Vivid Bike Light Spectacular

Guess what bikeling friends...?  Its time for the Vivid Festival again in Sydney which means we are organising our Vivid Bike Light Spectacular!  For those of you new to our Vivid ride - check out pics from our last Vivid event here: http://featherbrigade.blogspot.com.au/2011/06/vivid-night-of-lights.html

This year we are doing things a little differently.  For starters it will be a longer bike ride, starting from Sydney Uni.  We will wind along the waterfront of Glebe and Prymont before bedazzling Darling Harbour and then whizzing around Walsh Bay before heading up to the Rocks and then finding a suitable stopping point near the MCA.  There we will have a vote for "Best Decorated Bike" and "Best Decorated Person" with prizes (oooh).  After that the fun you have is up to you - check out the lights of Vivid on the festival walk (and don't forget your camera).  We will have a follow up competition on our blog for the "Most Creative Photo" from the night, so happy snapping!

Ideas for lights - think battery-powered fairy lights, glow sticks, light sticks, twirlywhirls, wheel lights, light up toys, solar powered lights.  Let your imagination take over!  Our favourite was the glow sticks taped to wheel spokes - very effective.  We found our lights at Kmart, $2 dollar shops and Ebay.

Ideas for high vis - wear your high vis in different ways, snap bands, arm bands, Tron stripes... the possiblities are endless!!   We ask that you come ready to ride on the night so we can all admire each other and then GET BIKELING!

Feel free to contact us via facebook or through the blog if you have any questions.  We look forward to seeing you there, no matter what 'type' of bikelist you are and  - SPREAD THE WORD!

FABRIC BIKE

I'll let you in on a little secret... I'm a little bit in love with the girls from The Deadly Nightshades.

Why? Well, their Toronto based (Torontoan? Torontoist? Torontonian? I dunno... someone let me know what the correct term for a Toronto resident is...) bike gang has to be one of the coolest out there. The girls are artsy and craftsy and have a whole bunch of bike love. Plus their gang colour just happens to be my favourite colour, seafoam green! Ummm, are long distance gang memberships available?? 'Cause I want to join!

Their film FABRIC BIKE recently premiered at the New York Bicycle Film Festival, and I'm so excited that it's showing as part of the Urban Bike Shorts programme at our very own Sydney BFF. I can't wait to see the full thing, but until then here's the trailer...

FABRIC BIKE Trailer from The Deadly Nightshades on Vimeo.

There is sooo much happening in the next few weeks, bike and BFF related. It's going to be a busy month, can't wait!

j.xoxo

Art Attack!

How cool was that show? So many bright 90's colours, that crazy theme song, the set made of giant pens and pallets, and way too many uses for craft glue and glitter. Not to mention the host Neil Buchanan's hair and printed bright red jumper (so hot right now... this might have been my first crush)

Feeling inspired by various crafty things I thought I would channel my inner Martha Stewart and present my own craft segment:

Art Attack! with Feather Brigade! (!!!)

For this Saturday's segment we are going to be decorating a picnic basket. You will need:

*Picnic Basket- we sourced (all of) ours from Vinnies (find one that's a good size for your back rack)
*Buttons- K-star had jars and jars of buttons from ebay just waiting for a ridiculous project like this
*Hot glue gun, and lots of glue sticks
*A rainy/boring afternoon or a desperate need to procrastinate
*A smug sense of your own crafty potential
*Not necessary, but we did it, paint for a base coat

Step One: Glue

Step Two: Select a button (be sure to make the most of your ocd tendencies and subconsciously have the buttons in some bizarre hierarchy based on colour, size, and shape that makes sense only to yourself)

Third step: Combine the two, carefully (Hot glue burns!)

Fourth step: Repeat step One thru Three, a few hundred times. Soon enough you'll have your own button-bedazzled picnic basket!

(smug)

Another Optional step would be to get you housemate, K-star, to use her Polaroid to document the project and then work that into the art work. See example below. A Polaroid adorns the corner, forever immortalizing the blood, sweat, tears, and corniness that went into creating such an 'amazing' artwork.

Anyway, this is the finished product. Everyone gasp and sigh in amazement!

Now find your own basket and get gluing!

j.xoxo

Bike Nomad

Artist Kevin Cyr's Camper-Bike

Sometimes the urge to drop everything and explore the desert on some sort of "vision quest" in a gypsy-bike-caravan is almost overwhelming. But then I think I would miss friends and family, and I remember that I like things like food, and even $5 treasures found at markets cost $5...

So I sigh, and make sure my alarm is set to wake me up for work tomorrow, and keep my secret wishes safe until I can live them out.

j.xoxo

Baskets

Two new bikes were added to the herd at our place this week. In anticipation of this joyous event, and to keep us occupied while the bikes were being put together, we decorated our baskets so they'd be ready to go when we picked up our new wheels.

There's something really wholesome about seeing a bike with a nice basket attached, and I don't necessarily mean a fancy basket. Just something sturdy, a good size, something that elevates the simple bike into the perfect vehicle for local trips to the shops, to the park, to the uni; something that's just the right size for a traditional, crusty, french baguette (ho ho hoh! insert french laugh/exclamation here)

I like how, with a little embellishment, the basket becomes an extension of the cyclist's style, and isn't stylish cycling what we're all about? Bike baskets are a canvas waiting for the proverbial glue gun and diamontes of inspiration to heat up strike! I'd like to encourage everyone to start expressing their personal style through their bike baskets. Take these two for example, What is being expressed?

Well... for starters the owners of these baskets clearly have a little too much spare time on their hands (and are a few screws short). Apart from that, you get a very obvious sense of two different styles. It's a representation of the cyclist's love of objects, charms, knick-knacks. Flowers can be pulled off, ribbon can be un-strung and in a month these baskets will probably look nothing like they do now... it's an evolving statement of personal style...

For now though, I simply added flowers, flowers, and more flowers to my little back-rack basket- like a frothy, pink, plastic garden- too pretty and too over the top, love it.

K got really creative, working with her purple and red colour scheme... It started with a little witch, the mascot sitting on the front and now includes ribbons, gems, crocheting, we have a basket liner in the works too!

S has a great sized back-rack basket. We helped make it a real man's basket the only way we knew how...

Hot. I want those pants (except not).

Plus, a bugle horn, fantastic!

More about new bikes soon...

j.xoxo

Eventually...

Do-it-Yourself Bikes are cool with a capital "K". There can never be enough flowers or bells or tassels or feathers.

This is what we should all be aiming for:

(Sorry, I can't remember where I found this picture, if I've stolen it from you, let me know xo.)

Don't even pretend like you're all not in awe...

j.xoxo

To Helmet or not to Helmet --or-- Helmet Decoration 101

Helmets don't get me excited. Bikes (old fashioned, basket-ed bikes) are great, but helmets, blah, they just don't do it for me. While saving furiously for my bike, the only thing that sustained me through the months of rice and sauce, was the idealistic image i had in my head of riding through the park, floral dress and sandals on, hair blowing in the warm spring breeze...

Not so much a "Beautiful Godzilla" mind you (coined by Bike Snob NYC), I'd like to aspire more to a Bike Hippie, think Uschi Obermaier on a granny bike...

Think Uschi, but without the almost constant nudity

So helmets don't really fit into my 'dream'... I'm not a 'bike commuter' (as much as I actually really like the idea of biking to work, cross-Sydney bike riding is a bit beyond me, for now), I'm not a lycra clad sports biker, I don't own a track bike, and I avoid traffic when I can. Heading down to the park and up to the local shops has been fine, I use lots of back road and alleys and actual bike paths.

Unfortunately soon I may have to give into the 'Man' and buy a helmet. I'd like to ride my bike a little further afield, and helmets are, you know, 'Law'... The question is, what helmet would we get? Not expensive, but something a little interesting...

This conundrum is what we've been mulling over the past few weeks. Our answer is Helmet Decorating. Take any old ugly cheap helmet and go nuts... tacky crazy crafty nuts!

These are our top ideas, so far, in no particular order:


"The Classic" or "Hair Helmet" (seen on Flight of the Conchords):

Brett's Hair Helmet explains the concept in it's full glory I think

I think the real beauty of the "Hair Helmet" is its pure awkwardness. Just think of all the double takes as you whizz by with a grossly distorted head...

The "Bedazzler"

"Bedazzler" paraphernalia

Obviously I don't think I could use an actual bedazzler on a helmet (I'd give it a 'red hot go' but I'd break my Bedazzler gun), but give me a bag of diamontes and sequins and a hot glue gun and i could make a helmet a mirror-ball would be ashamed of...

"The Showgirl"

Lots of feathers, the more the better... you get it...

Not the most aerodynamic of our ideas, but any feather inspired helmet is obviously going to get our approval, and when were we ever interested in aerodynamics? A variation on this theme that is equally excellent: "The Indian Chief".

Others on our shortlist are the turban, fairly self explanatory. Mini hats (like doll's hats) glued together to create a giant hat, a mutant hat-helmet. Lace and fascinator inspired designs, spring racing carnival helmets. Also one i haven't thought of a name for yet, but it involves lots of sparklers in a configuration a lot like that creepy guy from that horror film... ('Pinhead', look it up, then come back to this page... eww gross right? But now imagine sparklers, and light them... awesome!)

Now a pic from today. Glorious sunny sunday, perfect for a picnic

j.xoxo