Big Olive

An Antenna Decoration

October 2001

Explanation

I'm sure you've seen people with styrofoam balls stuck on their car antennas. I'm not sure why these became so popular in the year 2000, but they became pretty popular. I somewhat joined the fray with a small styrofoam potato that I bought at the craft store. This eventually blew off or was stolen, and I was inspired to create my masterpiece in this arena, the Big Olive.

Materials

The big olive is made from a styrofoam "goose egg", that I carved, and painted with many layers of various paints.

The Process

To carve the pimento shapes at the tips, I shoved a wide-mouth bottle into the styrofoam. It was just that easy.

The paints were left over from various other projects. The key, of course, if you're going to spraypaint styrofoam, is that the solvents in most spray paint will dissolve styrene. Bummer. The solution is to paint the strofoam first with a water-based latex primer. If you have the patience, sand the styrofoam between coats, and use some kind of filler material, so that the surface falttens out. Once the surface is totally covered, you can spray it to your heart's delight. I hand painted the pimento bits, and sealed the whole thing with clear enamel.

Once it was all done and painted, I installed it on my car antenna. It's maybe a little heavy for the way my antenna is on my car, but the way I placed it, the wind gets under the olive and actually lifts the antenna while I'm driving.