grasswire

This morning while boiling water to make a cup of Turkish coffee, I suddenly felt the urge to use my recent acquisition - the crinkled cup by Rob Brandt. But than it suddenly did not seem right to drink a proper coffee from a cup like this, so I made myself some instant coffee instead. Well, I need to relax my mind from grading and I admit, it sometimes works in a strange way. Anyway, I bought the cup (like me)originally designed in 1970’s in a Brooklyn design store Spring with a nice selection of objects and a good taste of music. Speaking of Brooklyn and stuff I liked (but did not buy), on my way to the airport I stopped at Brooklyn Flea  and spotted:
- elegant prints by Lotta Jansdotter (see the pic with elephant below)
- Polaroid-inspired work by Sean Tubridy
- sophisticated block printed T-shirts by 1Girl1Boy
- Ciarian Tully’s photographs (his framed mixed media photographs look better than pics on the web page)

I like to check my blog statistics from time to time to see through what keywords people stumble upon grasswire. Sometimes, the results are so surprising – one of the most visited posts lately has been the readability of caps vs. lowercase letters. Apparently, this is hotly debated topic in some areas of the blogosphere and my post became a reference point within this on-line “type war”.

Than a few weeks ago I decided that I should not simply dwell on this newly acquired status and put my knowledge into practice. I changed the design of a T shirt I designed to sell to frustrated graduate students and hip professors. Admittedly, it is a niche market but at least I have a fair perception of my target group’s behaviour and needs :)

The redesigned so called Habershirt now became the first item for sale in our Etsy shop called Ferdinand’s dream. The shop will be filled with more and more diverse stuff in some time so do drop by from time to time… Simply click the banner on the left.

Here is my latest flea market find – a children’s illustration book. There are a couple more nice illustrations on the inside but I like the cover best, particularly the contrast between American illustrations and the Cyrillic caption. Since Tamara still puts everything into her mouth, I will probably just frame it. BTW, I bargained it down to 2€.

I can finally show you my latest crafting mini project. Past week, I spent a few evenings secretly making the wrapping paper and gift card for Dragana’s present (click for the sheet or for close-up). Linocut is great, I actually found the cutting part quite meditative and making the print was rewarding in itself. Not to mention the heavy smell of paint:) Just as a curiosity, the box design of the linocut “starter kit” I bought is still the same as it was to decades ago when I needed it for primary school art class. Being so retro, it looks quite trendy now…

As always, the dark December nights are sooo inviting for a little bit of crafting. I always seem to have two problems. The first is the long warm-up period before I really get into the mood. Which is probably the largest cause of the second, that there is not enough time to do all the little projects I eventually imagine. I must admit that the things I’m working on now are not really Decemberish, although these little owls might end up as parts of our New Year’s door decoration. It’s actually origami paper (thanks Chie) on balsa wood. Will post some pics once its done.

OK, I admit I was a lazy poster this week but we are just having so much fun with our Japanese friend…

And to make it up to you, here is a little iillustration I fiddled with last week.

I admit this may seem like a side step from the Things as they are project but I decided I’d recycle the images into another project, a series of cards I will name the Alphabet of everyday life. So in the end I’ll have a non-aesthetisation of everyday life plus an aesthetisation of this non-aesthetisation :))

It probably won’t be as sophisticated as this Periodic table of elements I recently came across but I’ll give it my best shot.

Instead of a brief rapport on the past few days, I decided to make a post related to Edirisa. Here is a call for craftsy contributions/comments for some nice looking iPod/iPhone jackets. Help Edirisa improve them.

I had one of those coincidence experiences yesterday, those when things or events just click by themselves. I just spent a part of Friday evening making rubber stamps (cutting them out of old erasers) and went to bed quite pleased with the results. Then the next morning as we passed the flea market on our way to vegetable market, the first thing I saw were old printing clichés. And I just knew I had to buy some of them. Based on the name of the printer on one of the blocks, they are from 1920’s or 1930’s. Neither paper nor ink were appropriate for test prints but I gave it a try nevertheless.

I finally managed to squeeze in some craftsy time between the baby and teaching preparations for the new semester. This is the first from my series of postcards on balsa wood. The stamps and origami paper are glued on 1mm sheet of balsa wood. Hope to show some more shortly and I promise photos will be of better quality (taken not so close to midnight). Postcards will be on sale, but for now inthe indefinite future :)

———————–
SELF-CENSORSHIP NOTICE (feb. 8th): Due to crapy photo that didn’t flatter neither the product nor my photographic skills, I decided to remove the photo. Well, suits me for late night posting of my work in porogress. Will be back shortly with more images and postcards.