| Serious Cat is Serious |
[May. 20th, 2013|08:52 am]
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My parent's cat, Princess! She blends in extremely well with dirt and is pretty no-nonsense.
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| The Fruits of My Labour |
[May. 10th, 2013|10:41 pm]
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It's been two weeks since my last Saturday class and I really can't believe it's over. It was crazy intense and I received a B+. For our final project and presentation, we had to pick a movie and create a prop for it - a weapon, vehicle or jewellery. I chose to design a set for Kim Basinger character in L.A. Confidential :
It was pretty straightforward - I made a ring, necklace and earrings based on mashing two Elizabeth Taylor designs. They turned out awesome in rendering. Everyone had to make a seven minute presentation and I was ready to puke butterflies all day! I thought we would get out by noon, but it took all day to critique everyone's designs and ask questions. It was great to see how everyone had progressed since January - Cam was able to bring out the talent in us all. Most of the props were jewellery, but one guy made a suit of futuristic armor and another made a spaceship that looked like a bird. I have so much more to tell you about this class - but for now I'm just going to enjoy doing other things for a bit first!
Once I had the heart shape, I could apply it to all the pieces. The ring was the easiest. The heart is upside down because it symbolizes the character of Lynn Bracken as being a damsel in distress.
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| From Idea to Reality! |
[May. 7th, 2013|09:28 pm]
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So, I had been very good at keeping my New Year's Resolution, but - I have to confess - after just over four months, I broke it. But, dear reader, I did so unwillingly and joylessly. I swear!
My rapid prototyping teacher, Cam, wrangled a deal with the local polytechnic, SAIT, to 3D print objects on their big fancy Fortus machine back in March. I decided to make a pin, as rendered below, in copper finish.
Cam suggested that adding the pin hardware on the back would be a great use of real world application, so I researched double stem pinbacks and designed one. Then the TA, Stephanie, had an easier idea - add some pegs onto the back that would fit a pinback. I could attach the pinback by using a heat gun to melt the pegs. Just one problem...I could not find a pinback around the house. I looked through every inch of stash and had to face the awful truth. There really isn't any other place to buy craft supplies except maybe a dollar store or a Wal-Mart. It's been at least ten years since both Lewiscraft and Crafts Canada closed down; I miss both. I would have to go to Michaels.
I made peace with the decision and bravely walked through those automtic double doors, inhaling the store's strange and long forgotten perfume (seriously, all the stores smell the same). I made a beeline for jewellery supplies, found the gold pinbacks, breezed through the scrapbooking supplies (just to see what was new) and headed for the checkout with just the pinbacks. I was gripped by anxiety; it seemed like everything was on sale! But I held firm and let out a sigh of relief when I stepped outside.
Time passed...and then the big day came, when Stephanie walked into class with a box of our pieces, all carefully wrapped in paper towels:
The best project was a ball bearing sort of bracelet that had free moving parts and something that looked like a Kinder Egg toy with gears. All the pieces were fragile, however. SAIT provided the invoice and my pin cost $1.77 to make. My piece was the flattest and it still had a slightly tiered look. The scaling went awry on one person's project and her bracelet ended up being teeny tiny instead of wearable. The pin back didn't fit on mine - I think there was a slight scaling problem too, so breaking my New Year's Resolution was all for naught! Still quite pleased with it though. Now I can send the file away to a place like Shapeways and have them make it in plastic or metal. |
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| Signs (Or Not) of a Stroke |
[Apr. 1st, 2013|07:31 pm]
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| [ | mood |
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It seems appropriate that my dad had a minor stroke during Heart and Stroke Month. The crazy thing is that he didn't know he even had one. The five signs of stroke, as illustrated below are:
Guess which one my dad had? Dizziness, which proved to be the least useful symptom for someone that often feels dizzy. He even drove himself to the walk in doctor a couple of days after and it went undetected then. A couple of days after that, he went to the emergency room and a CAT scan showed the stroke. Dad was up and chatting and acting very normal except for feeling a little tired.
It took a whole month, but dad came home last week. It was so exhausting to go from devastated to optimistic in the span of five days, and it was a long trip to see him in the hospital. He needed a couple of weeks of therapy and the excellent staff at the Foothills hospital did a great job of looking after a grumpy old man :-) A side benefit is that dad couldn't smoke in the hospital, so fingers crossed that he can give up smoking for good! |
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| My Saturday Time Suck |
[Mar. 24th, 2013|12:37 pm]
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I figure by the time I get around writing about my Saturday class, I will have run out of Saturdays, but I'm looking forward to it. The rapid prototyping class to be so intense, taking up all my time and mental space. Invariably I always do something that causes the teacher to say "How did you do that?!" in a generally bad way :D I always seem to come up with the wrong solution. We're using a software package called Rhinoceros.
Here are some of the projects from the beginning. The first thing we learned was how to revolve a line into an object. Basically a line made from the object's profile can be revolved 360 degrees to make a whole object. Vases, glasses, bottles...all very easy to make! All you need to make the martini glass on the left is the profile line on the right. It's true! Stay tuned for more stuff :-)
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| Valentines for Valentines |
[Feb. 16th, 2013|09:20 am]
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It is so nice to be able to do normal people things today - thanks to the long weekend here in Alberta, I don't have class, which means I have time to catch up on things (it doesn't mean no homework though, woe!)
A couple of weeks ago I had a great idea - send Valentine's to my friends! But like most of my great ideas, the turnaround time was a little short, so I didn't send as many as I would have liked. It was just so nice to be able to make something. I was in a hurry to get them out the door, so I only had time to take cell phone photos. I made two of each of the following from the crafty stash:
A budgiegram, with a little note :-)
"You're the purr-fect friend!"
My favourite - "It's so tweet...that you like me!" with a Facebook thumbs up on the inside :-)
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| New Year's Cards for 2013 |
[Jan. 31st, 2013|09:50 pm]
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I just have to get this up with a January date stamp on it :-) For the second time, I have sent out New Year's cards instead of Christmas cards...mostly because I fail miserably at doing Christmas cards. I figure it's always nice to get something in the new year anyway. Now that I'm checking the blog archive, I realized I didn't post pictures of the 2012 cards. Gee! That's what I get for putting Muffin in charge of things. Here's what they looked like:
I have a Pazzles craft cutter, and after fiddling around with the text for about an hour, I found a font that I liked. The tricky part was cutting them out of the glitter cardstock. It took a while to find the right pressure - the cardstock was actually heavyweight cardboard and the chipboard setting was too light. But once that was done, it was just a little bit of glue before they were off to friends and family. If you have a Pazzles, I have posted the cutting file for sale on Artfire. Just $2 gets you cutting right away.
The pink one is the only one that was glittered on plain paper. Glittering took a surprising long time, so I quickly abandoned that. Not that the glitter cardstock was much better - glitter still got everywhere :-D Things were glittered for days afterwards. |
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| So far, so good for 2013... |
[Jan. 19th, 2013|05:46 pm]
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Mid-month already! My motto this year is going to be "less is more" mostly. Perhaps it was because I finally had a chance to chuck a lot of stuff during Christmas break. But, when you think about it, most resolutions centre around doing more.
Part of that reduction has been unsubscribing to a bunch of mailing lists. Less temptation, less email, more time :-) I also cancelled a few web subscriptions that I wasn't using either. Still hanging on to my gym membership though! There's a World Health near ACAD and I have been good about hitting the treadmill after class on Saturdays.
This might be a little difficult, but I'm going to try and stay out of Michaels too! I spend a lot there :) My husband is skeptical and so are my guy friends. It's an expensive love affair. But I have so much stash, and I'm with Craftymoose in finding more ways to use it up.
I had a bit of a shocker when I sat down to do the 2013 budget. I discovered we were paying way too much in banking fees and every extra transaction over the limit was costing $1. I'm embarrassed to say just how much that totalled, but it would have been a couple of nice dinners out :S
I also made up some resolutions for Muffin too!
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| Happy New Year! |
[Jan. 4th, 2013|09:25 pm]
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We wound down the old year with friends. Each year I like to buy them a new board game for Christmas, and this year it was Temple Run: Danger Chase. If it sounds familiar, it's because it's just one of the many smartphone games that have made the jump offline. I don't think it really comes through that I'm a huge board game geek, and enjoy playing games like Settlers of Catan and Dominion. Sure beats Monopoly :-D
I couldn't find many reviews for it online, so I hemmed and hawed about purchasing it, especially since it was $25. The good news is that it is a fun speed based game for four people. It's essentially a dice game, kind of like Farkle without the points. Players roll six dice and can re-roll before the tiki timer runs out. The player not only moves his pawn, but the demon monkey as well. You start and stop the tiki timer at the same time you start and finish your rolls; you can run out of time when you hear the monkey scream.
The game board is made of five square panels that get flipped and moved to create a continuous path - very clever! We played it on easy mode and found it a little tough at first. The trouble is, it's too easy to die. If the monkey doesn't catch up to you, chances are you'll run into an obstacle. Each game we played lasted less than 10 minutes. I think a longer play time would be far more satisfying - there's lots of room for house rules here!
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| New Picture - DJ Feis-T |
[Dec. 23rd, 2012|06:51 am]
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Possibly the last picture of the year - inspired by a game of Draw Something, DJ Feis-T has all the grooves to make you move! Our budgie, Feisty, loves to mix and match everything he hears. An excellent mimic, he loves imitating Muffin, sparrows, robins, dripping water, the toy budgie and video game sounds and mashing them up. I started on this back in July, but only had the time to finish now.
December 22, 2012 ::: PanPastel, Pencil Crayon and CorelDraw ::: 9x12"
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