A-Muse

Vanna can you please spin the wheel for us today?

This idea came from, wanting a way to inspire the kids I worked with to write & play in their journals. This one, has a bit more of an adult theme, but could be easily adapted... and my son loves to walk by and spin, & spin & spin.

The a-muse is made of:

• an old bike wheel & fork,
• tissue paper collected from all around,
• LED's
• wood
• paint
• paper scraps

If you want to see the process I documented it at Instructables

On the spokes:

• Play With Paper - books, origami, paper dolls, paper toys, zines
• Doodle - put on some tunes grab some pens, colored pencils & play (inspired by Drawing Lab book)
• WALK, RIDE, PLAY, MOVE, OUTSIDE - feel the air in your lungs.
• Learn - something new
• Change - Change the scenery, go out... library, coffee shop, notice, taste, smell
• Game - Play a game, or better yet make one. A maze, a puzzle, game of your life.
• Sew - clothing, toy, doll, something useful
• Imagine - the best space ever, a tree house, a studio your secret cave. (A room of your own)
• Machine Made - invent your own machine, what does it do? what does it look like?
• Sculpt - salt dough, paper mache, clay
• Toy - indulge your inner child make a toy from what's on hand.
• Mail - send a post card or letter
• Weave a Tail (purposefully spelled wrong, my cats were causing trouble, I wished I could weave there tails together!)
• Vacation - for a day, or imagine one... or plan one
• Rest - take a nap, a bath, eat well & take care of your body.
• Spoiled Rotten - Find someone/something spoil them rotten for the day (to answer my son's question YES, it can be yourself... but it's surprisingly refreshing to do it for someone else.)
• Repair
• Draw it - Take a walk bring something back to draw.

Ohhh, it even lights up!

My Art Studio!!

The Art Studio has passed inspection!! Stage one complete. I'm so excited... and chomping at the bit to move in. Sigh, apparently it needs insulation, electricity, drywall, and maybe some flooring before i'm there. But isn't it beautiful? I particularly love the large windows on the ends upstairs, i have a view of the whole neighborhood. Between those windows and the sky lights i have plenty of light upstairs to play and create.

Tim Burns our neighbor did the construction and foundation work, and was an absolute pleasure to work with. Everyone listened and was easy to talk to. And i think what impressed me the most, was that when faced with a challenge, the crew did a wonderful job of creative and intelligent problem solving. Nice to have a dream built with people like that.

More pictures from the ground up here...

My Crazy Scale won!!

Mid December i posted this instructable, about how to modify your bathroom scale. I was a little tired of feeling fat every time I stepped on the scale. So i decided to modify it, so it didn't have numbers on it any more, and maybe make it a little less judgmental. So i painted a fun scene, and i made it much more colorful. Apparently, the judges for the Humana Health Challenge agreed it wasn't a bad idea, and they picked it as one of the first prize winners!! Sweet.

What has been equally cool, and perhaps even more touching, have been some of the comments other people have made. Who knew a bit of paint, and the sharing of an idea could have an impact? Many of the other entries were phenomenally inspiring as well. How to Help (when you can't change a thing), had me crying, but was a great idea, and How to Meditate is my next read. People also came up with great prototype ideas, and some of the discussions, and peoples willingness to try and share and make together was really cool. So if you need some warm fuzzies, and a reminder that the world isn't all bad today, I would highly recommend checking out the posts through out the challenge. (View all Entries)

Valentines Cards

I'm home sick today, and a little sad because I was really looking forward to a postcard making class today. Felted postcards, seemed like such a wonderful Valentines project!

So in my heartbreak, I'm surfing the web for other fun & creative valentine card ideas. I thought I wold share a few of my favorites with you:

• Jeanne Turner McBrayer has some wonderful sewn postcards she did with some free motion machine quilting. I really love the playfulness of them.
  
  
  
• MarissaLouise, shows you how to make traditional cobweb cards (she has some in her Etsy store too!).
  
  
  
  

• Grathio labs, has some free PDF's to download of US patent imagery, refined and turned in to cards (a couple cute cheeky ones too).
  
  
  
  
  

• Sew, Mama, Sew has an adorable fabric valentines, inside a fabric envelope!!
  
  
  
  



• My Favorite however was this beautiful old valentine I found on Will & Guy's website. This "card", seems to have some beautiful origami folding at it's root.

Jpg Color Shift in Firefox

I'm working on the css of a website I'm currently building, and ran in to an interesting conundrum. The jpg image color didn't match up with my gif image. However, the problem wasn't duplicating in other browsers.


Jpg's and Gif images store color information differently, as a result I rarely have jpg images, butting up against gifs that need to match. But in this case converting the swirls to a .gif would triple the file size, and the other image needed transparency, so it had to be a .gif.

Many of you tech savvy folks will tell me... match it up as a png. That option would likely work better. In this case it seems the issue applies to both png's and jpg's. (read more details about the issue here: http://hacks.mozilla.org/2009/06/color-correction/)

I also am not willing to use png's just yet as a more than 5% is still in IE 6, and having the page not render properly for 1 in 20 potential customers is not an option. (Turnkey has an interesting article about this: http://www.turnkeylinux.org/blog/png-vs-jpg)

What to do?

Apparently the new version of Firefox is trying to be kind, and manage color correction information for photographers. This information can be contained in the jpg file. Yeah... that's a kind thing to do, but it's messing me up in this case. The article above outlines what you can do for png images. Here's what you do for jpg's:

When saving your jpg files, in Photoshop, be sure to uncheck "Embed Color Profile".

The result:

Warning!

I was working on a chair on the 6th, when I came across this label... for a chair!!!

DO NOT REMOVE

• USE THIS PRODUCT FOR SEATING ONE PERSON AT A TIME.
• DO NOT USE UNLESS ALL MECHANICAL FASTENERS (BOLTS, SCREWS, KNOBS, ETC.) ARE TIGHT.
• ON A MONTHLY BASIS CHECK CASTERS AND ALL MECHANICAL FASTENERS (BOLTS, SCREWS, KNOBS, ETC.) TO BE SURE THEY ARE TIGHT.
• IF PARTS ARE MISSING, BROKEN, DAMAGED OR WORN, STOP USE OF THE PRODUCT UNTIL REPAIRS ARE MADE BY YOUR CHROMCRAFT DEALER USING FACTORY AUTHORIZED PARTS.

FAILURE TO FOLLOW THESE WARNINGS CAN RESULT IN SERIOUS INJURY

I'm sorry but things are really bad if you have to protect consumers from killing themselves on a rickety seat. I so wish we would stop our propensity to sue everyone here in the US, it's embarrassing!

Hording

Do you ever save things for that day... you know when you'll have the perfect thing to use them for. i sometimes keep them for years, tote them around, file them, keep them like precious jewels ... when they're like ... stickers.

Stickers i set you free!!

(sorry it's not on my cool car, or my awesome mtn bike... just think though you'll get to do all that extra advertising traveling from here to there.... way more effective than in my drawer)

Self Portrait... (sort of )

This was my day yesterday... I'm not sure i can explain, but it has a little to do with the little one's homework.. things i love.. clothing that i saw worn... the things i try.. and monsters. Definitely monsters.

Sail away to another world

This postcard was me just playing with the old paints from yesterday. The paints were applied using bubble wrap, and an old toy tire. I then wove the cereal box cardboard with a coke can. The "string" holding it all together on the sides, is old bicycle cable. I was thinking sailing away to another world might be nice today... some place with a tropical breeze.

If only I could

Some days I wish I could attach everything to my little one, so they wouldn't get lost! Mind you I imagine he'd spin round & round with all those things, resulting in quite the Tasmanian devil :-)

Jar Of Dreams

Hopes, Dreams and Wishes for the New Year.