I had so much fun restoring and fixing up bikes, trikes, and tiny tractors for all the niblings that I decided to try my hand at a full size bike. My sister in law Cara lives in florida where it’s flat and cruisers are super popular so I decided to build one for her with the theme of her favorite artist: Taylor Swift! After getting Justin in on the scheme, he sleuthed what her favorite TS album was and I got to work!
I don’t really follow Taylor (although we listen to her a lot when we’re at their house!) so I didn’t really associate her with “badass” but her Reputation outfit is red and black with snakes and I’m 100% here for it!
So now that I have a theme I needed a starter bike. Old vintage bikes are cool and charming but also not always easy to ride, so I found something newer and ended up with a recent model Trek cruiser.
I can’t just do basic black, this bike has to be super #extra! I found some red glitter bomb spray paint at Ace Hardware and decided that would be perfect! (also, don’t buy it, it gums up super easy. Terrible paint. lol)
I even had a red steering stem laying around from something else that worked perfectly! I also had a set of red single speed rims in the attic. Because Cara is going to be riding this thing on the streets, I got some really nice tires that should be durable and even have a reflective strip around the edges in case she’s out at night.
Time to assemble and get this thing rolling again!
This is the bare minimum currently so now it’s time for *custom paint*. Once I saw Taylor’s outfit I knew I was going to hand paint snakes on the frame. I used my pinstriping enamel and did my best.
I also wanted to incorporate other aspects into the bike, so we have song lyrics on the rear fender and album art on the chain guard!
Here she is all assembled and taken for a test ride!
Cara should be rolling in style now!