I’ve been re-reading the Lord of the Rings and it has got me to thinking about traveling and maps and my own life journey. I have taken all of the countries and states I’ve lived in for a significant amount of time and traced them. The nice thing about tracing paper is that you can overlay them on top of each other and see your visual history all together. Granted, it doesn’t make as much sense to most people as when seen individually, but somehow it helps me make sense of my past.
I like the old-fashioned method of bartering. There’s just something satisfying about a hand-made exchange of goods that each party has put real effort into that swiping a plastic card can never match. You tend to put more of your soul into something if you know the person who is going to receive it in the end. It keeps you more honest, it makes you more impassioned and desirous to do your work well. You get to witness the entire process- the expression on the other person’s face when they see your work and you receive theirs.
In an effort to be a part of this process I asked if anyone I knew could sew. I can’t even thread a needle, and a dress I have needed a bit of stitching. A friend offered her services and in return I created a card for her. It was wonderful to be able to personalize it to her needs and to see her gasp when I handed it to her. It was just wonderful. I hope to be able to barter again very soon.
Here’s the card I made.
I am obsessed with the sea and all things nautical. Here’s another image I found this week that feeds that obsession.
My sister-in-law, Chelsea, is hosting an alternative gift fair later this month. It is to create a Christmas shopping party for her community with products that either directly or indirectly work in and fight against world-wide sex trafficking and human slavery. You can read more about what she is passionate for here. Anyway she asked me to create some cards to sell at the fair. I created 48 unique cards. Here are the results.
I made some valentines cards for friends and families. See the full set below:
Love these ads from the art of reuse blog. Read their blog here: blog.theartofreuse.ca. As far as I can tell it is a thrift store, a blog, a commnity and so much more.
I made some icons at work for one of our clients- the Make an Impact Schools challenge. There are 9 challenges they present to help people make an impact and be more green. My job was to come up with icons to match. I sketched some ideas, then after finalizing the ideas, drew better versions of them. After scanning them in I tweaked them a bit, but they still retain the hand drawn look and feel. Here’s the list:
Can you guess which icons stands for what?
My co-worker also thought that it would be a cool tshirt:
I liked this project because it reminded me of the work of one of my favorite illustrators, Kate Bingaman Burt.
These are my two favorite art pieces of the week. I would totally buy this shirt if it wasn’t $18 and if the ship wasn’t placed in such an awkward position. I also really enjoyed this beautiful art print of the peacock.
I attended DC week today. To learn more go to their website: DC Week. There were a lot of different keynotes and lectures. Some were great! Others were a little….interesting.
One of my favorites was the keynote “future media trends” with David Shing from AOL. I took studious notes:
Then there was the Creative direction panel. A little more meander-y IMO. There were all these gobo lights of the sponors on the wall which somehow worked their way into my notes…
I also really enjoyed the social media and analytics panel session. I did take notes, but also did a few doodles:
And finally there was an HTML5 panel that I thought was good, but maybe a little too over my head. However, I did enjoy drawing the multiple outlines of my hands from two lights projecting onto my paper. I added some color in photoshop to show you an idea of what it looked like:
Another winner from Fab.com. We all need something in the pocket department.
