Palette October 30, 2009

Oh man, I don’t know about you, but this is probably the most enticing palette I’ve ever had to work with.

I got them all today at the Pine Street Papery in Sausalito, which is actually on Caledonia Street.  I got about eight sets of each of these for $70 total.  Not a bad investment if you consider how many mandalas they will create.

The Mrs. Grossman’s site says I can only make fifty art pieces with their stickers.  Not that I intend to make more that, but it seems kind of bogus to market a product primarily as an art material and then limit the number of pieces your customers can make it.  I can’t think of any other example of this.

Hopefully the Bay Bridge will be open again by Monday, so I can go to the East Bay and pick up my little wooden bases.  Then I can really get down to business.  In the meantime I’ll work on making my own stickers so I have everything ready to go.  The anticipation is killing me!

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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.