Pinstriping by Julie Fournier

Every year I am fully committed to my work on the carousel at the Henry Ford for the entire month of March. Sometimes the weather is good enough I can start in Jan, or February, but that's rare. Most years I work through March, and into April, especially if I am asked to paint a piece of farm equipment in addition to my work on the carousel. So I never schedule anything else for March, and tell callers that I will contact them mid April, once I wrap up at the musuem. I do all my carousel work in an unheated building, so you can understand why weather play such a big role in my scheduling. In spring and summer and fall I do all my pinstriping work outside in full sunlight - the best light!- and again, weather plays a crucial role in my scheduling. I simply can't schedule a pinstripe job one or two months out, since I have no way to precict what the weather will be like. I generally look at the forecast for the week, and schedule for a sunny day, leaving the next open just in cas...

Like anyone else, there was a learning curve and I wound up with two separate blogs, oopsy. This one has a lot of subscribers, so if you'd all plase head over to my Julie Fournier's Art blog, that's the blog that I am writing and posting in these days. You don't want to miss out! Here's the direct link: https://juliekfournier.blogspot.com/ Thanks, and enjoy!

We're all thrilled to get a new car, whether it's new from a dealer, or just new to us. Once we get our new ride home, we want to really make it our own. One of the easiest ways to do that is to have it customized with paint, namely, pinstripes. That's where I come in. I listen to what my clients want, what they like, and then I creatively come up with ideas uniquely suited to them as individuals. My job is to make people happy. When they drive away, or pick up their newly painted item, I want them to enjoy it for many, many years to come! I want them to look at the customized painted artwork I did especially for them, and SMILE. Some people have a "less is more" outlook, and I like to share my view that pinstripes are like diamond stud earrings with a little black dress. Others want something bold, and I say, go bold or go home. I like to give people what THEY want, to their taste and style. Check out the variety of my work on my website, juliefournier...

Today I spent most of the day fighting with wet paint not drying on the carousel cat I've been working on. I painted an area yesterday, and today it was still wet, in spite of being left in a 90 degree room for an hour last night. The ambient temperature is about 64 1/2 degrees, and One Shot Lettering Enamel doesn't like to dry if it's under 65. Which means...major frustration. I tried anyway today to get some work done, but when I put black next to pale blue they feathered together at the edge, no good. You just can't let wet paint touch a different wet color - they run almost every time. Nothing I can do but wait, only I need to get this job done because another is in queue, and I doubt they'll be ok with why I have to make them wait (it's a background wall for the Gene Winfield exhibit for Autorama, not a job that can be put on hold, really, since the shows are coming up soon). No pressure or anything, noooo. Gah! Both jobs were scheduled for me to do in...

I've sure been keeping busy, yay! Even before I finished the tender tank at The Henry Ford Museum at Greenfield Village in Dearborn, MI, they asked if I'd be interested in restoring their carousel animals. They said that I'd be asked to restore about two per year, that it was an ongoing job. The first one I got to restore was a zebra. The museum dropped it off at B&B Collision in Royal Oak for me, where I could sand it and paint it and not have to worry about anything. How nice! I love B&B Collision, they are SO good to me! I spent a day sanding off the old chipped and cracked paint, then I started repainting the white stripes. I used a paintbrush to get the blending on the eyes, ears, nose, tail and hooves. Then on the fourth day I did the black stripes. For some reason the black didnt want to lay down cleanly next to the white, even though I'd wiped it with wax and grease remover. I spent a fifth day with a thin striping brush going over the black and white...

Where to start? Winters have usually been my rest period since I usually don't get a lot of work then. There aren't any art fairs, or car shows, not a lot of weddings, it's just basically an historically slow period for me. Not this winter! I was asked to do some restoration lettering and striping at The Henry Ford Museum at Greenfield Village in Dearborn Michigan on a tender tank that used to be owned by Henry Ford. What's a tender tank you ask? I didn't know what one was, either, until it was explained to me. It's the train car right behind the locomotive that holds water. In this case, 18,000 gallons of water. Apparently Henry Ford used to like to drive a real, full sized train around for fun. Now it's at the museum and after ten years of restoration work, it was ready to have the finishing touches put on it. I was lucky enough to have been in the right place at the right time, as well as having the necessary skills, to be asked to do this incredible job:...

Lots of shows this month: Billetproof, Sins of Steel, then Rumbleville in Flint. I'm good and warm for striping all summer now! The weather was perfect at all three shows, I saw lots of old friends, and of course, made new ones. I pinstriped this tiki on the hood of a Falcon, and then it won best in it's class at Billetproof, and two weeks later it won another award at Sins of Steel! Wow! It was a beautiful car, I'm just glad I could add a few lines to such a prize! The paint was such a pretty blue, and flawless, and when I was asked to pinstripe the back of a bike at Rumbleville that was the same color, my heart fluttered a little bit remembering how fun it was to do the Falcon two weeks before. Anyway, here's a few new pictures, enjoy!

Autorama Detroit 2011 went by too fast! I always have so much fun pinstriping and meeting new people as well as catching up with old friends! I did a panel beforehand for the charity auction that's held to raise funds for charity, but my friend bought it before it even got there! I donated half of the proceeds anyway, and then I painted a second version (pictured below), which they auctioned off for over $200! yay! Lots of pinstripers from all over the US and Canada contributed their time and talent and this year's auction raised over $36,000 for Leader Dogs for the Blind. I just love doing something good and having a great time; what more could anyone ask for? I think one of my most memorable moments of the whole weekend came when John Harrow and I had to make a mad dash from the basement all the way upstairs through the thick ocean of people just in time to literally *slide* into the group picture right as it was being shot! A moment later and we would have missed it! We we...

Pinstriping and Kustom Graphics is a wonderful magazine, and they are going to do an article on me and my work. I'm really excited! I've been gathering images to send them, which hasn't been as easy as you'd think! They want pictures of the whole car, which makes sense, but I usually forget to bring my camera, and when I do, I just take pictures of my work, not the whole vehicle! One job I did was some of my best work, so I decided to drive an hour to the guy's house to take a picture of the car, since I only had a picture of the c-pillar and my work on it! He was very accomodating; I told him it was for a magazine article and he was more than happy to oblige! I've finally got enough pictures to send, now all I have to do is write a 200-300 word "bioblog" on myself and then send it. Another magazine, Throttle Gals, is supposed to be doing an article on me, too. I didn't have to do anything for that one other that paint! Lots less work for ...

Randy from B&B Collision in Royal Oak saw me up at the Woodward Dream Cruise doing some striping and liked what he saw - he called me to do some lettering on his dad's car. I forgot my camera on that one, oops. Randy called me again to do some work for a friend of his, Mike, on Mike's trans am. I did a nice red line down the side, and this cool red stripe on the c pillars. Today I got to put some silver double stripes on a 1947 Pontiac for another friend of Randy's who just had new skirts put on it. I matched the stripes to the ones that have been on the car since it was new, and I also redid the red & black lines in the logo on the hood I love that I get to touch such beautiful cars!

My friend that I met at the charity pinstriper auction at Autorama in Detroit, Chris Stapley, kindly invited me to his home in Canada where he has a yearly panel swap with other pinstripers. What a blast! Lost of us came, and striped all day. There was food, too, an incredible banquet, a feast! Pulled pork, hot dogs, corn on the cob- the best I've ever had! Chris and his wife let me sleep in their home, too, they are so kind and generous - I love Canada, let me tell you! Here's a picture of all of us, and some panels I did there. I can't wait for next year!

Just a little something I did. Restoration striping. Enjoy.

I love my job! I woke up early to get some work done before it got to hot. Today's jobs were a cooler and two signs. Enjoy the pictures! I'm sure glad I got it in early, because my thermometer is reading 100F! whew! I'm hiding in my air conditioned bedroom for a few hours where it's nice and cool and I can tweak my web page. Always working, LOL! ;)

I went to Brighton yesterday and pinstriped for eight hours! I had a lineup of bikes waiting for me, it was awesome! The guys, and gals, in the Forbidden Wheels Motorcycle Club are amazing. What a generous group of people! Here's some pictures of some of my work from the show. I hope you enjoy them.

I finished the pinstripes on the tbucket's flames, and I painted a simple design around a gas cap on a bright yellow coupe. Earlier today I striped a Ducatti helmut. Not too bad for a day's work :) I remembered my camera, too, LOL!

At the suggestion of someone I met at the Downriver Cruise I drove an hour out to Milford to try and find a bike show at someplace called "the Grind". I never did find it, but I did find a weekly bike show at 59 West off M-59 where I pinstriped a Harley Davidson- I did some lettering, Ivory with a red drop shadow that said, in a "back in the day kind of script", "Harley Davidson". The owner of the black motorcycle was very happy with my work, and I think some of the other guys there will be calling me soon. What a great bunch of guys, they were all very polite and kind. One of them is having a big biker party this Saturday and he invited me out to pinstripe at it, how cool is that! I'm very excited. This morning I'm going to the Park Collision shop here in Hazel Park, MI, to pinstripe a freshly painted car, I'm pretty eager to do it, even though it's a long line (which are really hard to do). Keeping my brush even with pressure and h...

Today I got to fondle a 1970 Mercedes Benz, ooohhhh. That is one beautiful car. I remember my dad had two 1976 Benz's; driving them is like cotton candy on a marshmallow road! I felt like I was going 10mph when I was really going 75! Wow! sigh. :) swoon. I did some basic script lettering on the back, in quotes it reads now "Klasse Ratte" I love the German feel of it, hahah Ivory letters, with a red drop shadow. The owner loved it, and the striping I did on his wood glove box. There was a channel, with black in it, so I used black, and for a second color went with a bronze to pick up the tan leather interior color. Just a nice small design in the lower right corner of the glove box door - less is MORE! It had a nice 70's feel to it, appropriate for the car. I felt like I was in a 1970's era conference room with wood paneling and a big maple conference table, heh. ok, time for me to rub my hand and relax for the rest of the day! Tomorrow I'm ...

It looked like rain this morning, but some cars were out anyway. I walked around, ooh-ing and ahh-ing at them, and passed out some cards. There's another show later today, but it poured on the way home, so I don't think there will be too many cars there, I'm going to try it again next Sunday, it's a weekly car show in Milford. I put some lines down on a Chevy, but the channel wasn't perfect to begin with (it's an old car, hello! LOL), and the guy wanted it to be perfect, so I wiped it off and walked away, making a note to never do any work for him in the future - there's no pleasing some people, and all they do is complain, it's not worth it. That, and he put his head literally right next to mine while I was working. It's a pet peeve of mine, I like my personal space, being crowded throws me off my game. That's just how I roll. I didn't do any other striping besides that today, but maybe I'll get some future call backs, some days t...

The cruise today was actually a cruise! Cars were moving! It was quite a change of pace from the slow moving traffic of the Woodward Dream Cruise! Many nice cars to look at, some parked, too. I pinstriped a friend's cooler, not much else, so around 6 I went to the Shell gas station on Woodward and picked up a small striping job, "Big Piston Racing" and a piston graphic, which made the truck owner happy! I may have lined up another job - hopefully the cadillac owner with the cool flames and unstriped scallops calls me, that will be a really fun job for me. That car is so long I'm only going to be able to put 2/3rds of it in my garage! wow! Very exciting day, I'm completely worn out, but I'll be ready for another show tomorrow, at 16 1/2 Mile Road and Van Dyke.