Mellowbeing

After cleaning up my craft space earlier this week, I rediscovered my beloved compass from childhood.

I used to make these w/my mom which she learned as a child also. It starts off with a circle. Then, take the compass point and place it anywhere on the circle – make a half circle. Then, place the compass point on one of those points and make another half circle.. etc. To get more lines as in this one, place the compass point between the “leaves” that are created. I’m sure there are other versions of this.. curious to see if anyone else made these.

Meet Chuck the Snowman!

Made this on 2/27.. these last few posts aren’t chronologically accurate.

for the postcard swap.

Adhesive tape strips & sharpies

This postcard is a lot more complicated than it looks like.  Sure, it may seem like I mysteriously drew lines and filled in shapes in certain areas.  What you can’t tell from this photo is that I started with several 8.5″ x 1″ strips of adhesive paper.

They are remnants from when KidMang made his promotional stickers and they turned to not fully print 8.5″ x 11″ sheets.  He gave me a couple of dozen of these strips and I wondered how I could apply them to the postcards.  Since they don’t quite work for a basket weave pattern, I just stuck them on in the same order without the weaving bit.

After this part, there were natural shapes formed between the different strips.  I chose bright colors to work with and patterns I usually doodle.   This isn’t the cleanest sketch but there are another 8 postcards to go to perfect.

Have you worked with a medium in an unexpected way that even you hadn’t originally thought of using?

Last year, Terry Border from Bent Objects had his first book was published.  I’d been looking forward to it for a while and once I’d heard the news, I just had to get a copy.  Or two.  I know just the person who to give it to and I think it’d make a cute engagement gift, right?  Right.

Terry makes some of the awesomest bent wire sculptures with wit and humor – just the kind of art I like.  The book has a lot of photographs from the blog as well as new ones.  I say you should definitely look it up and get a copy!

I follow @terryborder on Twitter and saw he had a contest for a postcard!   An original handrawn postcard about “Liquid Courage”.  I mentioned how when prepping for my graduate thesis presentation, I had a glass (or two) of red wine.  I guess that was the best story since I won the postcard heh :)

When I was photographing the book w/o and then w/ the postcard, I noticed how the postcard fits just so and it makes the book cover take on a different meaning hah.

Good morning guys and gals. Thought I’d start off the week with some uplifting imagery. The first to grace our eyes is this motivational poster which is the anti-thesis of the “Keep Calm and Carry On” well-known British poster.

It was highlighted by Merlin Mann at 43 Folders. The original image is here by Matt Jones.