A lot of progress has been made!

So today was a bit of a hassle, getting a lot of work done but regretting some decisions I made earlier on and because the deadline is looming I cannot restart making idioms.

First of all I unscrewed the box of my 'chip of the old block'. The block was perfect but not completely dry on the front side. I could not take out the styrofoam without ruining some of the cement around the letters, so I thought I would give it a day to dry and finish it tomorrow.

As you can see from above its still wet so I thought it would be too risky to remove the styrofoam now.

Secondly I started working on my nails. It was time to use the big boy nails (the ones with larger heads). They were nailed in so only 2cm of the nail would stick out which I thought was about right. Unfortunately I couldn't finish it as I ran out of nails, so on the way home from the studio I bought some more to finish tomorrow.

Close up of the nails, trying to nail them all the same height.

As you can see I've filled in the slots between the letters and from a birds eye view of it being on the table you cannot see any gaps which is exactly what I wanted. Looking back now though I have some regrets,  wish I had nailed the first smaller layer of nails with the middle ones nailed in and the rest slowly rising to meet this new layer of nails. Kind of like a map you see in a geography textbook...

It may be to late to change, I will see how much time I have at the end to maybe re do the piece as I know exactly how to do it and the short cuts to take.

Now for the 'good money for rope' ordeal. Its been very hard and stressful with the time I have left to work out how I'm going to produce and present this piece. Today I went to Arthur Beale, The Chandlers in Tottenham Court Road. They had a massive supply of rope which wasn't to expensive. I found a perfect size rope (12mm I think) with the perfect colour. Bought it, took it home and measured it out, I DIDN'T BUY ENOUGH ROPE! pretty stupid I know so I will have to make another trip on the way home tomorrow, very annoying.  The rope I had was still okay though for the words, I just needed a bit extra for certain parts. For the letters to keep its form I had to sew the rope together, and it would then always be the way I wanted it to be. Very smart. Whether I sew the rope onto the large rope behind it...I'm not sure. We'll see.

All joined up!

Close up of the sewing. I did it on the back of the rope so you cannot see it when displayed.