Thanks for a great month, everyone!

Phew!

Following on yesterday’s theme, Russian poster style mashup with aquatic life…

All I was able to do today was to get the yellow cross weave in.

Well, it’s the last day and my last post so I decided to end it with another gift card holder adorned with three sparrows circling.  I choose the design because I wanted to do something with sparrows, but I wanted to do something different.  They’re circling because they’re imitating the famous recycling symbol with the three arrows.  They’re also a symbol of all that I’ve learned from thing-a-day, the most important lesson for me being the reuse of existing materials to create something brand new and seeking out already recycled materials for craft.  For example, the back of the gift card holder is made of ecospun felt made from recycled plastic bottles. I never would have noticed or sought out using this type of material had it not been for my experiences this month and the other posts from others who’ve crafted with recycled materials. I’m inspired and viewing the world with new eyes. As I look at something I might have simply tossed away, my mind flurries with ideas of ways to reuse it.

Thing-a-day changed my life for the better. I’m glad I got to experience it with all of you. I’ve learned so much everyday. So many posts, so many ideas, and everyone is inspiring

I’m even planning on opening a shop on etsy in late March. Hope to see more of you there.

Time spent: about an hour.

Finally! Figured out how to print nicely and cut in a straight line

Not-so-shameless plug (hey, you’ve been asking!): These are freshly posted in my etsy, if you’re interested.
(molliefabric.etsy.com)

I can’t believe this is the last day! I’ll post one more thing tonight (this post is for yesterday).
Thing-a-day really got me goin! I’m feeling so… useful haha

Seriously though, is there a year round community for this? I want to keep going. I guess I could start my own blog, but having a community to interact with would be way better! Does anyone know? I cant find any info about it on the thing-a-day site.

mine is very simple, not like hers with the cute pattern, but i like it still and am going to wear it today. i didn’t follow the instructions to the tutorial closely and chose to make mine single layered instead of double (basically, i just sewed 2 pieces of jersey together on each side)—i liked craftykeg’s idea of tapering for the waist and did the same. i like to layer my tshirts, so i think of this as an extra tshirt layer that i can interchange easily. i want to make more—with patterns and designs, i also think it’d be cute to add lace or a lettuce/rolled edge using a serger. i also might want to add long sleeve arms to a short sleeve tee following the same idea.

i also wasn’t entirely happy with my results from yesterday, so i re-worked one of them (the first one):

yesterday	today

i tried to make the vignette softer, but i didn’t really notice until afterwards that i probably could have softened it even more and made it lighter. i also backed off on the cyan/blue color tinting because i thought it was too heavy handed yesterday. similarly for the second photo, i took out the color tinting effect entirely.

i have really enjoyed participating in thing.a.day and am sad that today is the last day. there are some projects that i’d hope to do/do more of this past month that i didn’t get to, so i’ll try to do them in the near future:

• re-learn illustrator
• make tshirts from illustrator and/other designs—try iron-on transfers or diy silkscreening
• needle felting
• re-learn crochet
• crochet hyperbolic planes and sea slugs
• knit squares for a blanket
• make more stuffed animals/creatures

i’ll probably keep documenting my projects on my blog (probably not every day though) and look forward to next year!

Another picture for size reference:

And that’s me done. Thanks everyone, it’s been fun!

i like russian poster style, and lately i’ve been wanting to draw a giant squid, because someone at work had a cool sweatshirt with some on it. but i opted for an octopus, and decided to mash it up with the russian poster thing. i’m not sure if the green takes away from the russian feeling, but i like the result anyway. long live the sharpie! i also like that octopusses have so many legs, and the russian text on the drawing translates into “Our strengths are uncountable.”

and so they are…

before	after

the vignetting effect on the top photo is too prominent/hard, i was going to add black bars to crop to cinemascope or re-do the vignette. i also saved non-cyan/blue tinted images that can be viewed here.

My first request:

Becca Elizabeth    says:

I.love.this.
Can you make me one, too? Green? Pretty please?

s

(Click for larger)

This is a map of the place I always go in my dreams (not an island, just not fully colored yet).
Just playing with coloring it in here.

Also, I:
Made a shrinky dink:

based on a Mucha… it got weird and cloudy around the edges, not sure why. Also, it was a circle but it got deformed so i tried to cut it with scissors after it was shrunk… and it splintered a lot.  I’ll try again.

ALSO, I Printed owl cards!
I’ll take em to school to use the super duper paper cutter tomorrow.
They’re black prints of drawings on cream cardstock. Does that sound ok, or too plain? I’m kind of thinking about printing on fancier paper, then applying that to cardstock. Hmmmph. Today was one of those days where you get really caught up in all the possibilities and it starts to get in the way of actually moving forward.
Worked a lot on an animation, but fruitlessly, as I could not get the *&%#ing turbulence feild to effect the grass. It was probably just a glitch, but I lost patience. Yarg.

Only 2 more days after this? Is there a year long thing-a-day? This has been so satisfying.

edit: thought I’d add the original pic

I made a decoration for my car! I found this clear cd packaged with a bunch of recordable/rewriteable cds I bought. I’m not sure why they felt compelled to include a clear cd, but I decided I might as well do something creative with it. I used sharpies, elastic wire, stickers, and a quote from On the Road< by Jack Kerouac.

Dangling against my wall.

So you can see it better, against paper.

“…because the only people that interest me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones that never yearn or say a commonplace thing… but burn, burn, burn like roman candles across the night.” - Jack Kerouac

With the assistance of a friend (i.e. her helping me find a tutorial for my lj), I managed to add a lovely header onto my livejournal. It was not created by moi, because I have no graphical skills. Rather, this was something I had been putting off for awhile, so I’m glad to have it done now.

Day #24: Fried Rice with Bok Choy and Scallions

Day #25: Hummus and Pita Chips

Day #26: Steamed Kale with Miso-Tahini Dressing

Day #27: Commonplace Notebook

(Traditionally, a commonplace book is a notebook where people copy reading quotations as they come across them. This, however, is a book where I’m hand-writing my favorite poems, and perhaps some prose quotes, so I can carry them around with me.)

x-posted

* i have edited the gold look from earlier today based on feedback and the fact that i didn’t like what i made earlier… i think it definitely works better but still doesn’t look quite gold-like…

before	after

next i composited a pink cocktail umbrella into a photo that was taken of a friend of mine:

before	after

he just loves pink. i might even add a cherry/pineapple to the drink if i have time…

Guess what I’m busy doing. 

This is actually an image I’m using in a powerpoint presentation- I added the cussin just for you, though.

Other doodles:
<– Mole men in the office
<– Large owls
<–Small owls
<– Gerbil powered solar system model

And this is my 3d assignment for tomorrow, playing with dynamics. It’s nothin’ special, but it’s not a big assignment:

YouTube Yay video link

Thing 25 was these envelopes. I made the template out of cardboard from a pizza box:)

I have another project in mind, for which I’ll need around 30 small envelopes - these were fun to make, and I’m sure they’ll come in handy, but after making these 6 I decided to just buy the 30 I need if said project happens.

Thing 26 is my current favourite; journal pages in my brand new journal. I’ve run across a few people doing this while following links from here, and found some wonderful pages on Flickr, and I think I’m going to give Page-a-day a shot once Thing-a-day is over, I really like doing something creative every day and I’ll miss Thing-a-day!

I’m happy with this for a first try - does anyone have favourite journalling groups on Flickr or Livejournal to recommend?

And Thing 27 - an Origami box. With rabbits this time!

While I waited I made some more shrinky dinks:

a black cat with big yellow eyes (in honor of my ever-so-curious feline companion Phoebe who modeled for me), an owl and a friendly heart.