Essentially, I bought this beautiful birdcage at target (I couldn’t resist) when I had come up with the idea to fill it with candles (including a bird one :p) and decorate it with fake flowers to give it a sort of beautiful natural wilderness look. I still am not sure if I’m done with it, I might add another flower at the top, etc… But we’ll see. I like it for now.

Thanks for a great month, everyone!

Farewell until next year — this was a blast!

Phew!

and here is my thing for today:

and today’s theater shot:

As you might imagine, I hate a cluttered desktop, so I keep them relatively simple when I make them for myself. All elements here are public domain, so please download and use this if you like it and have a 1280 x 786 desktop.

And yay! I made it to the end of February!

x-posted

One thing I’ve definitely learned is that I don’t want to waste another year until I decide to be creative again, so what I’m doing right now, for my final T-A-D is setting up my very own WordPress blog, in which I will document work projects (I’m a website designer), personal projects, or, heck, just use to talk about my day and how I’m feeling.

But I’m gonna keep this one much less personal than what I do on MySpace. I’ve gotten way too personal with MySpace since I started that horrid habit in January of 2006. So personal that I really have no choice but to keep my profile private, either that or go back through each of the hundreds of blogs I’ve posted and set private ones to Friends Only. And I seriously do not have the time to devote to that.

So I’m starting fresh on WordPress. I may not necessarily quit posting MySpace blogs, but I really want to shift my blogging habit to a more mature, more customizable, more blog-focused, less profile-focused format. And I’ve heard many people in my industry sing WordPress’s praises for a while now, and since Thing-A-Day, I’ve gotten to know and love the inner workings.

So here I am, to stay! On WordPress.

Now, the only problem is…. my entire blog audience resides on MySpace. Which means, I’m going to have to finagle some readers over to this direction somehow. And, while I’m at it, I’d love to make some new friends who are already on the WordPress train. So if you blog via WordPress, will you connect with me in whatever way WordPress does that? (So far, I only know how to post blogs.)

Now, I absolutely HATE to complete my Thing-A-Day journey with a post that doesn’t even have a picture!!!! So here’s a screenshot of my blog:

Yes, I know I’m a web designer using a default WordPress theme. I just started, K? I’ll design my own theme soon as I figure out where to go to insert custom CSS. (And soon as I have a few free hours to spend in Photoshop & Dreamweaver.)

So won’t you go read my first post? It’s about a website I’ll be working on this weekend. *Sigh.*

amandathomas.wordpress.com

However my necklace came from a place much more personal than cultural diplomacy. My husband tells me that one of the reasons he loves me is that I “make our life beautiful.” He is not talking about my habit of spending evenings in stained pjs, with my hair piled on top of my head, while I eat Chinese food out of the container. He is talking about how I like to fill the room with sunshine, how I point out details in the world that he may not have noticed, how I make pretty jewelry and stationary, and how I love to throw theme parties. He is talking about my approach to life in general, and it is a most lovely compliment.

I love beautiful things. I like to create them. I like to share them. I like to keep them. I must continue to make them without TAD, because beautiful objects inspire me and making things energizes me.

For future musings and creations by yours truly (I have a handful I did not even get to tackle during TAD), check out my new blog Lady Lulu’s Braindump Hut and Craftarium. Although I will not be posting a thing a day, I do intend to keep up the good work. So set up an RSS feed and keep tabs on me.

-Lu

It is a speaker. It acts as a microphone. It goes to an amplifier. It plays through another speaker. It hangs from the ceiling. Sometimes it makes wicked feedback.

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.

Well its over. I never could have predicted or preconceived any of the work I did for this challenge. This was the beauty of thing-a-day for me. The spontaneity that is often suppressed by daily routine and habits has been restored. Thanks to all those who commented on my work and those who inspired and challenged be to pursue new directions. I would like to keep tabs on several artist I’ve come to know from thing-a-day and hope they will continue to keep tabs on me. All of you can always find my work on my website: http://elliottmitchell3d.com/index.php and look for me in a few days on ZBrushcentral.com and CGSociety.org forums. I’ll most likely be posting under my real name, Elliott Mitchell (unfortunately MrT seems to be taken).

Just a heads up, I am looking for freelance work and other employment options as of a few day ago. Please e-mail me if you have any leads, jobs, advice or need of consultation.

One amazing observation I made was the global interest generated by thing-a-day. I have had 1400 visitors to my website since 9 days ago when I put up a counter. I have been randomly sampling visitor’s IP addresses who visit my site after seeing my work on thing-a-day. In the last few days visitors from the following locations have looked at 4 or more pages on my site:

Karlsruhe Germany
Moscow Russia
Kuala Lumpur Malaysia
Curitiba Brazil
Gothenburg Sweden
Dublin Ireland
Osaka Japan
Paris France
Falmouth UK
Chandigarh India
Sarajevo Bosnia and Herzegovina
Seoul South Korea
Lisbon Portugal
Vienna Austria
Tokyo Japan
Macau Macao
Stavanger Norway
MONTREAL CANADA
Vancouver BC
Amsterdam Netherlands
Canberra Australia
Rajkot India
Stockholm Sweden
Hong Kong China
Laxou France
Istanbul Turkey
Athens Greece
Villejui France
Basel Switzerland
New Brunswick Canada
And all from over the USA

“Be well, do good work and keep in touch.” - Garrison Keillor

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 worked some on my Inspirational Reminders book - printing out some words I want to have in the book to match some sayings I bought at Paper Source. To continue the color them of turquoise and red, the only colors in the book will be those two so I will print this again in red ink on my color printer at work - the black and white version in the photo below.

I want to include a rotating list of creative projects to work on so decided to use photo corners for the list so I can switch it out as I finish things. When I went to use the white ones I have on hand, however, my artists persnickety nature kicked in and they just wont do. I will pick up either red or turquoise photo corners this weekend. I did cut some red and turquoise nice paper to have stored in a little envelope for future lists.

With this paper corner decision, I think I will also use the photo corners to mount the sayings instead of glue as well so I can have a whole set of sayings and switch them out as desired. I like the idea of an evolving book that changes over time and with my mood. By the way, there is also an imagine saying which was hiding under the book. A stagnant book would just become a display; this way, I think I will come back to it often to assess what I need to see and hear from myself and change it at any time.

Lastly, I received my foil paper for the black Magritte book just now. I haven’t had a chance to open it yet but I am very excited to explore it. I have some more black books on order so that will be a project for March.

It didn’t seem like I did much today but in actuality, lots of creative plans were made, some actual work was done and as Thing a Day draws to a close, I feel like I have several projects in the works I am looking forward to completing.

I also turned my winter time display

into a spring time one.

(Which I just realize continue the color theme of red and blue…)

I completed my first metalsmithing project and I’ve learned that it is quite
the patient craft. I think I’m addicted. This piece is actually two pieces,
one on top of another, soldered together but with plenty of filing and
sanding it’s seamless.

If you notice my end design is flipped. My teacher kept flipping it and
when he went to demo soldering he started it on the wrong side so I went
with it.

When I returned to the bus, the driver asked what I had taken a picture of.  When I told him, he said “there’s a dark history to that place; that’s where the ‘beltway snipers’ got their guns.”

When I got home, I looked it up, and, yup, it’s apparently true. Shiver.

Stop the war and all the other nonsense, now!!

In purple for mom.

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.

Today was the first day I did not know exactly what I would create when I woke up. I had some ideas, of course, but nothing planned. I thought about it a bit and decided I would make a book for me - one to fill with reminders of who I am, all I considered and created this month and place it somewhere where I would see it often. I think, in the end, I will bring it into work to place on my desk as a reminder of who I am while I work at a job that is interesting and creative but certainly not exactly what I’d like to be doing all day.

I used the turquoise Japanese paper again for because it is by far my favorite (and my new found resolution is to stop hording my most favorite things but to use them and get joy from beholding them).  It is an an accordion book but without a ribbon (too cutesy for me). The photo seems a bit boring but once it’s filled, it will be a wonderful object of inspirational reminders.

This would have been posted much earlier but I have been having all sorts of telecommunications issues. Is Mercury retrograde (governor of all this electronic and communications)?

via mefi, an interesting and simple to make optical illusion.

Instructions: stare at the black dot, don’t look elsewhere. After 20 seconds the image will shift. If you don’t shift your gaze it will appear to be in colour, but as soon as you look somewhere else it goes back to black and white.

The instructions are very straightforward.

1. open the original colour image in photoshop and create a duplicate layer
2. select the bottom layer and do image –> adjustment –> desaturate
3. pick a 50% grey from the colour palette
4. select the top layer and do edit –> fill; use foreground colour, mode = luminosity; opacity = 100%
5. still on the top layer image –> adjustment –> invert
6. make a new layer and draw a black dot in the middle
7. save as jpg
8. delete bottom layer and save as a second jpg
9. either create an animated gif or follow instructions to make a mouseover effect

I did an even more fun standalone page where you can control how long you look at the negative image, then you mouseover to flip to the actual image.

I wanted to redo a still life I created as a demo for an intro Maya course I taught last semester. I used my own original photographic textures for the wood and background. I hand painted the textures for the fruit in Zbrush and Photoshop. I modeled the wood block and fruit in 3D. The scene is lit from the background image.