Cool and Collected - collecting pop culture memories and memorabilia
A general discussion of collecting cool things, such as vintage and modern toys, comic books, ephemera.
I do love a good “toy” movie, and this one is the best one I’ve seen in a long time. The quasi-stop motion technique really works well and the modeling and photography are superb. This could have easily ended up like a bad Robot Chicken sequence, but the effective use of still photos and minimal [...]
The yard sales were pretty good this weekend. We hit one neighborhood sale and two church sales, which I have started to really appreciate. The church sales are basically small flea markets, where a bunch of people get together in a parking lot to sell their items along with a bunch of stuff that was [...]
There were plenty of yard sales this weekend, but I wasn’t able to hit them until after 11:00AM again, so the pickings were already pretty well picked by the time I got there. I found a few fun items, including an E.T. doll and a Prince Adam He-Man action figure. The surprise of the day [...]
I am blessed with two wonderful sons who are just getting into superheroes and action figures. After watching the Avengers cartoon and seeing all the hype for the upcoming movie, my youngest started carrying around an Iron Man action figure (which just warmed dear old dad’s heart). The other day he told me that Iron [...]
The last two posts showed how I made the forest diorama, and now it’s time to see it in action… G.I. Joe action figures fit right into the landscape. By adding a few sticks to the scene, the photo has more depth. A red light bulb was used to simulate the brake lights of the [...]
In the first part of this series, I showed you how to make the diorama base out of styrofoam insulation board, glue and paint. The fun continues here with the addition of the trees… Insulation foam is a great material for dioramas because it is so easy to work with. After doing a little yard [...]
Here I go again… I had some insulation foam laying around, and Ithought I could put it to good use. The base is 2″ thick foam board cut to a 2′ square. Liquid Nails was used to glue down pieces of pink 1″ foam board, to make the contours of a hill. Once the glue [...]
Friend of the site, Ashley Raburn of Life with Fandom, and his pal, Luke, have a new video series in the works called “Collecting Nostalgia,” where they highlight collectors like you and me. Check out the first video… I’m really excited about this endeavor and think that Ashley and Luke have done a great job. The [...]
Firefly–everyone’s favorite saboteur… For this photo, I used a clear plastic ceiling tiles for the backdrop, and had some blue Christmas lights behind it, which cast a purplish tone on the figure. I held an LED flashlight directly above the figure to make it look like he’s standing beneath a spotlight. Here I go using [...]
I’m about ready to just call this G.I. Joe week on Cool & Collected, and it’s only Tuesday. I have just been having too much fun… Just by moving the light sources around slightly, I got some dramatically different results. I thought it might be fun to throw a vehicle into the scene, and this [...]
