Colganology2: Phone me a scorpion

The theme for this week is upcycling rubbish into art.

A year ago I was set an interesting challenge ...

My friend, photographer Mark Page, had taken over a shop unit in town that had formerly been a phone shop. And, out the back, he found a big pile of obsolete stock items hat had been left behind. So he asked me ... could I do something with a pile of old mobile phone cases and replacement keypads? None of this stuff had any re-sale value as they were all parts for phones that no one has any more, like early model flip phones and Blackberries. But it seemed a shame to just bin it all. So Mark bagged them up - and it was a very big mail bag - and gave them to me, saying 'Do something creative with that lot!'

He knows how much I enjoy a challenge like that ...

I was immediately struck by the fact that many of the phone cases were covered in fake rhinestones that looked like scales. The many replacement keypads also reminded me of scales. So, using a few bottle caps and the neck of a bleach spray I made a tail. A dragon maybe? A crocodile? However, I soon realised that it looked more invertebrate than reptile. It was at this point that I decided to make a scorpion. I had a rummage in my junk boxes and found some pieces left over from old printer cartridges. Adding them to some Blackberry carcases, I had the start of a pair of claws.

I then used my hot wire tool to cut and shape a block of polystyrene to act as the main body for the scorpion. I attached the tail and began cladding it in phone cases - using heat to bend them into the shapes I wanted. I added lots of keypads, plus any other small junk pieces I had to hand. Usefully, most of the keypads were backed by a kind of rubber layer that made them flexible enough to wrap around curves. I then used parts of two bleach spray triggers as jaws (pardon the messy hot glue strings - they get removed later!).

Okay, so I then realised that the claws were going to be too big (one is half-finished in the photo). So, instead, I cut down the larger claw to match the smaller one. Trashbuilding means constant problem solving and occasional changes in direction. There's rarely a plan.

The arms were recycled from a charity store robot moneybox (total cost 50p). I added some plasticard panels and loads of greeblies - mostly old wires, googly eyes and pieces of phone keypad. I then attached the claws and the arms were done.

Now came the issue of legs. And a nasty surprise. I know that scorpions are arachnids - like spiders and ticks - and therefore have eight legs. But, for some reason, I'd assumed that the 'arms' were two of those legs. Not so, however (I also didn't know that a scorpion's anus is at the end of its tail by the stinger - every day is a school day!). So, I had to make eight legs instead of six. Grrr. Anyway, here's the leg assembly being built using phone parts, plastic cutlery, plastic beads, some laser cut cogs left over from another project and various pieces from my junk boxes.

Then the final elements to be added were the eyes (small nylon bearings) and the sting which, as a tribute to the scorpion's phone-related origins, I made by sculpting a model of a 1980s mobile from balsa wood. It seemed like the right thing to do.