everyone thinks they are a designer...

This is totally true. I love it! A great strip... if you are involved in design, or even if you are not you should check it out: businessguysonbusinesstrips.com

the magic of photoshop

Found this super cool photo.

Very clever. Erik Johansson's other work is also pretty great, but this was my favorite. Not much else to report. 5 weeks until D Day.

(via How About Orange)

legos, starwars, and paperclips

Never Underestimate Youth - Especially if they have a lightsaber.

I discovered Chris McVeigh through Bent Objects. Both excellent blogs that make use of small figures/everyday objects in their photographs which remind me a lot of my own photographs. Maybe someday I will find a coherent theme for my blog, but in the meantime I can seriously admire their work.

A couple other Chris McVeigh photos that I thought were super clever:
Umm...
Late for Work

apology

Sorry not to post for a long time, but we have been busy doing this!



OK, we haven't reached the end yet... 9 weeks to go! But I thought it was clever and wanted to share.

Anyway, I posted a comment on a friends blog yesterday and realized how long it has been since I have posted anything here. Things have been pretty crazy for me between freelancing for my last job, work for the synagogue, and well... there's a little monster in my belly :)

Hope all is well with all of you (whoever is out there).

bike to work day

Tomorrow (May 15th) is national bike to work day. My bike is in pretty bad shape, but I plan on walking... apparently that is what the bikes prefer.


via ShareSomeCandy

my cartoon and other job related stuff

This is sort of old news... I created an educational illustration for work. It has gotten rave reviews and I have heard other folks are using it as far away as California. I am just posting the thumbnail, but email me if you want to see the whole drawing. I am happy because i got to do something genuinely creative and hopefully make the world a little safer.

In other work news several of my designs from the past year won marketing awards. It is funny because the one i was least proud of won the gold, but I am proud of the other 2 designs, which won a silver and merit awards.

Not too much to report workwise... some restructuring, but seems like things are going in a positive direction.

tea and tea cups

I thought this was clever, although this teacup is waaay too small for a proper cup of tea
(via AT). Personally I like my tea in a giant mug, and I have been drinking a lot of it lately. While I enjoy my tea I am hoping for weather that doesn't require piping hot beverages in order to keep warm. Well, at least it was warm enough to walk home from work yesterday.

How cool is this wall?

I have seen a lot of cool wall decals (some of my favorite are these birdcages, trees, and birds) floating around the design blogs, but wouldn't this be perfect for the wall behind the turtles tank?!

excuses for not posting...

This pretty much sums it up.

"A site specific installation has just been completed in this lovely museum in the heart of Copenhagen. The installation is a large fully functioning meeting room, which seats up to 20 people. Focus is on the enormous amount of words used during meetings, of which only a fraction are truly useful." (via Design Milk)

I have lots of things to post, so hopefully I can get my act together soon... a few links to keep you busy:

1. Advice from Thelonius Monk
2. Cool coat rack wall decal (via Oh Joy!)
3. Interesting Ideas of what the 2000 would be like drawn in 1910 (via Speak Up)
4. Bagel, cream cheese, and lox
5. Amazing quilts from the Tokyo International Quilt Show by Moonstitches (via CRAFT)

And now I am going to bed... wishing I had once of these cool lamps by my bedside (via unplggd). Good night, and happy new year!

Paper Strongbad!

I followed a link on MAKE:blog to Foldskool Heroes Marshall Alexander's website. I fell in love with the idea of a printable paper toy! Wow! Some of these are so intricate and detailed. I immediately had to try one. I chose Limi-ted. So clever. I finished it yesterday. Rather than taking another bad photo using photobooth here is the official photo from the website.

Trust me, it is just as cute in person! Anyway, this morning I decided to check out the links to other toy designers and found Cubecraft. The design is brilliant because it allows for so much of the character to be in the illustrations, and they did a great job with capturing the essence of each of those characters. I printed and cut out Strongbad (from homestarrunner.com). He is now sitting next to me watching me write this post. I suppose he would have a snide comment about now, but I can't think of any. All I have to say is, "Strongbad are you making out with a piece of looooseleaf?"

There are so many other toy designers with templates to download. I can't wait to post more paper toy experiments. Let me know if any of you decide to try.

tangerine menorah for hannukah

I seem to be in holiday spirits today given my thanksgiving post earlier today.

Well, actually, i was not, but am getting there. I was feeling sort of sad that Hanukah had just crept up on me, and we were not doing anything special other then lighting candles, but I was going through articles in googlereader, and came across an article on Apartment Therapy for clementine candles. This may not be the sort of thing that puts you in the holiday spirit, but it perked me up thanks to a conversation at dinner on Friday night about what you could use to build your own oil menorah. Beets, potatoes, turnips, and of course CLEMENTINES! were suggested. I decided to try it out, and hopefully use a clementine menorah for next Friday, when the candles need to burn a bit longer than the standard boxed candles typically burn.

My first attempt was very pretty, but the edges of the star shape started to burn. I tried cutting the wick down to create a smaller flame and propping it up so that the hole was more directly over the flame. I even tried a second clementine with a smaller wick, but eventually that ended up being burnt too.


A couple of people wrote comments about this problem, but none gave a good solution, and given that you need to leave the candles (or oil as in this case) to burn until it burns itself out this didn't seem like a very safe way of lighting the 6 candles I wanted for next Friday night.

In the end I think I will just use the bottom half of the clementine. It is pretty and holds the oil well. I will do a test run tonight when I only need one candle.


The results are pictured about with the abandoned attempts in the background. It is still pretty, will do quite nicely, and has a nice cheery orange glow, just the sort of thing you need to get into the holiday mood...

Happy Hanukkah to all who will begin celebrating tonight!

thanksgiving wrap up

I know at this point these are a month old, but i just finally loaded the photos onto my computer, so here is the story of our thanksgiving weekend...


We drove up on Wednesday night, and got there pretty late. The rest of the gang arrived EARLY the next morning. M, R, Little J and Brandy. This picture above is Samwise (Sam). He was there the whole time, even came to sleep with us on Saturday night. You can see J and R playing with a new toy in the background.

Mr. SD and I baked some challah on Thursday before the big dinner (we were planning on skiing on Friday) They came out very pretty.

There was a big giant (40 people!) dinner at friends who have a super nice wood log house with giant green plants all over the place and high ceilings, and an open kitchen with a giant island. I really like their house. Mr. SD's dad made a chickpea curry and there was lots of other vegetarian food and pumpkin pie for dessert. Yum. Did I mention the TWO vegetarian stuffings?!

Decided there were not enough trails open on Friday, so we went for a hike instead. Hiking through snow is hard, and I am terribly out of shape, so it wasn't a long hike, but it was pretty.

Mr. SD attempted to sign us into the trial, but the sign in book was full! (and had been for a quite sometime) and then at the end of the trail looking all rugged with our dirty subaru :)

Somewhat relaxing and quiet Saturday with fresh chocolate chip cookies and Kung Fu Panda late Saturday night. Nothing really beats fresh chocolate chip cookies and a nice big glass of milk :)


*Picture above not actual cookies baked over Thanksgiving weekend. Photo from Nestle Tollhouse.

sometimes it might be nice to hide inside a wall...

and sometimes it might be nice to watch the reactions of the people passing by. I just really liked this image and wanted to share, but I just checked out the artist's website and it is pretty awesome. Some of the images are very sad, but some of them are ridiculously funny.

I think one of the designers interviewed for the documentary Helvetica said that when you see something and wish that you had done that .... well, that is saying something. Anyway, I feel that way about some of these photographs. Check out his website. I am sure you can figure out which ones I am talking about.

(via designobserver)

ninja magnets!

I know it has been a while since I have posted and there are lots of other things to report on ,but how cool is this? It fits perfectly with my gmail ninja theme! (from core77 gift guide)

starry night at the moma

Thanks to D and C's wonderful wedding present, Mr. SD and I went to the members only night at MoMA. It was still crowded, but the paintings were worth it. There were also letters to his brother and other with sketches of future paintings. Mr SD wondered why I didn't send him letters with drawings in them, and I pointed out that we were in the same place, so no need for letters, but he objected. How will they display these drawings in the museum when I am famous?

This painting, Starry Night Over the Rhine, is my favorite. I think it would look perfect over my bed, matching perfectly with my quilt.

It was nice to wander around the rest of the museum, which was basically empty. We got to see a pretty interesting Miro exhibit, which i think i enjoyed more than Mr. SD, but hopefully he liked some of it. There is also a huge video installation that opens next week, but they had the videos on last night. I hope to go back and get the full experience soon.

Mr SD and I felt so adventurous and cultured wandering the city on a Tuesday night.

Thanks D & C!

Goodnight and thanks for the cookies

Well, they are calling it over, and i am inclined to believe them. Obama won for my birthday! I am going to sleep, but first a few more cookies:



Thanks for stopping by and decorating with me! Good night.

Red v. Blue

Still reporting live from my election/birthday event. We have decorated more cookies, and are watching the returns. Anyway, I saw this post earlier on Apartment Therapy, and thought these doors were a perfect image for the day. Hope that you all voted. I did, and got the perfect birthday pressent, no line... more guests making cookies! Will post more photos later.

celebrating election day with cookies

Blogging live from my election/birthday happening. This was my attempt at cookie decorating. Couldn't find any cupcakes with white frosting (the ones in the supermarket are still orange from Halloween, which is a little scary) so went with chocolate chip cookies, which is truthfully are probably better than cupcakes. Got the idea after a lively debate about Obama and Mccain cakes, cookies, and candies inspired by yeswecake.com, so I decided to just get the appropriate colors of frosting and let people decorate for themselves. I made these before everyone arrived, and I already had a friend attempt to decorate his cookie, but he ate it before I could take a photo!

I am bringing this "globe" (for lack of anything better to call it) to an art show tomorrow night. The theme is light and dark, and while this globe does not make it dark when you put it on your head, it is very isolating.

My plan is to try and convince people to put it on their heads, but one of these days I am going to bring it into the city and take photos of random people transformed into giant fisher price little people. Not only am I a fan of making people experience something that takes them out of their comfort zone (and trust me the experience will only be greater out on the city streets when the sounds become muffled), but I think it raises pretty interesting questions of identity and how we define ourselves.

Anyway, I liked how these photos came out, although the color isn't exactly right, so I thought I would give all my loyal readers a sneak peak. Now you can say you saw it here first :)

Free Art/Political Posters

unplugged posted a few of these posters on their blog, but didn't check the site out until it was mention for a second time in the NYT

Anyway, you should check out this site because the concept of posters that you can download and print yourself is pretty cool. There is a new one posted every day. Here are a few of my favorites to tempt you: