The Happy Axe Project

Do you remember the Gilmore Girls episode when Rory is helping at a house building project in order to get into Harvard University later? She needs to bring an own hammer, so Lorelai gets her one and sprays it in gold and decorates it with pink and purple feathers.

I could not stop laughing when I saw that hammer. (Picture found somewhere on the internet...)

I wanted a hammer like that!

There was also Kill Bill Vol. 1. There's the schoolgirl Gogo Yubari, who is mostly remembered for her lethal meteor hammer. However, she also carries a short sword which has cute straps dangling from its sides. I didn't find a good picture of the straps, but they are there!

The hammer as well as the sword were transformed from a potentially dangerous tool into a somewhat cute girlish thing, and I loved it.

So I decided to do something like that on my own.

See for yourself:

I bought an axe for just 11 Bucks. (It kind of made me feel strange that you can get a lethal weapon just like that. I went to the building center by car, not because I needed to, but it would have felt just too awkward to drive in a train holding a huge axe.)

I also bought some spray colours as well as a lot of decorating items. However, after I had bought everything I could not start right away, as the first step required my father's help.

I wanted a hole drilled into the axe in order to apply a strap on the axe. First I wanted to use a pompom, but later I found a cheap faux-fur foxtail, so I took that one instead.

First things first, my dad finally found the time to drill the hole, and once that was done I could start spray painting.

I had bought spray colour in matte black, shiny red and sparkling bronze. Until the last moment I was not completely sure where to apply which colour, but in the end I decided to stick with my very first draft (and to follow my friends' advice) and it ended up the way it did.

(Alternatives would have been a red grip and a black head, or a bronze grip and a black and red head..... and so on.)

It took several days until I had applied sufficiently thick layers of colour to all of the sides of the axe. I did the spraying outside, and there were strong winds these days. Several times a strong wind blew one of the newspapers I had spread out (and weighed down with loads of stones) onto an almost dry part of the axe, so that I'd have to scratch bits of paper from the axe and reapply all the colour.

It seemed to take forever...

Then the real fun started. I applied a net of golden stones that I had bought for just 1€ at kik, the textil diskont. I also bought loads of red and black feathers and glued all that stuff onto the axe with extra strong glue.

Then I covered the red pinfeather parts with red roses....

and at the other end the black pinfeather parts with a black satin ribbon, so that the glued areas would not be visible.

In the end I fixed the black foxtail (the metal part was silver when I bought it, so I spray painted it with the bronze colour as well) at my axe, and there it was.

I'm really happy with the result. I think it looks really gorgeous and funny.

And I am kind of relieved that even the people who, when hearing about my plans, looked at me as if I was a full-grown lunatic, were actually liking the finished axe and seem to understand that I am not planning to kill anyone.

Still, when I posed with the axe, I made myself a Katniss Everdeen braid to look a bit like Hunger Games style. Well, ok, technically I would have to do the Johanna Mason, after all she is the axe girl in the books, but that would mean a short brown haircut and being completely naked, oiling myself up. Gotta love Johanna :D