Stinkerpants

A Blurb book for every year

May 25, 2011 in Personal Projects • Displaying Memories • DIY and Crafts • How To

Sometimes when I tell people about the things I do -- my little projects and such -- I realize that I sound like a complete and total crazy person. Normal people have better things to do with their time than think up ways to redecorate their not-even-a-year-old baby's room.

By-the-week Growth Onesies for Babies

April 1, 2011 in Parenthood & Life • Projects & Tips for Babies & Kids • Personal Projects • Displaying Memories

I've received a lot of emails and Facebook messages from people who'd like to know where I bought the weekly onesies I pose Charlie in every week.  So many, in fact, that I think it's about time I write a blog post about it.

They say no idea is original, and while I don't agree with that (as I'm sure most creative types wouldn't), I will say that this idea was 100% snagged from someone else.  So instead of giving you a step-by-step tutorial, I'll say this:

• They aren't onesies, actually! It's the same white onesie every week, with a new number photoshopped on.
• The idea came from Young House Love, and I put my own twist on it by posing her on the same quilt every week (her head used to be smaller than one of the circles!) and adding weekly highlights.
• The lovely bloggers over at Young House Love wrote a tutorial about how they did it for their baby, and that tutorial can be found here.
• This has been a really, really fun project. I haven't skipped a week since I started (which unfortunately wasn't until she was four weeks old), and I plan to stop when she's a year. At that point, I'm going to make a big Blurb coffee table book for us, plus one for her godmother and each set of grandparents.

Seriously, this project has been super fun - I highly recommend you try it yourself! And if you don't think you have the dedication to do it every week, try it for each month. :)

Moo Card Photo Collage, a la Stinkerpants

May 14, 2009 in Personal Projects • Displaying Memories

{ photo credit }

Last night my friend Lisa introduced me to Sabine Scherer (a great photographer) and Stacy McCainLisa’s business cards.  If you’re still with me after all that, I’ll get to my point:  Lisa (the second one, haha) uses Moo Cards for business cards.  These are fantastic little cards, especially if you’re an artist or a photographer.  They’re an odd size–about half the size of a regular business card–and the colors are really bright and high quality.  They’re fun to use as business cards because people always comment on the odd size. (check out her event planning website! I love the circus logo!), and we got talking about our other friend

I have some moo cards, but I don’t use them as business cards (I’m more of a “let’s get 1000 business cards for $50″ kind of girl).  While we were talking, I told these lovely ladies that I’d share the project I did with Moo cards–so here it is!  :)

I first heard about Moo cards a couple of years ago through Flickr.  They were doing a giveaway because they’d just launched.  When I got my trial pack I totally wanted more; something about their size made me want to collect them (and people totally do!).

What to do with them, though?   I decided to create a piece of artwork for our living room, which showcased the 18-day cross-country roadtrip that Y and I took in 2006 (Ohio to Maine to San Francisco).

This piece of artwork took a bit of planning and was kind of a headache, but I think it turned out really well–definitely worth the effort.  It’s a conversation piece, too, which is always fun:

This big collage is made up of 100 little Moo Cards–some are horizontal and some are vertical.

Even closer up:

As you can imagine, figuring out how to arrange 100 cards so they end up forming a perfect rectangle is kind of frustrating.  It’s like a puzzle.

But I already did all the work, so I thought I’d make a chart for you guys, just in case you want to do this yourself:

The collage uses 100 moo cards (make sure you order the mini cards).  When picking your photos, make sure to orient 60 of them horizontally and 40 of them vertically.  I haven’t ordered from them in years, but I recall that it was very easy, because we already had our photos on Flickr.

I (obviously) made a giant collage (finished size was 27″ wide by 11″ high), but if you wanted to, you could split this in half to make two, or in thirds to make three separate pieces.

Framing tip:

The most frustrating part of this project wasn’t actually the arranging of the cards: it was getting a mat cut for the frame.  I went to Aaron Brothers and asked for a mat, which they had to cut five times.  Apparently, mats are usually made so they cut off 1/4″ of the artwork all the way around.  Doing that for this project, though, looks really bad–you miss half of a moo card if you take away 1/4″ inch of it.   Make sure to specify that the measurements you provide (27″ x 11″) are the exact measurements of the part you want cut out.

I’m not sure what any of you will do with this, but maybe it’ll inspire you to make a piece of art out of your wedding photos!

(And to Sabine and Stacy–it was great to meet you last night!)

Sentimental Art

November 12, 2008 in Personal Projects • Displaying Memories

Random story: At my bridal shower, we played a really fun version of 20 Questions, during which we watched Y reveal the 20 Answers on a videotape.  I proved that I am a very good listener by answering most of the questions correctly.  One of the ones I got wrong, though, had to do with Y’s childhood pastimes.  I was asked what Y’s first collection was.  The answer (I thought) was very clearly “baseball cards,” as we’d discussed his baseball card collection numerous times and I’d even seen them.  The correct answer, however, was “stamps.”

Stamps?! I had never heard Y so much as mention a stamp, let alone reveal that he had collected them.

I (obviously) got that question wrong, but to this day maintain that he never told me he collected stamps.  Thus, not my fault.

One day, I was looking through the loads of crap we have in our storage area (I am forever trying to clean that place out) when I ran across a box of–you guessed it–stamps.  I showed Y and asked him what he planned to do with them.  He said they weren’t worth anything, so I should throw them out.

The man knows me well.  I don’t like keeping useless crap around, and I will almost always make a good case for deeming items (including my own items) “useless” or “crap,” or sometimes a combination of the two.  He knew I’d be happy to get rid of something else.

However.

I am not going to force my darling husband to get rid of his first real collection!  It obviously must have some sort of sentimental value!  I can’t be an advocate for getting rid of something meaningful!  Not only is that cruel, but it’s a recipe for future resentment.  I try to steer clear of those types of recipes (well, recipes in general, who am I kidding?).  So I decided to turn his childhood stamp collection into something he’d be able to admire every day: a piece of art.

And thus began the massive project that became his 32nd birthday gift.

The first step was Sorting.  The sorting process took hours, but I was able to do it in front of the TV during Periods of Work Avoidance, over the course of a couple of months.  Not too painful.   I sorted the stamps by color and got to see what I was working with.  There were a lot of very colorful, awesome stamps.  Unfortunately, the majority of them were still stuck to envelopes.  I already had a plan for my project, and the stamps couldn’t be attached to envelopes.  Drat.

…which leads us to the second step: Detaching.  I gathered several bowls and dishes in our kitchen and filled them up with hot water.  Color by color, I submerged the stamps and let the hot water dissolve the adhesive.  The stamps then came off the paper relatively easily.

From there, I let the stamps dry on cookie sheets (or sometimes the granite countertop) and recycled the envelopes.  This process took FOREVER, and there were stamps EVERYWHERE.  I was beginning to see that I’d gotten myself into a project FAR bigger than I’d anticipated.

I developed a new routine, during which I became very thankful that I work from home.  I worked for a few hours, then took a half-hour break to peel dried stamps off the countertops and submerge a new batch.

Once I had all of the stamps sorted and detached from the envelopes, it was time for the actual project, which by comparison took about 10 minutes.  In reality it took almost an entire day, but what’s that compared with months of preparation?  At any point during this project I might have had the wherewithal to quit.  However, I really thought Y would appreciate this, so I labored on (slight dramatization, for effect).  I will also admit that it’s hard to give up when you’ve already dedicated hours to something and don’t have a final product to make it all worth it.

Anyway, so I had all of my dry and detached stamps sorted in plastic baggies according to color, and I was ready to start gluing.  I bought a nice frame at Michael’s (they were 50% off, as usual) and got to work.

Genius as I am, I forgot to take a picture of the work-in-progress.  I’m sure you can imagine what it looked like, though.  There was glue.  And a lot of stamps spread out all over our dining table.

This is the finished product, drying.  As you can see, I arranged the stamps according to color, then glued them down.  When you view it from far away, it just sort of looks like a bunch of color.  But close up, you can check out some really cool artwork (and by “really cool artwork,” I mean the artwork on the stamps, of course).

How beautiful are these?!  Seriously, these put the Forever Stamp to shame.  I really wish the post office would stop pushing those–or at least come out with more than one ugly liberty bell design! Looking through this collection, which included stamps from Hong Kong, Pakistan, the UK and more, I really gained an appreciation for stamps.  They’re pretty awesome, actually.

And the finished, framed project.  Unfortunately, I only used about a quarter of his stamp collection.  I cannot bring myself to throw the rest of them away, though!  It took me hours to sort and detach all of them…I guess I should have thought about how many I would realistically use.  I can see at least a few more really awesome projects coming out of them.  But really, how many art pieces made from stamps does one couple need?  We’re not even into stamps.

Y was really impressed with it, which was very gratifying.  After all of the sweat (there were no tears or blood, I’m happy to say), I can honestly say I’m glad I did it.   That’s love, right?  And dedication.

Or maybe just insanity?