What color orange are you?

A question you've been wrestling with, no doubt. Me too. After taking this quiz, I've learned that I am Clay Pot: "You are down to earth and well connected to all your senses. For you, life is about the simple pleasures— like going to a great concert or enjoying a bottle of wine. Your warmth and zest for life tends to make everyone feel connected with you." Hmm. I might be this. Sounds nice, anyhow.

I'm taking a blogging break until October 1, so in the meantime, I encourage you to find out what color orange you are.

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Arrange your books by color... maybe

This photo from Superhero is taken in a San Francisco bookstore where an artist named Chris Cobb rearranged all 20,000 books by color. Not sure if this helped the owner sell more books, but it looks pretty cool. Read more here. The photo is part of flickr's Rainbow of Books pool. Take a look to decide if you want to do this in your own house. I don't think I could stand not being able to find my books, but my friend did it a year or so ago, and it looks nice at her place.

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DIY projects

Learn how to distress a picture frame by Lara Berch
Learn how to decoupage a chair by Apartment Therapy:San Francisco
Learn how to make your own bubble mailers by 27 Things
Learn how to cover a lamp shade with decorative fabric by Lara Cameron

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Here's my bike!

Not really. I don't have it; I just like it. It's Trek's urban Lime bike. Designed to have broad appeal to non-bikers (like moi), it hides all those nasty, intimidating gears and sprockets and cranks and levers and pulleys. Good. I don't want to see that stuff. I also never go bike-riding, but this could be the machine that gets me to start.

(Image from Trek.)

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Sneak peek

I've been working on some patterns for a client, and we've decided to offer a glimpse of where we're at in the process. I can't tell you what these are for, but if you'd like to offer any feedback, feel free! More details to come in three or four weeks.

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Make some chai

A couple weekends ago we visited a friend at Yale and spent a day in New York City. After exhausting ourselves in Manhattan, we stopped at a Japanese tea house to rest, and I had an excellent glass of iced chai. Ever since then, I'd been dying to make some. So I tried this recipe: Verdict: loved it. (I doubled it but due to a shortage of ingredients, I didn't double the honey or cardamom. And I thought it was perfect.) I want to experiment with some others, too. Browse this site for more recipes.

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Nice couch.

I really like my couch, but if it spontaneously combusted and I needed another one, I'd pick this Chet Sofa from CB2. My downstairs neighbor Elizabeth (art history teacher with classic taste who likes toile, fine china, and anything blue) and I (graphic designer with modern taste who likes graphic prints, stainless steel, and anything orange) found it while browsing CB2's site. And we both loved it. Unheard of.

(Image from CB2.)

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Out for a walk

Alex and I went for a walk the other night, and I found something cool: this Chevy pickup. I bet it doesn't smell like cows and silage like the pickups I grew up with. I like it.

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A shrinky plastic project

Readymade magazine sent me a sample of their shrinky sheets awhile back (you know—that Shrinky Dink stuff from when you were a kid). And I've finally gotten around to trying them out. I know I'm going to make Readymade very happy when I say this, but OH MY GOSH, IT'S SO FUN! I used some of my own designs (you might see more soon; stay tuned!), and here's the result.

How to make:
1. Inkjet, draw, or paint on the sheets.
2. Cut them out.
3. Hole-punch them if you want.
4. Bake at 325º for 2 or 3 minutes on a piece of cardboard.

They'll curl up and then flatten out in the oven. After you take them out, you can mash them flat with a spatula when they're still hot if they didn't flatten quite enough. My printouts were about 230% larger than the finished product turned out. I wanted the circles to end up 1.5 inches in diameter, so I printed them at 3.5 inches.

There were two kinds of sheets in the sample kit: white and clear. The photo above shows the white kind. Below are the clear ones followed by a side-by-side comparison.



If you want to make some too, you can buy the sheets in the Readymade store, at Dick Blick, or just google for inkjet shrink film.

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Paint your place

Behr Paints has a new tool on their site called Paint Your Place. You can take photos of your house and upload them, then test different paint colors on your walls. For $4.95 a year, you can play with unlimited photos. Being the fairly cautious person that I am, and never having painted a room before, when we moved into our place I took photos and did the same thing using Photoshop. It was really helpful. I ruled out some bad ideas quickly without wasting lots of time painting. So if you're not a Photoshop user, this tool looks like the next best thing.

(Image from Behr)

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More design

Here's a logo, stationery set, and blog header I designed for a friend's handmade gifts business.

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Recent work

Maybe you've noticed that I don't usually post my graphic design work for clients here. I freelance part time at a design studio, and I don't feel at liberty to write about those projects since the work is for companies who have hired the studio, not me directly. And some of the jobs I do for my own clients are probably not interesting to readers of this blog.

That being said, here's a project I deem "fun enough" to make the blog. Let me introduce you to Brooke Schwab Photography. Brooke Shepard contacted me about tweaking her existing logo a bit and developing some stationery for her business. Here's a sample of her lovely work:

Brooke wanted a new, fresher color for her existing logo and selected a cheerful golden orange (Her idea--I don't make all my clients choose orange, honest! Though I do love it, so I was happy to comply :) We also tightened up the type a bit. I designed a few stationery layouts to choose from, and here's the final product.



To see more of Brooke's wedding and portrait photography, visit her blog and website (transitioning soon to the new look!)

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Spell with Flickr

A fun little online tool called Spell with Flickr lets you type in a word, then recreates the word for you using photographs of letters from Flickr. If you don't like the style of a letter chosen for you, click it to see another. Links to the full size images on Flickr are also available, so you could print them out and frame them for your wall. Remember, don't use other people's images commercially without permission, and check Flickr's terms of use! Found via Nested.

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Make a 3D desk calendar

The latest issue of Blueprint magazine featured interesting ways to spruce up your desk. Something in one of the photos caught my eye: a printable 3D desk calendar. And since I do love printing things, cutting things, and gluing things (see paper-related posts), I had to look up the link. You can enter the year you'd like and generate your own calendar here.

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Holiday

Happy Labor Day, U.S. Americans!

(Image from Google maps)

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