A receipt artist has taken social media by storm after he compiled a perfect A to Z of items on a supermarket bill.
Graeme Bowman, 43, set himself the challenge of finding 26 items for each letter of the alphabet at his local Leyton ASDA.
The advertising specialist has also stunned Reddit with other receipt artwork, including takedowns of Donald Trump and building a Christmas tree with his purchases.
The idea for the stunt first came to Graeme over ten years ago in 2012, but it has taken him until now to work out what to buy for the pesky X and Z.
Graeme, from Walthamstow, hopped over to his nearby superstore at the beginning of April and spent up to two hours finding all the right items, starting with Apples for A and Bananas for B.
He had to get creative, finding an extension chord for E, because eggs came up as ‘Organic Eggs’.
Quiche was a genius find to fill the letter Q as part of the £75 shop. He found pomegranates for P and a £15 USB stick for U.
But the real problems began at the end of the alphabet.
Graeme told Metro: ‘I knew I needed an ASDA superstore with clothes and other bits and bobs so I could find Z and X.
‘I was looking through all the shelves. I was thinking maybe the best bet is a toy zebra or a zebra book.
‘I was very surprised when I discovered a zinkeez toy and I was even more surprised when it came up as that on the receipt.’
Zinkees toys are popular children’s fidget toys based on a viral TikTok video.
Graeme revealed he actually abandoned the shop a week earlier because he could not find an X item first time around.
He added: ‘The store had an X box controller section but there were no products. So the second time I picked up a few different things and tried it and found the X box dock’.
The 43-year-old even revealed a surprising reason he chose to shop in ASDA.
The supermarket chain uses ‘simple descriptions’ for their products, whereas stores like Tesco use ‘far more descriptive’ lines for each item.
Graeme needed the descriptive Tesco receipt for an earlier receipt artwork he created for Trump’s inauguration.
He went to a Lea Valley shop and bought a hair blonding kit, a face tan mistand an entire pack of male diapers.
The marketing man also bought Cheetos and coke, taking the mick out of Trump’s eating habits.
This dig at Trump bill artwork went down a treat on Reddit, but it was not as popular as the A to Z.
That post racked up over 33,000 upvotes and 1,400 comments.
Graeme’s first adventure into receipt art began with the construction of a Christmas tree out of festive items.
He bought goose fat, mince pies, sausages and carrots – all items of different lengths – in order to build a Christmas tree.
That receipt might make it seem straight forward, but Graeme revealed to Metro it involved multiple run-ins with store authorities,
He said: ‘The Christmas Tree was very stressful! I did not realise that you could scan the stuff on the self checkout and cancel the transaction.
‘So I would scan everything, see it is not right, but I’d still pay and then take it to the customer service desk and ask for a refund.
‘I did this twice or so – and then I told them “I’m sorry I’m wasting your time. I am doing this stupid art project.”
‘So that was painful. I might even do it again better next year.’
Graeme has other new receipts planned for future projects, he plans to do one with numbers, from one to ten.
Another he started on Valentine’s Day, and will pick up again nine months after Valentine’s Day, but he will leave the rest to our imagination.
This is not the first odd endeavour from the creative advertiser.
He has a business selling 1.6kg chocolate bricks, which was even featured in the popular Off Menu podcast.
‘My wife finds it all a little bit bewildering,’ he told Metro.
‘Another part of the reason I do it is because I work in advertising.
‘My day job is to try and get people to take notice of the things I am making. Usually that is for a brand.
‘So I can put this project on my portfolio. Creative directors like to see other things you have done on the side.’
Get in touch with our news team by emailing us at webnews@metro.co.uk.
For more stories like this, check our news page.
MORE: Here’s what we’re shopping from Damson Madder’s new swimwear drop
MORE: Mystery of the ‘whump whump meadow’ where unexplained thuds heard for decades
