Tools of the Trade
Day Twenty-Nine: Project Tray
A few years ago, I spent each day in January writing about a different tool I use in my maskmaking. As I am currently redesigning my entire website in the new year, I thought it might be nice to revisit this project. Each day in January 2021, I’ll share a different item that I use in my studio. I hope some of these can help other people who are interested in making wrestling masks.
I saw @kazu_konosu using a shallow tray to organize his wrestling mask projects, and I thought it was such an excellent idea, I started doing it myself. Keeping your plate pieces, mask parts, and notes in a tray makes it easy to carry between your cutting area and your sewing area, makes it more difficult to misplace something, and makes it easy to store away between sewing sessions. My tray is an old wooden “in” tray that used to belong to my boss at my old job. He passed away (after still working in the office and teaching until age 96!) and I think he’d like knowing that it’s still proving to be useful. I try and thank him every time I use it.
If you work on multiple projects at a time, get multiple trays that stack, and you can organize and prioritize. Another option is project boxes. They make these neat clipboards that are also latch boxes. There are fancy metal ones for construction sites, but I have a few I bought that are designed for kids, and are made of bright plastic. (These aren’t the ones I have, but it seems like a good deal. I really like the clear ones too, but they’re a couple of dollars more.)