Thing-a-day.com

The last four days of the month went to hell in a hand basket as far as TAD went, when I learned on Tuesday evening that our campus would be the site of a presidential campaign rally. Since I’m our campus pr/media relations person (and a one-person office at that), things started getting zooey on Wednesday and then became exponentially more so on Thursday and Friday.

From a pr perspective, it was really, really cool to watch how this whole thing came together with very short lead time, and even more cool to be able to help — working with the campaign advance staff, the Secret Service agents, etc. When someone says to me, “This is the end result we need to achieve. Can I just hand this over to you?” I am really good at (and really enjoy) the kind of problem solving and creativity that sometimes needs to be employed.

At the end of the evening, the handful of us campus staff folks who had busted our butts to handle all the logistical issues particular to our site were whisked backstage for a meet/greet/photo op. That was very cool, too.

But the price I paid for all that coolness was zippo production for TAD.

TAD has been a great adventure. It was good to push myself. I became rather obsessive about checking TAD to see everyone’s stuff. There are some folks whose work I’ve really enjoyed that I need to go back and comment on. Thanks, twicks, for getting Dopers on board!

I guess I could reword and repost it here, but why don’t you just head over to my own blog and read my little re-cap and requiem for Thing-a-Day 2008. And you can find out what the hell this thing is:

Thanks for a great month, everyone!

Phew!

My goal for the thing-a-day project was to create something every day of the month, or to spend 20-30 minutes a day working on something creative. Some of my projects were familiar things (cooking, writing, taking pictures to illustrate my blog); some were not daily events (making cards, organizing my new cabinet, making other things with paper, and my bulletin board at school). Some days, it was hard to get in a creative place and some days it was easy. I liked the challenge of getting myself to think in a new way, though sometimes the daily requirement created anxiety…..not exactly conducive to creativity. But, as I predicted when I started out on the 1st of the month, being mindful of creativity is a very good thing for me and even without the thing-a-day element, well worth holding on to.

well, a work day in the life.

actual life got in the way and I couldn’t finish the full day.

http://sh1ft.org/adayinthelife/

this project, chronicling leap day, seemed like the perfect way to end thing-a-day

thanks for the fun!

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.

It is a rare sunny morning in Seattle’s winter, and I biked the three blocks to take a picture I’ve been wanting to take for a while now: Chief Seattle illuminated by sunlight. I took two pictures, and I like them both for different reasons.  The business in the background on the left image announces “Immigration & Citizenship Law”, the tracks behind are the monorail; the image on the right is with the space needle in the background.

A lot of people are expressing sadness that the month is over. It has indeed been an incredibly exhilarating experience. But I slowly came to realize the following over the last days:

The thing is actually just training wheels for truly living and creating and noticing and sharing. That is why it has to end today!

Thanks everyone!

This is dated the 29th, but it is actually my thing for the 28th (it was just after midnight when I put the date in I guess). We get one more last one tomorrow.

I helped my friend pack her things…

I began the day all ready to make more sunprints - this time using the leaves from the tree where I got the flowers and pods last time. I have decided a set of 3 window panes would make a lovely display and was thrilled to have /easily/ found more cyanotype paper yesterday. I was waiting a bit until the sun was in a similar place in the sky to ensure the light throw would be similar, then the cable guy came to fix my internet and then the fog rolled in. Foiled!

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…)

JT and I sat down for supper tonight with a sheet of paper and we made a list of the things we’d like to do for spring break.  Last year, we spent a week at Disneyworld and that’s hard to top.  But the beauty of being 8 is well, that you are 8 and so he was full of ideas.  So far, we’ve agreed to go see a movie at the theater in town (the one that serves pizza for the kids and beer for the mamas); invite a friend for a sleepover; spend a day playing games on the Wii (read:  Mama takes a drubbing); rent a Davy Crocket movie; and a visit to the Natural History museum in New York.

It’s nice to have a plan…….now I just hope we can score some warm weather.

Made labels for my Spice Rack.  I know this is a silly one - especially since I printed them on my computer, but I did figure out how to feed odd size paper into my laser printer - I really have never tried this before and it opens up a lot of possibilities I hadn’t thought of before

And a close up -

It’s well worth it for me to dock at the Stanford Mother Ship every now & then.  One of the great advantages is that one can get a jumpstart on spring.  Another is that, as a Stanford employee, one of my benefits is a yearly transit pass that allows me to ride the Monterey/Salinas (MST), San Jose (VTA) and Caltrain transit systems for FREE.  Thus, having secured said pass at Stanford 2 weeks ago, I started my return voyage to Seattle yesterday, taking the route 55 to San Jose and then the Caltrain to SF without spending a penny for my fare.  Then, we hopped on the N/Judah trolley line at the Caltrain station and got off at 7th Avenue in Sunset to get what I consider the best burrito in San Fran: the sauteed mushroom burrito with black beans and rice at L’Avenida. I know this is a fairly bold claim (I encourage any readers to post their personal fave burrito joint in the comment section here). But the mushrooms are sauteed to order, and the balance with the other ingredients as well as the delectable salsas are surely difficult to top. Since our N driver gave us a phat transfer time of 3 hours, I did the return trip on the same $1.50 fare, thus making my grand total $10 from Monterey to SF, with side trip for burrito con cerveza…tip was extra

From left to right: a picture I got just in time before Beatriz ate the last bite; the required elements for the trip and the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow; two photos crossing the bay bridge on the greyhound heading North, two hours later. Adios California!

I made another scarf, thicker (on purpose) and slight shorter (oops) than last time:

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.

February 26th

I can’t post what I did here because I’m not sure if it’s okay to post an essay from my pending application on the internet. So I want to play it safe. I submitted my college application for Colorado College (as a transfer applicant) on the 26th, and so decided to use that for my thing-a-day considering I had just finished edits on several rather creative essays that were required for it. Basically, I was asked to detail and design my own class. I had a lot of fun doing it. Those on the lj thingaday08 community should be able to see it though, friends locked.

February 23rd

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.

Doodling a character for an animation. Little Indian girl, still needs a name.


(I’m rusty with people and faces, so this was a good exercise)

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:
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