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!