Education and demonstration – Visual art or craft – artistic adornment – or color training... – Color application
Reexamination Certificate
2002-05-20
2004-09-07
Fernstrom, Kurt (Department: 3712)
Education and demonstration
Visual art or craft, artistic adornment, or color training...
Color application
Reexamination Certificate
active
06786728
ABSTRACT:
FIELD OF THE INVENTION
The present invention relates to the general field of decorative articles and is particularly concerned with a method and a blank for providing a customizable decorative structure.
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
The decoration of human habitat for allowing humans to express themselves and for providing an esthetically pleasing environment go back as far as prehistoric times when cavemen are believed to have painted hunting scenes on cave walls. The practice of providing esthetically pleasing decorations on walls or other supporting surfaces seems to have evolved cyclically eversince. The relatively recent trend of spending more time indoors and especially inside one's living quarters, commonly referred to as “cocooning” has led to a concurrent trend towards searching for novel decoration articles.
With the advent of the so-called leisure society there also seems to exist an increased need for leisure activities and, in particular, for family oriented indoor leisure activities. Hobbies such as arts and crafts activities seem to have recently gain increased interest.
The combined interest for decoration articles and hobby related articles has been recognized in the prior art. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 5,640,790 naming Daniel M Johns as inventor and issued Jun. 24, 1997 discloses a collector plate kit including an outer free member and a selectively immovable inner member. The inner member carries a decorative design indicia thereon. The indicia may be painted by the intended collector to suit a particular design scheme.
The kit disclosed in the hereinabove mentioned patent provides a decorative article that, in contrast with paintings inscribed directly on the wall may be readily changed has the taste or preferences of the intended user evolve. Since the tastes of children in particular seem to evolve as they grow this may prove to be particularly useful for decorating children's room or the like.
Also, the structure disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,640,790 provides an outline for the decorative indicia formed on the undersurface of the inner member. The outline of the decorative indicia includes a plurality of outwardly projected ribs that act as an outline to facilitate and guide and intended user in the application of appropriate paints within the area defined by the ribs. Hence, different features may be painted on the surface of the inner member with limited manual dexterity requirements.
Delimiting specific areas of the surface to be painted with guiding ridges provides an interesting advantage over prior methods. Indeed, some of the conventional methods for applying two or more colors of paint in such a way that the individual paint not cover all of the substrate to be painted and so that the colors are sharply delimited from one another have proven to be tedious and inefficient. One of these prior art method involves coating the substrate with paint of a first color, drying the first layer and then covering up the area so painted whereupon the uncovered areas are then painted with a second layer of paint. This conventional method is time-consuming owing to the need for drying between the application of any two paints.
This conventional method also requires some degree of manual dexterity since it may be deemed considerably difficult to make sharp demarcations between differently colored areas. The difficulty is at least in part related to the fact that portions of the applied paint typically cross the boundary line to settle in the adjacent area.
Various techniques have been used to obviate this problem. One typical method is to apply so-called “masking tape” of suitable width along the dividing line on the side of the adjacent area that should not be painted. Another is to completely cover the adjacent area exposing only the surface to be painted.
In either of these methods, desired effects have been obtained in preventing the masked area from being smeared with paint. However, these prior art methods have been found to cause other problems. Firstly, processes involved are themselves not very efficient in actual practice and also not suitable for applications in some artistic settings.
Secondly, the subsequent removal of the masking tape tends to cause the jagging of the edge of the film of coating which borders on the tape. This jagging is sometimes caused by the removal that destroys the coating of paint dried across the surface of the tape. In other instances, the removal of the tape can entail the scraping of flakes of the layer along the edge of the painted layer where the paint is not fully dried together with the tape.
Hence, the ribs or ridges provided by the structure disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,640,790 seem to provide a great advantage over prior art structures and methods for allowing the painting of decoration articles requiring demarcation between the differently colored feature sections. However, the use of ribs or ridges suffers from numerous drawbacks.
The ribs protruding from the feature sections unduly increase the overall thickness of the decorative panel hence leading to increase required storage volume. Also, since the ribs protrude from the feature sections, they are susceptible of being damaged or broken during shipping or handling of the panel. Furthermore, painting of the outermost portion of the ribs may prove to be difficult and may potentially lead to dripping of the painted outermost section on the side surfaces of the ribs creating an unpleasant visual effect.
Accordingly, there exists a need for an improved decorative and craft related structure and method for providing the same.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
It is an object of the present invention to provide a combined decorative and craft related structure and method for providing the same.
Advantages of the present invention include that the proposed structure is intended to be used both as craft article allowing an intended user to exercise leisure craft skills and to also be used as a decorating article for decorating a supporting surface once the decorating article has been customized by the intended user using his/her craft skills.
The proposed decorative structure allows an intended user, even with limited experience, skills or dexterity, to apply coloring material such as paint to various feature sections of the structure with reduced risks of overlapping so as to enable the intended user to define sharply delimited feature regions creating a pleasing esthetical effect. Hence, the proposed structure and method allows an intended user with limited skills such as an handicapped person or a child to the apply a multicolored pattern on a structure in which all different colored painted areas are relatively sharply delimited from one another through the use of conventional color applying implements such as a conventional painting brush.
More specifically, the proposed structure allows for coloring of both feature sections of the design and outlining areas with different colors with reduced risks of overlapping between feature sections and/or between a feature sections and an adjacent outlining area. The outlining grooves are designed so as to guide the intended user in the application of paint with other coloring material therein. The outlining areas are also designed so as to reduce the risks of overlapping by providing a physical gap between adjacent feature sections.
The proposed structure further optionally allows the intended user to easily and readily remove paint from unintentionally painted areas through a set of quick and ergonomical steps. More specifically, the proposed structure allows an intended user to abrasively remove unintentionally applied paint using conventional sanding paper.
The proposed structure is designed so as to be manufacturable using conventional forms of manufacturing so as to provide a decorative structure that would be economically feasible, long-lasting and relatively trouble-free in operation.
Still furthermore, the proposed structure and method allows for the creation of composite wall designs by juxtaposing structures in ac
Desmarais Luc
Leblanc Donald
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