As many of you may have noticed, our beloved Skip has not been reporting lately due to being out with a bout of pneumonia. We wish him the best and hope he can bless us with his words of wisdom very soon. In the meantime Big Al has been filing Skip’s shoes quite well. Al thanks for the help around here and your attention to meticulous details, is very similar to “little miss picky” (Anne, one of our carpenters). Thanks for getting in where you fit in.

“What is this?” you ask? A teaser image for part of a multi-tiered project we are currently in the midst of working on for the upcoming SIA tradeshow. Watch for more images in the near future to see what these crushed water bottles become…

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…)

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