factor among teens.

“Many kids have attended the movie more than once,” said junior Ally Herbst.

But Grano said most of the people going to the movie have already read the book. In fact, sophomore Amy Vandenheuvel said some parts of the movie will only make sense if you’ve read the book, giving book readers the feel they are part of a secret society.

“Edward Cullen (main character) is so hot, and it is such a good love story,” said junior Morgan Stadheim.

Technology was a force in this non-scientific survey: Facebook, Myspace, iPods, plus cell phones and text messaging.

“I gotta have the latest thing,” said freshman Andrew Esse, who has a Rocker cell phone, but wishes he had the LG Rhythm.

Technology truly has enhanced — or depreciated — communication, depending on one’s viewpoint. Herbst pointed to Facebook as her source for information, and Stadheim said if information shows up on Facebook it must be true.

“It’s where people get a lot of their information about what’s going on,” Herbst said. “It’s sweet to creep new photos.”

Junior Katelyn Anderson added “Yeah, you have to ’creep the ’book,” referring to looking at other people’s photos on Facebook.

Freshman Graham Christopherson said iPods are by far the best MP3 players, and sophomore Josh Piper likes the cool new features Apple consistently releasing on its newer iPods, including touch screen and games.

But it’s not all technology all the time. Junior Derek DeVries of the DeVries’ family chosen to participate in “Extreme Makeover: Home Edition,” this fall, with the help of junior Meghan Sipple, have made duct tape a cool tool.

“You can make stuff and fix stuff,” said freshman Brady Falk of duct tape, “and there are all different colors.”

Sophomore Kyle Larsen said he couldn’t classify it as cool, but found it unique and interesting to see Albert Lea in the national spotlight twice in one week.

“We’re on TV for the worst and best of human nature,” said Larsen, referring to the case of alleged elder abuse at the Good Samaritan Society last spring and the taping of an episode of “Extreme Makeover: Home Edition” in Hayward Township in October.

Junior Stephanie Ferguson said students are getting together for what she called “study parties.”

“It’s not just getting nagged by your teachers,” Ferguson said. “You get to learn the material with your friends.”

Check this out: Ferguson is not referring to some new Web site, www.studyparties.com (doesn’t exist), or even referring to students helping each other study via Instant Messaging. Study parties are actually human teenagers sitting in the presence of other teens, helping each other study for upcoming tests.

Of course, such a study party requires leaving one’s home and possibly even human-to-human interaction, something studies show is not as cool as it used to be. But with that in mind, somewhere behind the overwhelming coolness of teenage vampires books and movies, but somewhere safely ahead of Chuck Norris jokes, is another out-and-about activity: Attending sporting events.

Numerous people interviewed pointed to the increased school-age crowds at sporting events this school year.

“It’s a way to be involved in your school and show support,” said sophomore Danielle Howe.

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