Please meet 3G, the Ghost Gig Globe. And yes, it is also a mirror ball. 40cm/ 15.7 inch diameter in its core, 60 cm/ 23.6 inch in all its spiky dimensions, 2,5 Kilos / 5.5 pound light and a unique character.

Making of Miniatures

All the miniatures are hand-made, built on wires or toothpicks, covered with rigid foam, balsa wood and/or lots of tissue paper and sealed with Mod Podge. After sanding, everything was painted – some of the signs and buildings with neon paint to make them glow under black light. Tiny beads of yellow neon paint shine as spotlights for various stages around the globe. The stages, such as all the guitars, are cut from balsa wood, and the backdrops are printed, of course. The hardest part was applying glue and waiting for it to dry, then continuing to sand or glue on more…. Nothing for an impatient character like me. I became a big hater of superglue with this project, I even developed an allergy of it, sneezing for days whenever I had to sniff the damps.

For the Papa Emeritus figures, I bought special skull beads to use as heads. Otherwise, I recycled a lot of stuff I had lying around in my junk drawer – plastic flowers, pipe cleaners, beads, pearls, Q-tips, aluminum foil, bottle caps…. All in all, it helped clean up the household a bit. By the way, nothing about this Ghost Gig Globe is to scale – not even to each other. Because that’s the way I wanted it.

Which venue is worth to be pinned?

One day after my epiphanical night, I started research by checking setlist.fm for past Ghost rituals. In fact, I copied all the Ghost concerts into an Excel sheet. 670 rituals up to that point. No way they would all fit on this globe. A 40 cm sphere looks big at first glance, but it really isn’t when you break it down to the continents and try to pin 100 tiny buildings on 10 square centimeters of Europe.

I sorted 670 rituals – by continent, by country, by city. Doubles and triples were deleted first. Iconic festivals and those rituals that play a special role in Ghost history automatically made the list. Every country where a ritual ever took place got a pin – in some cases without anything being decided, as there was only one ritual in Peru, Turkey, Serbia and other countries. Some concerts which meant milestones to the clergy, were held in rather ugly buildings. That night club in Linköping, that saw two Papas changing…. does not make a remarkable pin. Same with the hall in Germany where the first abroad appearance of a Papa Emeritus took place. So I helped myself with Ghost symbolism and, of course, the clergy.

For other venues, I decided – if not for popularity or fame – the way every woman does: by design (my first car was going to be green, no matter what – you get the idea, eh?). I had to cross a lot off the list to get to about 300 miniatures before I started calculating the materials and time to make them. In the end 246 pins made it on the globe, even less than 200 marking a concert location. In my opinion, still a great accomplishment to be proud of.

What it took to make 246 pins?

A lot of time – 1240 hours over the course of 13 months – and the usage of three different Excel sheets that squeezed every possible minute out of my life to use it for the project. I didn’t meet any friends, I never went out, no one got a Christmas present from me that year. I went to work (late shifts), came home, crafted, slept, and repeated. On off days, I sat at my desk for 14 hours. Well, I had a boyfriend, a cat, and a comfortable life. Until month 7 of making 3G…. I had to pause the project for two months to find a better job and a new home. No, I didn’t make my life easier.

But there was a bright side: I was always in a happy mood when I could work on a miniature and listen to music. I had put myself in a crisis by doing this thing that was my therapy at the same time. I kept telling myself that it would be worth it, hoping that I could surprise my favorite band Ghost and Tobias Forge with it, even if I would never see the funny face of that moment. No matter how many times I doubted the purpose of what I was doing or struggled with the crafting process, I eventually recovered and kept going. In case I did not mention before, I’m stubborn.