Wednesday 21st August
Well, this project took a little while to complete.. but we finally finished on 21st August (a project that we'd started planning early June and by mid June we were ready to get to work......)
Back Story:
Ale Mary moved up from South Sea Roller Derby (in Victoria) and joined our league in January... she bouted her first bout with us in May at the Tweed bout and was fast becoming a local favourite.... she's an amazing derby player and just all round great person.... never a bad word against anyone... just perfectly perfect....
She got a job at the local paper as a reporter/editor/allrounder.... and one of her articles (Article Here)
"IT started with a pair of pink flamingos. Plastic, gaudy, and on sale at the over-sized hardware store, I couldn't resist.
I installed them as avian sentinels, on either side of my letterbox.
There were howls of disapproval from more sophisticated mates.
"I'm just proving you don't need a trailer to be trailer trash!" I shot back proudly.
"Well, I guess you do live in West Gladstone," a life-long local mused.
"Yeah, exactly... hang on, what? West Gladstone is lovely!"
Apparently not, according to this mate. He'd lived there, you see."
The "mate" in question is our Roller Derby Coach..... (and just to clarify - I also live in West Gladstone.... and aside from a PILE of housing commission houses that come with a significant number of V8's and horrid young people.... it is actually a nice area....)
Anyway, when we were about to leave for NTT (the Tournament that we went to Townsville for in June) - Dunc and I had got talking about stealing one of these pink flamingoes (as this had become the derby joke) and taking it up to townsville with us and taking photos of it at various locations without letting her know that we had it.....
Then we agreed that rather than steal from her... we were going to ADD to her already "trashy" garden and fill it with Gnomes..... but not just ANY gnomes... we planned to paint up an entire team of "Hustler" Gnomes....
It all sounds like a pile of fun.... in the beginning.....
First came the shopping to find Gnomes....
I found these fairly quickly... and there were enough different designs that we could get 15 of these and paint them up and you wouldn't notice too much how there were some that were identical.....
There was room on their backs to put player names and numbers....
Our other option was to paint up Hustler Worms.... but seriously, you don't want to say to someone
"Welcome to the Hustlers... we've given you worms!"
It really doesn't have the same ring to it.....
I painted up Ale's Gnome first... to see how it would turn out.... It was surprisingly fun to paint up.....
Something just wasn't right about the shade of purple.....
I then played around with the paint and lightened them up.....
Then it was time to paint them all purple and green and have alternating colours to make them all a little different....
Then it was time to start altering the Gnomes to individualise them....
Nick Rofilia - #115 - Nick always wears make-up... always the bright red lipstick....
(we giggled a lot when we did this... cause with the beard, this just looked like a Gnome in drag!)
This is my Gnome.... at our bout against Gold Coast in 2012 the Tweed Girls had painted a paw print on my face.... so this was enough to make my Gnome identifiable....
These are the Twins.... Dunc & Menace....
The Gnomes had no hair to paint red - so - their beards were perfect!
Highland Fling.... always in Tartan
Von-a-Soreass - Von is a Kiwi.... this worked!
(well, that was 6 of them that I had taken individual pics of as I was painting them to show Dunc)
Over the course of this - quite a few of the team had come and done some painting.... (ie. Von, Zerky and obviously Dunc.... Mom even helped me to individualise some of them.....)
After I'd finished individualising them all and putting names/numbers on them - Dunc took them home to coat them in clear spray to protect them....
The Whole Team!
And the team's bums!
Now for the placement.....
I arranged for Dunc to come and get me so that we could take these Gnomes to Ale's and positing them in her yard for her to find when she got home from work.... I have never felt like more of a criminal than I did at that time as we didn't know her neighbours - nor did anyone know that we were going to be there... what if her fiancé came home early and caught us?!?! what if SHE caught us?!?!
It was totally worth the risk!
KK (White Boots - the only skater in our leage (at the time) that had white skates)
Kittie - well.... that one explains itself....
Voodoo - Voodoo always has very dark purple and black lines painted around her eyes for our bouts... it's very much her signature look
Casstr8er - We really struggled with something to make Cass's gnome her own.... and then we triggered to the fact that she ALWAYS wore these skinz (derby hot pants) with pink lightning bolts all over them.... so I painted pink lightning bolts on the hip of her gnome....
Lil Miss Lucifer - Lil Miss's Gnome had devil horns and a devil tail around the back end....
Teddie - well, we've already seen my gnome....
Candy - if you click on this pic to enlarge it - you can see the Lollypop that I painted onto Candy's arm.... she is one of our most tattooed skaters - she's got a complete sleeve on her right arm and is obsessed with Sweets and Sweet tattoes....
Von is the other Gnome in this pic... and we've seen that one too.....
Ale - Ale always paints black stripes on her cheeks for bouts.... and up at NTT she actually had what looked like black electrical tape stuck to her face.... but it at least didn't smudge off!
Zerky is the other gnome here... she had a "Rock On" symbol painted on her hip
Fling - already shown
Nick Rofilia - already shown
This was probably our hardest player to work out an identity for..... and once we decided on this look - it seemed insane that we hadn't thought of it to start with......
This Hustler Gnome is Slay'er Swift.... she's our leagues best jammer.... and the best thing about her is that she's just like a little bandit who sneaks through the pack without anyone even noticing her.....
She's a sneaky one! I think this was ultimately my favourite Gnome of the team!
The twins were positioned at the letter box - with the Flamingoes....
Dunc proudly standing with her Gnome....
This is me with my Gnome counterpart....
Then the Facebook posts started....
We had no idea when we put this plan into action that it would be this much of a success....
Though, I'd really love my own derby gnome team... I may have to steal them back one day!
A job well done!
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