This year, our New Year’s cards for our Utility & DOE friends have been made by hand via the old school method of letterpress printing. Many of us designers here have creative talents outside of the screen. This is one of my (many) others. The above image is a teaser of how they look by hand, so hopefully you’ll get one in the next few weeks. If not, make friends with us this coming year to get in our address book for next year (or drop me a line at jynn@deptofenergy.com to get one of these this year)!

To see & read more on what I did, keep reading on (more…)

My friend Drew works at a studio in Toronto called Taxi. Taxi just celebrated their 15th year in business, and instead of sending out a gift box or throwing a party, they did something pretty incredible. When the temperature drops to 15ºC below 0 the Canadian government issues a cold weather warning. When this happens homeless shelters are instructed to let more people in to gain refuge. To help these people Taxi designed a jacket that is insulated, with newspaper.

Check it out! It’s really awesome. Good work guys.

As promised here are some of the better shake face images from this past weekend.
(more…)

The last of my holiday craft projects worth sharing with you is my snowflake wall. This was a happy accident, having a revised thought on my original idea. My early intent was to buy all of the needlepoint looms I could find in the local thrift stores and then fill them with various swatches of colored fabrics. But as I was looking through the scrap fabric piles at Value Village, I came across an old crocheted doily and made the creative leap on how it looked like a snowflake. Back went the fabric and instead the hunt for all the vintage doilies I could find commenced.

Once home, I matched the doilies with a matching loom size, arranged them, and then double stick taped the outer fringes to the wall. Done!

Cost= $17 in looms, $20 in doilies. Time to construct: 45 minutes.

Jynn had a little holiday gathering on Saturday night. There was food and booze and it was a lot of fun. But the party really started to get going when I decided we should play “shake face.” Shake Face is a game where someone relaxes their face and shakes it while a sequence of photos is taken, freezing ones face in a preposterous and hilarious state.

I have about 400 of these photos which I need to process and size down, but here’s a little taste of things to come.

Over the weekend I finished up all but one of my holiday craft projects. There two are in my front entryway when you walk in. On the left, I took another fallen branch from my backyard (free!), took a spool of 10lb fishing line ($2.57), and then strung these white paper cupcake holders (5 packs of 50 quantity-$1.27 a piece) on the line. Before stringing ‘em, I flattened ‘em (mostly) and made them imperfect in shape for visual interest. I tied one end of the fishing line to the branch, and the loose end to a needle in order to string the cups, several at a time.

To keep ‘em in place, I used white yarn scrapes from the other piece you see in the picture to tie a knot at the bottom of each paper cup. After stringing the amounts I wanted on each string, I arranged them visually to my desire and then tied off the end of the line with a button (free from my collection) to weigh it down when hung.

Total cost=$8.92 and approx. 6 hours.

The other side of my entryway, I constructed this beast-a cascading string snowfall the entire length of my banister. Again, more free branches from my yard, and 8 skeins of yarn at $2 a pop. I tied up the two (huge) branches to my top railing, then took a skein, tied the end yarn to the branch, and threw it over the edge below. I figured out how my “arm length pulls” of the yarn were needed as yanking the yarn back up to me, then snipped the line-being careful to hold tight the other end so I wouldn’t have to keep running up and down the stairs. Repeat process again & again & again & again………..In the end, I trimmed any extra long strands to skim the floor and called it done.

Cost=$16. Time approx. 28 hours.