How to Guide: Painting My Skis

So as promised, here is a conventional blog post on something useful that someone may stumble across sometime.

Step 1:
Decide on your design.
I personally wanted a kind of doodle design, so I went for the approach of drawing with markers. If you want a more exact and neat/plain design I suggest you follow this blog on the subject: http://thezarseeffect.wordpress.com/2012/01/22/painting-a-pair-of-skis-research/
Even if you're going to do it my way I suggest reading the above anyway as that's what I used as research and it can't hurt to have more information. If you're going to do it the above way I imagine preparing your design will be the most time consuming part.

Step 2:
Prepare your skis.
This means taking everything off your lovely 2 planks. You're going to need to write down some numbers as it may be a while before you put these back together.
I'm no pro when it comes to skiing so I took down what distances my toe and heel bindings had been set for. For my bindings at least the toe and heel parts pop off the underneath part (we'll call it the "binding mount" for lack of a better name) very easily. There was a small lever you pull up and then they just slide off.
The next part is taking off the binding mount, this bit you need to be slightly more careful with as you don't want to ruin the holes that this mount screw into. So I used a torque wrench when taking off these screws to see what pressure would be required for putting them back on and took down this figure too.
Be careful as you remove the mount as there were some loose pieces that fit against the mount on mine so you don't want to lose these. I taped them to my mounts and taped the mounts together for safe keeping.
Put your mounts and bindings somewhere safe and out of the way until you're finished.

They should look something like this once the bindings are removed.

Step 3:
Sanding.
Your skis nearly definitely have their current design/colours in the actual plastic so you're not going to be able to remove this. What you need to do is cover it over. To do this we first sand down the the tops of your skis so that we have a nice rough surface that our paint will stick to.
It's hard to say exactly how much you need to sand them down, but do enough so that it has noticeably lost it's shine and they now look like an old worn pair of skis.

Notice the bottom of the skis is dull looking, that's what you want after sanding.

Step 4:
Painting.
So now you're nearly about to start feeling like you're making your skis better instead of ruining them. I actually taped around all my edges and taped over the holes in the center of the skis, but with hindsight that was probably a waste of time. The paint should come off the edge when you get it sharpened anyway. A little tiny square of tape over the holes was probably worth doing though, I didn't want paint getting into the grooves and giving me trouble putting back on the mounts. Also tape over the metal at the top to save scraping it off there after can't hurt.
I used a white matt spray paint, and did 4 or 5 very light coats until I could no longer see the design underneath.

Now they look plain and nice and you may be feeling similar to how the other blog says, they look nice and clean and you feel like you may ruin them by drawing on them. What's wrong with plain white skis?
Well nothing, but they're boring and you can make them cool so lets try. Worst comes to worst and you can just re-spray them.

Step 5:
Drawing.
This step took by far the longest for me.
First I drew pretty much everything I wanted on an A4 pad, and then after getting it exactly right I started drawing on my skis.
Here's the very start.

Simple starts

And then after many more hours drawing and finishing I was left with this.

I'd recommend you take frequent breaks as you'll probably be inhaling a fair bit of marker scents if you draw with your head as stupidly close to the surface as I do, it can make you feel a bit unwell. Also, make sure you have good music on while you do this or you'll go mad/give up.

Step 6:
Glossing
You're not finished yet though buddy. You still have what I have since discovered is the most important part to do. You need to gloss these puppies. Get yourself 2 cans of clear spray gloss from a hardware store. I only got 1 can and left glossing them too late so my work got a bit scratched while I was skiing as I only did maybe 3 or 4 light layers.
So to gloss them you're going to want to start with a VERY VERY LIGHT FIRST LAYER. I didn't do this and the gloss blurred some of my lines which really annoyed me. I thought I was spraying from moderately far back, maybe 8 inches, but seriously do a full foot and move at a pretty fast speed for your first layer. It said on the can to wait an hour to do a next layer but it should be touch dry in less than that and ready for another layer. Your second layer you can put on a little more gloss as the first layer should stop it from blurring, but still be careful as if your first layer was too thin you're going to blur the drawings. Just progressively do heavier layers. NOTE: This stuff really stinks the air (it smells nice actually). Be careful and adhere the warnings on the can. Spray it somewhere ventilated, don't inhale it and don't stick around. Leave them somewhere dry and not windy or else dirt may get blown onto them while drying.

You can see the right ski got very blurred from the gloss

You can probably tell from looking at this picture that there isn't enough gloss on the skis, but I wanted them dry for going skiing the next morning.

Hopefully you should be really finished at this stage, all you have to do is put back on your bindings, but if you're like me you'll have to do the next few steps.

Step 7:
Wrecking your skis.
This step is simple. Ski on them without sufficient gloss and they get scratched all over. I took some pictures but can't find them anywhere :/.

Step 8:
Repeat above
This step is also simple albeit a pain in the ass. Spray white paint over where got scratched off, making sure to tape lots of space around it so you don't spray stuff that is still fine. Remove the tape good and early so it doesn't harden with a big edge, I think you're basically guaranteed to get some sort of paint-edge though unless you smoothly sand off a large area but ain't nobody got time for that. Then re-draw whatever is missing. Then coat the whole thing in enough layers of gloss this time.

Hope this helps someone somewhere at some stage as otherwise I went to the effort of writing all this and taking pictures for nothing!

You look beautiful today.

Heya.

So......... How are you?

This has gotten a bit awkward has it?

Maybe we should take some drinks.....

I'm going to have to build myself up for my next post. It's going to be a really conventional boring blog-post about how I painted my skis.  I'll probably even use appropriate tags/labels for the post instead of my usual nonsense because that's how serious the post is going to be.

Anyway, I'm just checking in to let you all know I'm still alive.
I'm still unemployed and I'm recently quite poor, but you can't complain about that when you're living at home and have almost no expenses.

I started working on a little game today, if I ever finish it I'll post it here. I start so much crap and then decide bah nobody is ever going to use that.. I should really just think these things through before I start.

Here's a lovely song I heard recently, and the video is quite nice too.

And here is a really funky artist I'm slightly surprised I had never heard about before. The main guy in it apparently was the head director of Nintendo's website or something like that. Pretty impressive.

It's nuts how quickly I'm becoming quite a while unemployed...
It has its ups and downs but I'm feeling pretty good right now so I'm not going to talk about it.
Out of mind, out of mind as they don't say. They should say it though.

My love life is non-existent in case anybody is wondering. Actually, I'm not going to talk about this now either.

It's easier to blog when I'm feeling mopey, it helps to get stuff off the chest. So when I'm feeling fine I don't want to talk about stuff because it'll probably make me feel mopey. Mopey.... Mopey mopey mopey mopey. Stupid word...
Anyway...

That's why I probably seem like a big down-buzz prick on this thing.
Does anybody even still read this?

Painting my skis

"Now we are starting to get somewhere. At this point a little voice inside you will be screaming at you to just stop while you are ahead. This voice will says things like: “those skis look great right now, don’t risk it by trying to do more,” “you are bound to screw it up, just cash out right now before you ruin a perfectly good pair of skis.” You need to ignore this voice. Find that voice inside you that pushes you to greatness. The one that says “you can do anything,” “if you really wanted to you could make a pair of skis from scratch, much less paint them,” “you are meant to do amazing things.” It is this voice that you need to learn to listen to."

I'm planning on painting my skis to make them look like cool-dude-skis, so that lead me to reading this post someone made about painting skis. 

I just wanted to share that snippet with you guys. 
I think it's a great mentality and it's how I feel whenever I'm doing anything mildly creative.
You won't fuck it up, and if you do, you'll work something out to make it not matter that you fucked it up and it'll still end up better than it is right now because you are beast.

You are beast.

Beathoven

So given the lovely praise from my mate about the last song being brilliantly creepy or something, I decided to go hopefully even creepier.
It actually took me ages to record this because I kept hating how it sounds, I can't do a little girls voice. So eventually I settled with this. I just wanna add that I don't actually know where the microphone is on my laptop!

Tomorrow is my last day in this place.
Really looking forward to getting home. I'm slightly going crazy being on my own.
If I ever have to travel alone somewhere again I'll be sure to download loads of movies I want to watch before I go. It's not nice being reliant on a crappy wifi that you can't even get in your room, and always cuts out before you finish downloading a movie...... Not nice at all.

I'm comin' home

So I had a close encounter with a job but alas it was not to be.
This woman rang me about an au-pair job that sounded pretty cushy, possible to ski everyday as not needed til half4, but minding kids every evening, and 1 of the weekend days would be fully on, one fully off.
Then she texted me saying an aupair they had before had said she could come back so I'm kicked to el kerb. Which is completely understandable if it is true. Or maybe she just hated my Irish accent (I have one?) over the phone as she is English. Them brits....

So anyway, I think I'll come home on Saturday so... I'm really just not having any fun here. I've kinda accepted the fact I'm going to go home so I doubt I'd even take one even if one came up between now and this time tomorrow when I book my flights.... I'm sort of looking forward to going home actually, it's really boring on my own. Although French people here are super nice.

I've no idea what this song sounds like as I don't have earphones down here in the lobby but I hope it's the song I'm thinking of. Probably not.
The lobby actually reeks of dog shit. A dog took a shit like 8 feet from me about 10 minutes ago. The owners cleaned it up but the smell remains.

I've been making another song you'll all be happy to know. But.... It's kinda hard to record the words. It's kind of a messed up song a bit and the walls are like, paper thin so I feel really self conscious while saying them. I don't want someone calling the police or something. You'll hear it in the next post hopefully.
All in good time.

Spendin' all my cashhh

So I checked my bank balance today, it was almost exactly what I expected. So I decided to buy ski boots/poles/bag to go with my lovely skis. Unfortunately I couldn't get a ski-bag that would fit my boots though, and I want one that could so I can put them together for flying on planes. Trek of having to carry them on.

So here is a picture of my lovely new ski boots.

I didn't want to spend over 200euro on them, but when I went into the shop (skimium) the guy was like 219 is our cheapest boot (in french, I was bossing it up to that point but had to ask him for English after the next bit). I then asked was there anything cheaper and he told me I could buy any of the boots they rent out, he just has to check them on the computer for how many times they were used, could get a pair for as low as 50 euro if they were used maybe 40 times. But he also said they'd never fit my feet as well as a pair that only I had used, which is something I had heard before. So I figured what the heck I'd at least try on the new pair. And as soon as my feet slid into the bad boys I knew I had to buy them. They fit so much nicer than any boots I had ever tried on before. Even the buckles were nice, they closed tightly without having to use loads and loads of energy. I got them half a size too small because he warned me they'd get roomier after about 4 weeks use. They still fit perfectly, just extra snug for the moment. I'm dying to go skiing tomorrow now. Was talking to the guy a little bit and he said he used to do freestyle skiing, big-air/half-pipes sorta stuff til he broke his collar bone the 3rd time and he decided to chuck that. He now does telemark skiing. That shits crazy. He said it was exactly like learning to ski all over again, but it's a really free feeling when you're telemark skiing. If you've never seen it you should give it a google, it looks nuts.

I also bought ski poles, which I've combined with a picture of my skis. My skis are ugly but I didn't exactly choose them. I also rented them in a different shop to where I bought this stuff.

And here is the hole in my ski.

Hopefully it'll last at least 10 days skiing. If it lasts that long I'll have just about broken even.
Looking back now I thinks she did rip me off getting me to pay the cost price for them. They've clearly been rented out a fair bit...

I had really horrible nightmares last night. The worst was the really realistic one where I thought I had woken up, then when you actually do wake up you're still kinda freaked. I've basically had 3 nightmares in that room over the last 24 hours, from naps and sleeps. That's pretty bad going. I think it's the room has quite a few noises, there's a really weird smell of kinda like solder or something all over the building, and the 3rd little roof-suite thingy is just creepy as fuck. Why the fuck is that there.

I'm hating the fact there's no wifi in my room too. It's taking ages to download this stupid movie I want to watch, and everytime I have to leave for whatever reason it won't resume where it left off. Twice I've been maybe 10 minutes off finished and had to leave to get something and start all over again. It's at 50 minutes til it's finished now.... Sick.

Anyway, keep cool guys.
Keep it cool.

Knackorrrrred

I'm wrecked.
It was such an unbelievable trek to change apartments today.
I had to get up early to make the apartment squeaky clean so I get my deposit back, just made it to checkout in time, then I had to go lug around my heavy-ass bag, my skis, my backpack-bag which was full of crap, and my camera-bag(which is tiny and light but still inconvenient. I also had my bed linens in my hand too when I was going to checkout; it was cumbersome as fuck.
So anyway, eventually after checking out I managed to find the place where they had kindly printed my voucher for this weeks accommodation. They call them vouchers for some reason, they're just a piece of paper that says what accommodation I've paid for. I guess it is a voucher but it seems a bit weird calling it one... Anyway, I found that place and then had to go back basically all the way I had come from to get to the new accommodation agency.
It's suchhh a chore dragging a bag across snow. It's a solid 10 minute gruelling trek between these 2 places.
So then I get there and fortunately my apartment was already ready despite it only being like 11am, so that was a relief, but the downside was I had to now try find the place that rents bed linens because they didn't rent them there. I decided I'd come back for that since I wasn't up for lugging around all my crap while looking for this place, which turned out to be a great idea because it took ages to find. It did take me friggin' AGES to get to the new apartment though, it's quite out of the way. I had to walk all the way back past the place that printed my voucher again, and keep going, lift my bag up 20 steps, walk across some snow, go up another few steps, get a lift thing, go up 10 more steps, go across a bridge thing, get to this REALLY FUCKING STUPID walkway, which had a 1inch step or so every 3 feet, so carried my, I reiterate, HEAVY ASS bag up those 20 more tiny long steps, then walk across more snow, and FINALLY I get to the place. I find the lifts and stand there like a dope as a maintenance guy walks past me and opens the door for me. I didn't realise the lifts were BEHIND doors. It's so strange. They have these doors in front of the lift doors that only can be pulled open when the lift arrives. Why the fuck? I don't even know. I guess it has to be for aesthetics, which is hilarious because this place looks ugly as, well, balls. I walked into my room and felt like I was walking into a brothel. Here's the room.

Note to self, never buy thin red curtains.

I turned around after opening the windows and observed this crazy piece of room.
So apparently you can climb onto the top bunk, and then climb from there onto this hidden bed above? How utterly bizarre. I had to climb halfway up to the top bunk just to double check there were no bodies or anything up on the roof-suite (that's probably what they call these). Y'know yourself..... Peace of mind is important when you're living alone.

These are the keys they gave me. I think there's probably just about a key to every door in France here.

This bathroom is described as having a "hip bath". The most outlandish parts of me had hoped it was some uber-cool super-hip bath, but in reality this piece of shit is exactly what I was expecting. What the fuck is the point. I guess we just don't have that concept back home, and for good reason.

Anyway, I dumped my bags off and went back to look for my linens. Walked around for about half an hour before finding what i thought was the place. It closed at 12 which was just as I arrived and was to re-open at 2. So I basically wandered around for about 2 hours trying to find wifi so I could apply to jobs and couldn't get anything anywhere. Seriously. What the fuck France.

So at 2 I wander back to this place, stumble my French til she tells me in English that I'm at the wrong place and the other place is closed til 3 she thinks. So I wander around some more and get directions from some other Frenchie to the "lingerie", that's what that shit is called, which indeed is closed til 3, so I walk all the way home, and come back an hour later and finally get my stupid bed-linens.

Christ. You'd think they'd just leave that shit in your room for you. It's kinda nuts it's not free too, but whattaya gonna do.

In other news I had a really fun day yesterday. I was skiing with my friend and 2 of his mates which was nice to finally actually talk to people, and skiing with people is so much less tiring. You have to stop at every junction to clarify with everybody else where we're going. It was so much easier than just bombing it down as fast as I'm comfortable with (cos that's how I roll baby) and going back up.

Oh I forgot to mention. There's no wifi in this fucking room so I've to sit in the cold but thankfully indoor market area at the 6th floor but also it's ground floor on one side of the building to get it. And the wifi here is soooo shit..... I want to download a movie but I can't find any movie download links, and I also can't use stupid putty to access my server to move files to the public folder so I can download movies I already have.
It's SO FUCKING ANNOYING.

I think I'll have to just try sleep.... Or make another phat song.