Thing-A-Day: No Frills Meat Indentity Branding October 12, 2009

This weekend I re-organized my studio.  I never realized how much my half-finished projects were stressing me out until I finally tackled my bin of cut but un-sewn plush pieces.  I thought that perhaps I could turn them into kits, like the ones I have for making mini hams, but it wasn’t worth the time to make detailed instruction booklets. Could I somehow turn them into simple, no-frills kits?

Yup.

Inspired by the recession, the Helvetica movie, and the joy of removing physical and mental clutter, my thing-a-day was some quick and dirty identity packaging.  The design takes a (huge) page from the no frills supermarket packaging I used to see growing up.  Sure, the kerning could be better but what you you want?  It’s no frills.

Thing-A-Day: Plastic Leaves October 8, 2009

Inspired by this epic post at CrookedBrains (via DudeCraft) of things made out of credit cards (and these rat pins, specifically) I decided to see if I could cut complex shapes out of plastic gift/rewards cards.  Turns out that it’s not too difficult, as long as you only cut in towards the center of the card and don’t try to curve your lines too much–perfect for making leaf shapes for holiday wreaths.  Last year I made this wreath and it took forever.  Each leaf was constructed by tying together seven separate plastic triangles with wire.  Each leaf was then tied onto the wreath form one by one.  Oy.

This year, I’m thinking of making some mini-wreaths, but with just one piece of plastic making up each leaf.  Yesterday I practiced a few different leaf forms to see which ones were easiest to cut.  Here are some of the more successful examples, which only took a minute or two each to make.  I’ve got a maple in there, a couple of oakey/hollyish ones, and some toothed leaves.  I tried a few really simple shapes as well, but they didn’t seem as autumnal as these.

Do you have any other ideas for iconic leaf shapes?  What have you made from plastic cards or other recycled materials?

Deep Creeps! October 6, 2009

I’ve been working on a set of plush deep sea creatures for a couple of years.  I’ve been calling them “Deep Creeps.” (Yes, I know, it sounds just like “Sweet Meats.”  I’m a one-trick pony when it comes to titles.)  ANYWAY, after several iterations but no real progress, I decided that I would use the Plush You! show at Schmancy as my deadline for having finished versions of a dumbo octopus and an angler fish. I finally finished them yesterday and they’ll arrive tomorrow, a scant two days before opening night.  It remains to be seen whether they’ll actually make it into the show now.

In August, I made two pillows embroidered with original drawings in glow-in-the-dark thread.  They look cool in the dark, but Plush You is a high-caliber plush show, not an embroidery show.  I put the pillows up in my Etsy shop and started over.  One month plus one extremely intense sewing week later, I’ve got two finished creeps and a massive tension headache.  So if you’ve been wondering what my craft-a-day has been since I last posted an update, here are the foam models, patterns, and body part prototypes I’ve been churning out.  These are just the few I hadn’t thrown out yet.

And here are the finished Creeps.  For more photos/larger versions you can visit my Flickr stream.  Yes, the angler’s bulb glows in the dark.

The City That Loves You Back September 13, 2009

I’ve been missing my friends.  So many of them are on the east coast now.  They moved away from San Francisco in three waves this summer, and many of them ended up in and around New York.  In order to ensure that they all come back someday, I thought I’d make them something to remind them of all the love that’s waiting here for them.

Friday’s thing-a-day was this stencil:

I meant it in the way that says “a lot of people in San Francisco love you,” but the more I looked at it, the more I realized, San Francisco really is a city that loves you back. In all the ways that New York tries to keep you out, San Francisco invites you in.  From the weather to housing (rent control!) to the entrepreneurial spirit, San Francisco makes it really easy to live well on your own terms.  New York requires you fight everyone else with sticks to get your own little piece of anything.

So to stick it to New York a little, I decided to change the stencil lettering to look like the “I heart New York” logo.  I used the first stencil to cut out the skyline, and then used this stencil to carve out the letters:

Yesterday I made three stickers for my girls with the Xyron and a security envelope, as well as some stickers from the removed letters, which I put up in my very spare Etsy shop. Doing these San Francisco love projects has given me some great ideas for much larger projects that focus on the Bay Bridge.

Thing-A-Day Progress Report September 10, 2009

For the last three days I’ve worked on just one project–a prototype for a fair ribbon.  It’s a project I’m doing for free for a low-key client, but it seemed like an easy thing to start with.  I thought I would be able to finish the whole thing in one day, but it turned out I know less about how to make fair ribbons than I thought.

Day 1: Picked out fabrics from scrap stash and embroidered a piece of blue quilting cotton with white embroidery thread.  Wrapped it around the front of a 1.25″ Dritz make-your-own-shank-button, then snapped the back of the button on.

Day 2: Made the rosette for behind the button.  I started by sewing two circular pieces of fabric together.  Then I sewed a small circle in the middle, to create a ring.  I thought that if I gathered the center of the ring, or threaded elastic through it, that this would create a nice rosette effect.

Instead it created this:

Then I sewed a long tube of fabric, and threaded the elastic through that with my nifty bias turner.

I tightened the elastic and let the fabric bunch.  Still too messy.  It looked like a scrunchie.

Out of ideas, I turned to the Internet for help, and found this post on the Chronicle Books blog about how to make a blue ribbon greeting card for Father’s Day.  I sewed another (much longer) tube, and this time, I accordion-folded the fabric while sewing the folds together to secure them in a circle.

Day 3: Cut and hemmed the bottom ribbons, and glued everything together.  Added a pin and a string to the back.  Covered up the unsightly mess in the back with a blue felt circle.

Each day I completed at least one item, so I feel like I made a small, complete object each day, even though they were part of one project.  Today I worked for an hour on the Amy Sedaris cross-stitch while I was at the DMV.  After posting this, I’m feeling too tired to start anything new.  Four days down, twenty-six to go.

Wussify Your Way to Success September 8, 2009

I’m trying to be a more prolific crafter without adding any stress to my day. Being stressed just makes me procrastinate.

A couple of years ago as part of New Year’s resolution, my husband (who is already much more prolific than I) decided to try to change his habits by adopting a “make-a-thing-a-day” routine for just 30 days.  If it wasn’t too difficult, he would extend the project to three months, and so on.  More than two years later he’s still doing it, which means that since he made that resolution he has made no few than 800 pieces of artwork.  Today one of them got chosen for an art show in Prague!

The task has always seemed daunting to me.  I’m afraid I will fail, even within the 30-day trial.  But this is the time of year when I make my annual resolutions, so I’ve been trying to figure out ways to make a-thing-a-day easier to accomplish.  Here are some rules I’ve come up with for myself:

• I can make anything.  It doesn’t have to be “crafted.”  I can make a ten-second drawing or write a two-line poem.
• I can copy someone else’s work.  I’ll still get technique practice and new ideas from doing this, and as long as I’m not selling what I make or adding it to my public portfolio, I figure there’s no harm done.
• I can make a project from someone else’s instructions or from a book.
• I can substitute half an hour’s work on an existing project, like the sweater I’m knitting or the cross-stitch I’m trying to finish.
• Craft/design work for clients counts.
• I can make something I’ve already made before.
• I cannot make two things one day in order to skip the next day.
• I do not have to post the results of any day’s work if I don’t like it.
• A project is finished when I am done working on it.  It doesn’t have to be complete.

These may seem like total wuss rules, but I think I’m more like to continue making something every day if I feel excited and confident. I can always ramp up the challenge later.  Whether this works despite my wussifying remains to be seen.  I’ll let you know next month.

Have any of you ever set creativity goals that you’ve successfully accomplished?  Please share in the comments!