A Semester’s Worth of Books.

or at least what I haven’t lost, thrown away, sold, or gifted.

I certainly had a very book centric semester, but I think it worked out quite well in the end. I now have the book thing added to my belt to help me execute some bigger ideas. I will continue to make books over the summer, perhaps some small editions to make some cash. Also, my portfolio will be updated soon as well, perhaps along with my website??? WHO KNOWS! Stay tuned.

Rubber Band Gun In Progress

Super secret spy shots! I am excited about this project, expect in depth photo documentation, packaging, videos of it in action, etc. within the month.

Leatherbound Sketchbooks

I haven’t blogged about anything in awhile, so I figured I would grab something nearby and take some pictures of it. I completed this 3 book series a month or so ago. My goal was to make what in my mind would be the perfect sketchbook for a fine artist. I came up with these wide format, leatherbound, Rives BFK Gray notebooks. I have already gifted two of them to some very fine artists, and I am sure I will find someone to give the 3rd one to soon. I hope they will draw/paint/watercolor/gouache/doodle all over them, then let me borrow them so I can take some pictures of them worn, when I hope they will be more beautiful and just as intact.

Sourced Leather

Plans for the Flatback Hardcover

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Things no one told me about: The North American Handmade Bicycle Show

Photo by Tim Potter

Seriously people. Why was I not told about this? An entire show dedicated to hand made bicycles; I am not sure I can imagine anything I would rather attend. Luckily, the NAHBS has provided extensive photographic documentation of the event and the bikes in attendance. Click on through their galleries and marvel at some true works of art. For some more professional photos, check out Urban Velo’s Coverage of the show.

I am going to go mark my calendar for next year.

(via Bicycle Design Blog)

Sourcing Leather from Thrift Stores

I think material is really important in design. Exceptionally important. And yet, many designers don’t seem to pay much attention to it, doing all their work digitally and getting it printed on whatever paper Kinkos or MICA‘s print lab has readily available. I have been trying to use alternative materials in my work for some time now, most notably wood, and I have recently taken the dive into working with leather. I had looked into leather in the past, and was immediately and completely turned off by the price and partially by the fact that some nice animals would be laying down their lives for my work. However, I recently visited my local thrift store in search of leather garments I could recycle into my work, and it was much more successful and rewarding than I expected. The variety and quality of the leather found in all sorts of stylish coats, pants, and shirts amazed and excited me. Not to mention the price was more than right.

I got all of the clothes you see pictured above and below for under $30 on half off Sundays at the Village. I managed to get a wide variety of color, finish, and thickness that should prove useful for all sorts of applications. I am ALL about recycling materials, and this was unbelievably cheap and will hopefully get turned into a plethora of very classy, professional looking things.

A few tips if you plan on getting some leather from your local thrift store:

• Check tags and use the smell test to make sure you are dealing with genuine leather and not some shitty pleather
• Pay attention to the size of the panels in the garments, a giant trench coat made entirely of small pieces is more or less worthless
• You will find exponentially more leather in womens clothes than mens

The reason this kind of re-appropriation is so exciting is because its like a scavenger hunt. Its almost as though you are living in some MMORPG when you find some beautiful pair of burgundy leather pants, because you know that whatever you make out of those pants will be one-of-a-kind. Your book cover, or whatever, will have the embedded history of a nice cow, and a bunch of people from the 80′s, tacked onto it. Beautiful.

Moleskine External HDD Project

Inconspicuous eh?

My old Apricorn External HDD was sittin’ around, held together by gorilla tape, lookin’ all sad and what-not. So I took the HDD and small board on the inside out of the case, and noticed they would fit nicely into a moleskine notebook, of which I have many lying around. So I cut the center out of all 80 pages of a Moleskine sketch book to form a cavity, you know like you would make if you were hiding a flask in a bible, and placed the HDD inside. And I recorded a time lapse of it too! (more…)