Finally managed to print those tanks cards today. The print areas were so large that they turned out with a little bit of distress but I really like what it adds to the image. It makes it look more military-industrial complex with a hint of hand-printed propaganda. Sweet. (**Update: They’re up in the shop now.)
Today’s instruction: make something that shows gratitude.
Your inspiration for today comes from Jeff Rudell’s ingenious client-getting nutshell book. Enjoy and be thankful.
Tonight I got back from working in Palo Alto at around 9:30. I’ve been working or driving non-stop since 7am and I am BEAT. I only had enough energy to make this piece:
It’s my original tank sketch, cut up into its individual components and arranged in a new formation. I glued about half the pieces down where they landed when I shook them out of their envelope (so. very. tired.). It looked vaguely like a pirate ship, so I steered the rest of the collage in that general direction. It’s very mechanical looking and a little creepy, like it could live on the Island of Misfit Toys.
So today’s instruction is: Cut up an old drawing and create a collage by rearranging the pieces.
Your own past work is your inspiration today, and this project requires no tutorials.
I have already written a couple of posts about making one thing every day, but I think it’s time to ramp things up a bit. As I begin this learning experience, you readers will be my proctors. OR optionally, you will be my classmates.
Starting today I will make something NEW every day for one year. If you wish to join me on this adventure, I will be posting the instruction for the day on this blog and on my “lvenell” twitter account. I will post a photo of my completed project along with the instruction, and links to other people’s finished projects when I can find them. Since I’m sort of a night owl, this project will also hopefully force me to learn to take better photos at night.
I will still post indie business news and tips, but now this blog will also have tutorials and/or inspiration on it every single day. Your inspiration for today comes from Brock Davis’ “Make Something Cool Every Day” project (via Ally Trigg’s blog). I will likely pull from his web site more than once for a future daily instruction.
Today’s instruction comes from this tutorial from The Creative Place (via How About Orange): Create a radial 3-D paper shape like these paper lanterns from A Creative Place:
Here are my successes (I experimented a lot with shape):
And here are some of my failures (one of them is actually pretty rad):
Tip: Use paper that is as thin and as smooth as possible. I used construction paper for these, which was a terrible idea. The paper did not like to turn, tore easily, and was almost too thick to put the brads through.
My in-laws gave me an Amazon gift card for my birthday (yeah, they rock). I planned to spend it on some kind of paper craft book, but everything out there was too specific, or childish, or boring. Then yesterday A. pointed me towards Papercraft: Design and Art with Paper and I freaked out a little. Actually, I should say that A. Pointed me toward this post on Daily Icon, which has a lot of amazing images from inside the book. It’s not due to come out until September 9th, but you can pre-order it from Amazon.
I’ve been working on a custom notebook project lately and after I cut out all the covers I had a lot of pretty card stock left over that could become half-size notebooks and bookmarks. I’ve also been wanting to do a project that uses patterned silhouettes and these seemed like the perfect medium to try it out. Because I’m a little geeky, these have equations on them.
I drew these shapes in Illustrator first, then printed them at 3/4″ size and cut them out with scissors. Then I traced the cut-outs onto another scrap of card stock and made this stencil from them using an Xacto.
I plan to make at least one other set of equations using differently patterned paper. Ideally I’d also like to make these sets for sale as a very limited-edition run, but it takes too long to trace and cut out the shapes to be worth it. I could print them on the Gocco but I Gocco everything these days. I’m bored with it.
Biz Miss 