This piece is a 3/4" MDO panel 22 x 28 done with paint and vinyl. The logo is a separate, sandcarved piece attached to the background. Designed by Rick Kovell of Top Brush Signs, Inc. of Toledo, Ohio and sent in by David Tulk.
You may know us as "TopBrush" or "Brushy" on the #letterhead IRC
Chat Channel.
TheY2K Barrel
Dave Draper The idea for the TY2KB project , which stands for "Traveling Year 2000 Barrel," hatched from a mini Letterhead meet fund raiser I attended back 1998. One of the letterheads brought a small oil barrel to that meet which was full of signatures and sign art. At the time I thought to myself what a wonderful conversation piece to have setting around my home with flowers growing out of it, or made into a stool by adding a seat to the top. I wanted one! So, I set out to make my own barrel of signatures. The next week I was lettering a huge track hoe digger for a local excavation company. When I gathered up my mess and took it to their dumpster, there was this cute little blue oil barrel crying out to me to be saved. I dug it out, cleaned it up and put in my garage. Another year passed. Then one sunny spring day, Steve Shortreed and his lovely wife Barb were knocking on my door. What a surprise, the owner of the Letterhead Web Site is at my home! While we sat and watched the paint peeling off my porch, I showed him the barrel, and told him it would be neat if we could get all the regulars who support the Letterhead Web Site to sign it! ( I’m sure he gave me one of those looks to see if I was mentally balanced ) There was so much uncertainty back in 1999 about our computers crashing when the big ball in Times Square came down to start off the new year 2000. Everyone was talking about Y2K this and that. Bingo! Light bulbs went off in my brain! We’ll call it the TY2KB! There was huge support from the regulars at the Letterhead Web Site. The barrel was destined to travel from shop to shop by mail or taken directly from one shop to another. That took a lot of organization. TY2KB made a tour of the Midwest, on to Oklahoma, down to the glorious South, then decided into retire in sunny Florida! It collected so much art and so many signatures, it just couldn’t contain them all. Even the inside of the barrel was filled with odd objects from its travels, which took 1 year. It was fun watching its progress from shop to shop. We all had a good time and made some new friends in far away places. Now it will find its way to a good home and maybe someday it will rest in a museum, a tribute to the first of a kind, an Internet / shop to shop Letterhead Meet. This project could have never been successful with out the cooperation of all involved and especially the Letterhead Web Site Bull Board. We thank you all, Dave &
Cindy Draper
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Rod Tickle from Loxton, South Australia, set in these photos of a bus project he just completed. Talk about a big airbrush job!
The coach owners contacted me to do a mural on the bus to depict the areas
scenery,produce and various attractions as this coach travels all over the country from
north to south and west to east. It just goes every where. The owners wanted to use the
bus to advertise our area which is called the "Riverland" and is in South
Australia.The Riverland is a cluster of small towns most of which are on the River
Murray.The mural features life like birds, koala and kangaroo's, along with landmarks like
a paddlesteamer, a river lock, water skier, houseboat vinyards orchards and many other
things thrown in. The owners basically said we want a mural showing bla bla bla and the
rest was left totally up to us. 
My worker Darren and I did everythig from concept right through to completion.The bus was mainly airbrushed using Paasche VL's but we did quite a bit of brush work too, along with ragging, sponging and whatever it took to get the effect we wanted. The paint we used was signwriting enamels for the art work (which actually went all the way around the bus with a map on the back showing where the riverland was) When finished, I cleared the whole bus with a few coats of two pack acrylic urethane enamel to give it a nice gloss and make it easier to keep clean. The job took us a total of 300 hours to complete.
The company is "Townsend Riverland Tours" and they are based in Renmark,
South Australia.
This beauty was sent in by Rick Sacks of Mendocino, California. Rick and his wife Megan own and operate The Sign Shop. We all know Rick on Letterhead Chat as "Rixax." Here's what Rick has to say about this project.
"We got this '29 American LaFrance after it had a fresh coat of red. We had the
original photos of this truck from the factory, and with a magifying glass attempted to
re-produce the scrolls. At that time, we did not know that there is a standard LaFrance
corner scroll. Anyway, we used quick size, gilded with 23k leaf, cleared with centari,
mixed asphaltum into Centari for the glaze, followed with the outlining and stripes. This
was kind of a mini-Letterhead party, since I called a couple of friends to help and work
till the wee hours each night. Gary Rhoades, Jim Moser, my wife Megan and I put in around
100 hours on this truck. It sure looks sweet filled with kids at parades. "
