Oh man, I could officially be the last poster for thing-a-day this year. That’s either highly embarrassing or exciting. A little bit of both. Between being sick and visiting my friend in Chicago, I’ve been far behind with catching up on thing-a-day (I read them ALL and refuse to let me post my catch-up things until I’ve read them all). But, I finally finished reading them all this morning, and so my last few things…

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.

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!

Folks liked this last graph, so I updated it with the latest stats:

Farewell until next year — this was a blast!

Phew!

wish good beginnings to all creative spirits!

and here is my thing for today:

and today’s theater shot:

Because I am still reading Jane Austen (five novels down, one to go!) and I am a fickle creature, I got tired of my old Jane Austen desktop that I made earlier this month and replaced it with a much simpler one.

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

Wow! I am SO glad I participated in Thing-A-Day this year. It was a whole new way of challenging myself, and I feel like I have gained a lot out of it!

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

Well, I did it. I made a thing a day for 29 days. I decided to sign off from TAD2 with another shrinky-dink-magnifying necklace. The charm says “create beauty,” and has a bird carrying an olive branch. I included the bird because I had been thinking about “cultural diplomacy” today. I heard the term being used to describe what the New York Philharmonic’s performance in North Korea was all about. I like the idea of vastly different communities coming together around cultural activities (i.e. art) in a way that fosters constructive conversations - who wouldn’t. These conversations may ultimately lead to peaceful solutions to foreign policy problems. The whole world could use some of that these days.

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

I’ve recently gotten into bhangra (an Indian style of music) and today while listening to it I was finally able to finish this painting. It took me forever to figure out what to do with it. I’m kinda bummed thing-a-day is over. I’ve been so inspired by all of you! Who’s up for 365 thing-a-days? I had this awesome plan to make a cool animated gif for my last thing but I couldn’t figure out a way to set up my cheap camera in a steady spot to take pics at the same angle every time. Maybe next year

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.

This last piece was inspired by the results of the last photoshop tutorial I did for yesterday’s post, some of the other artist’s work I’ve seen on thing-a-day, a hand one of my students modeled and my own desire to make new art. Everything was modeled in 3D using Maya and Zbrush and rendered in Zbrush. The shader / material is courtesy of Arran Lewis. No photoshop manipulations although it looks like I did.

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

today i copied craftykeg and made a haramaki/tummy warmer:

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!

I went back through the things I’ve made during the month, and decided that the ones I liked best were the ones involving rabbits or books in some way. And then I thought back over the posts by others that I’ve enjoyed the most, and realised they generally involved rabbits, books, and small things. So, for my last thing I remade the rabbit I created for Thing 4, and made a small rabbit reading a small book:)

Another picture for size reference:

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

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 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…)

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.

No, I haven’t forgotten that this is a leap year, but I have a different project in mind for tomorrow.

…I know, but here’s the evidence.  We pulled into the Tacoma bus station, our last stop before Seattle, and I had to run one block back to take this photo before the bus pulled away.  Perhaps it is ironic that this city is named after the longtime residents before Europeans arrived (it is also, incidentally the true name of the nearby mountain, that the Europeans renamed “Rainier”); this gun store display seems like the epitome of backwards, stereotyped thinking.

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!!

I reworked my thing from the other day into a necklace. I like it much better. As much as I would like to keep it, it will end up for sale in my etsy shop, rubyzu. The necklace part is reticulated quartz in little diamond and rod shapes.