You may know that Chinese pop king Jay Chou is gracing us with his first ever Canadian concert appearance this Thursday evening at the ACC in Toronto. You may also know that I will be attending said concert, and that it would be my first actual concert concert, ie. mega-pop-star, legit venue, credible success, etc. Lily and I were thinking how we can make this experience extra special, and we came up with making posters. At first we wanted to design coordinating T-shirts but decided that would be too messy.

The next challenge was thinking of a theme for the posters. Should we use his song titles/lyrics to form a witty catchphrase? Draw a flattering portrait? Convey our affection/level of obsession? Welcome him to the Great White North? Use a lot of flashy stuff to gain attention? In the end we just decided to hit a dollar store and see what we could salvage.

On Saturday I met up with Lily to get a haircut in the Yonge & Finch area. After that we had lunch and stopped by a cute little salon for some minor primping. We went to Centrepoint Mall to scope out any art supply/dollar stores, and found A Buck Or Two. (The name is a lie – I saw stuff for upwards of two bucks.) After checking out the whole place, we finally decided on a Christmas-themed Jay portrait. We managed to get quite a few items and the total only came out to be $10 which was awesome. Since the public library was only open until 5pm that day, we decided to execute Project Jay at a nearby Korean café.

At first we were afraid the owners wouldn’t let us use paint/glue/glitter/etc in there, but we asked the waitress if it was okay and they were really nice about it! What’s more, they kept handing out free food to all the patrons too. And not just crappy leftover stuff either. Screw Destiny; Korean cafés are THE SHIT. In any case, Mark dropped by and he essentially became our assistant, helping us Google photo references and managing our workspace. The following is a series of photo WIPs so you can see how we made our lovelyyyyy posters :)

[View with PicLens]

 

It took us nearly 4 hours to make the first poster, so by the time we finished, we were pretty spent. After Mark left, Lily and I half-assed the second poster. We just painted on a really lame “We (heart) Jay Chou”, dabbed on some supposedly glow-in-the-dark paint, taped on the remaining snowflakes, and randomly dumped piles of glitter. That took us about an hour, but we didn’t really care because the guys would be responsible for holding this one.

It was definitely a lot of fun (other people at the café came by our table to chat with us and even take some photos!) and reminded me of good old elementary/high school art projects. I felt it was a lot more productive than sitting at home, wasting away another Saturday in front of my laptop screen, which is probably what I would’ve done. And yes, we tipped the place generously.

Now I’m just really looking forward to Thursday :D

Tags: concert, jay chou, poster