Some of you may remember my phone book centerpiece design from a while ago, well that project actually came out of this book project.  I was playing around seeing what I could design, and that centerpiece was one of the things I made.  For Ann’s book I decided to create some simple little letter holders, using phone books, ribbon, a bit of scrap cardboard and some glue.  And I’m pretty pleased with how they turned out!

If you are interested in learning how I made them, you’ll have to purchase the book!  But don’t just buy it for my project, there are 19 other amazing projects to peruse as well.  I can’t wait to try a whole bunch of different projects in the book, but two particularly stood out.  The first is this AMAZING tote bag made from grocery bag handles!  It was designed and made by an awesome craft blogger and book writer Richela Fabian Morgan (her material of choice is duct tape, how awesome is that?!)

I am simply in awe.  Recycled, eco-friendly AND stylish.  It is the perfect project.  Not to mention that it combines paper craft and sewing, so it is the perfect project to undertake with my business partner and best friend Elizabeth.  Now my only problem is, my grocery store doesn’t use paper bags with handles…  Which makes me very sad.  I’ll have to look for some sort of ‘collect and swap’ website where people swap different recycled goods.  Maybe I can find people who would be willing to save bag handles to mail to me?  Who knows, the internet is a magical place.  Now tell me, doesn’t this photo make the bag look like so much more than a bunch of recycled handles?!  I think it is truly one of the most amazing recycling projects I’ve ever seen.

The other project I really want to try is this gorgeous Japanese mystery box.  When you lift the lid from the left side, you reveal the large center space.  But then when you lift the lid from the right side you get access to the two other small spaces on the ends.  Its like that toy with the wooden blocks and the ribbon where the pieces flipped back and forth in odd directions.  This project looks pretty complicated, but totally worth it in the end.  The tutorial is by Cecelia Louie and includes very clear instructions and photographs, so I bet I can figure it out without too much trouble.  (Well I bet I can understand what to do without too much trouble, actually doing it is another story…)  This project (and a few others in the book) have also made me realize that maybe I need a bone folder tool.  Does anyone use one?  Is it worth the purchase?

So if any of these projects have made you in the least excited, run right out and purchase Ann’s book!  Or head over to her website for a book giveaway and maybe you’ll win one for free.

Ciao, Allison

One of the great projects that happens around New York City over the summer is Sing for Hope’s piano project.  This is the third summer that they will be installing 88 pianos around the 5 boroughs for anyone (and everyone) to play and enjoy, from June 1st through June 16th.  Elizabeth and I first met the team at Sing for Hope when we constructed their gala centerpieces last October.  Fast forward a few months and we were able to collaborate on a Zipper8Lighting piano!  Sadly our piano does not light up, but that doesn’t mean we forgot everything that makes our lighting special.  Normally the artists responsible for each piano paint it in some what, but neither of us are painters so we knew we wanted to do something a bit different.  Cue our idea to paint the piano solid hot pink, and then cover it in black and white sea urchins created from drinking straws.  Here’s my process sketch from before the project started.

Once it was time to begin, Elizabeth and I sanded and painted our piano with primer and then with a beautiful hot pink that we mixed ourselves.  An upright piano may not look that large, but after painting it with 5 coats let me tell you, it is bigger than it looks!

Finally after 2 coats of primer, 2 coats of pink and 1 coat of clear polyurethane to protect it from the elements, we were ready to start attaching our sea urchins.  (We had originally designed our straw sunbursts for an under-the-sea project, hence why we thought of them as sea urchins.)  Each sea urchin was constructed using black or white straws, of varying lengths and diameters.  I used small metal skimmers as a base, and then followed the same technique I learned from Mark Montano back with one of the very first lights I ever constructed.  Each straw gets bent in half and then the two ends are pushed through two different holes in the skimmer (or whatever mesh shape that you are using.)  Total we used approximately 61 sea urchins, and over 7000 straws!

We had 3 different white straws, and 2 different black straws, ranging from full sized straws to small cocktail stirrers, and while most of the mesh skimmers we used were a standard small size, we did have a handful of larger skimmers to make really large sea urchins.  We debated how to attach the sea urchins, but in the end we decided to just go with glue.  For the urchins we could attach to flat surfaces we used E6000 which worked well, but had a set time of one hour.  So for the vertical surfaces we used a two part Epoxy Resin which had a set time of only 5 minutes.  After sanding down the surface where the glue would attach, we added glue to both the the piano and the sea urchin, and then placed it on the piano.  For the E6000 we used painters tape to hold them in place, but for the vertical surfaces we had to actually hold them on until the glue set…  This left us with a lot of time sitting and holding things onto a piano, so I had a lot of time to play around on my phone, resulting in a series of odd and artistic photos of our piano to post on our new Instagram account.  (Check us out under Zipper8Lighting!)  Here are two of my favorites, both artistic portraits of our piano shot through the tubes of the resin.

And finally, after over 100 hours of work, our piano was finished!  We are both really pleased with the final product, I think it looks a bit like a trippy coral reef, personally…

It was so exciting when it was finally time to sign our piano!  Elizabeth did an excellent job copying our logo onto the piano with sharpie.  The beautiful final touch to a wonderfully exciting project.

Starting yesterday our piano is on view at the Queens Museum across from the Unisphere at the old World’s Fair site.  If you are in New York City over the next few weeks you should check it and all other 87 pianos out around the city!  Visit the Sing for Hope website for a full map with details about each artist and photos of the pianos.  I’ll be back to post some photos of our piano on location, as soon as I have a chance to make the trip.

Ciao, Allison

P.S. Here are a few more fun pics from the studio.  The project is co-sponsored by Chobani, so we decided to use some of their recycled yogurt cups for paint mixing!

We even decorated our corner of the studio!

- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Well, spring hasn’t exactly burst upon the world here in NYC, it is 35 and windy today, but there are a few flowers beginning to poke their heads out in the park which gives me hope.  Since today is the official first day of spring I thought it was the perfect occasion to post a few photos of the new centerpieces I’ve been working on for Zipper 8 Lighting.  My most recent post was about the centerpieces Elizabeth and I did for the Sing for Hope Gala last October, and since then we’ve been really excited to design new centerpieces, with summer weddings in mind.

This first new design features two full roses and a rose bud, all of varying sizes and colors.  Each petal is cut out of heavy weight paper and then hand painted individually with watercolors.  The colors could obviously be designed to custom match someone’s color scheme, and there could be a bit of flexibility in rose sizing but only a bit because each rose is built around some sort of hollow shape allowing us to light them up from inside.

Our second design features three larger flowers constructed from hand dyed coffee filters.  Again there would be some flexibility when it came to color scheme and flower size, especially if someone was more interested in a different number of smaller or larger flowers.  I think a line of big poofs down the center of a long table would be pretty spectacular.  Or you could even hang them above the table for extra drama.

The next planned photo shoot will involve mixing and matching different types of flowers, and showing them in place on a table as they would look for an actual event.  I think we are going to try a long runner as well, with the various different flowers intermixed down the length of the table.

I’m super exited to see these on an actual table with votive candles and everything.  It will also be interesting to see the different amounts of light each flower gives off.  Hopefully I will have some of those photos to show you very soon!

Happy first day of Spring everyone, Allison

Update:  These are lit up by battery powered LED lights, so not only do you not need a power source, but the lights stay completely cool to the touch so there is no risk of fire (just don’t put them too close to any real candles!)

Sing for Hope is a non-profit located here in New York which makes the arts accessible to all, and they have started a tradition of having an artist make a special custom centerpiece, instead of using traditional flowers.  The director of Sing for Hope spotted our work during our second Fab.com sale, and immediately got in touch to see if we could somehow transform our Sheet Music Artichoke Pendant into a centerpiece.  I was instantly inspired, and had the idea to tweak the standard artichoke design by changing the size of the circles I used, and creating shapes that were more reminiscent of lotus flowers than artichokes.

Elizabeth and I worked together on the designs, and decided that each table should feature a trio of flowers, created using three sizes of lanterns and featuring repurposed old sheet music as the paper medium.  Each large 8 inch flower was essentially the same, though we added different types of leaves at the end which made them each unique.  The medium 6 inch flowers were pretty similar to the 8 inch ones, but had a few small tweaks to make them a bit more unique, we had maybe 4 different styles for those.  Then for the small 4 inch flowers we really played around with the concept and created as many different designs as we could.  Personally I found the 4 inch flowers the most fun to create because we were always trying new designs and there were no mistakes, just sometimes there were versions that ended up being unique one of a kind pieces.

We found a small string of LED lights powered by a battery pack so each centerpiece was connected to one strand of lights and glowed warmly on the tables.  With the purple table clothes they really stood out beautifully, especially after dinner when they changed the lights in the room to blue and purple hues.

Although we were commissioned to create centerpieces just for the upstairs dining tables, we ended up having extras so we set them up downstairs in the cocktail hour area that was later used for the after party.  It was this really fun and unexpected space where we were able to create different unforeseen clusters on small hightop tables or long coffee tables.  And the black tablecloths really offset the lanterns nicely.

This event also inspired us to really think about how we could use our designs in less traditional ways, and we are now totally excited to try and create centerpieces for other events, and possibly even weddings!  It has just been such a great chance to explore something neither of us ever thought about before.

I hope you like these centerpieces as much as we do!  All photos from the Gala (except the one with the very blue lighting which I snapped with my iPhone) were taken by Allan Zepeda an amazing wedding and event photographer.

Ciao!  Allison

Ciao for now, Allison

Since January is the season of New Year’s resolutions, and I wanted to post about one of mine; “Get Organized.”  While this may be easier said than done, I have taken a few drastic steps towards a more organized life.  Most recently I was finally able to hang up a wonderful large bulletin board that I made many months ago out of recycled wine corks.

I used two large pieces of particle board that I had been saving, and simply made the board in two square pieces which fitted together into one large rectangle.  Using hot glue I attached the corks one by one, doing my best to keep each row as even as possible.  I was actually quite surprised at the difference in heights of the different varieties of corks, as well as the different widths, but by fitting shorter corks on top of longer ones, I was able to keep each row roughly even.  While completely unnecessary, aesthetically it was something I felt was important.  I could have glued the corks on in either direction, but I chose to glue them on vertically next to each other, so that I added each row horizontally as it is now hanging on the wall.

I can’t wait to fill it up with inspirations for both this blog and my business.  Right now I’m using a few fabric covered pushpins that I made a while back, but I will probably augment those with a bunch of simple T-pins once I remember where I stashed my supply…

What organizational projects have you undertaken recently?  Or what other New Year’s resolutions are you tackling instead?

Happy 2013!  Allison

I absolutely love making ornaments, in fact I will often work on them year round!  But I usually get more excited by them at Christmas time, and this year was no exception.  A few weeks ago my good friend Ann (from All Things Paper) sent me a link to these gorgeous sequin ornaments.  All you need is a styrofoam ball, some sequins, and a lot of straight pins.  Oh, and thumbs of steel… I’m seriously thinking about investing in an old-fashioned thimble for future ornaments.

Basically you just push a straight pin through the center of each sequin, and into the styrofoam ball, it couldn’t be easier.  It is, however, a bit time consuming.  These random balls probably took me 2-3 hours each, though I was making them while watching movies so I wasn’t always concentrating 100% on each ornament.  The original tutorial I found was making balls out of just one color of sequin, and that is something I want to try too, but for now the only sequins I could find locally were in a big jumbled box of mixed colors and sizes, so I started with these multicolored ornaments and ordered a larger selection of single color sequins online (which should be arriving today!)  Each sequin is a 10mm cup sequin, and the styrofoam balls are 3 inches in diameter.  You could use any size sequin for this project but the smaller they are, the more sequins (and work) you’ll need to cover the whole surface.  For the hook at the top I cut an extra ornament hook in half, dabbed a bit of hot glue on the ends and pushed it down into the styrofoam until I had the perfect bit of U-shaped hook sticking out the top, to attach to a second ornament hook for hanging.

You can also make fun patterns and shapes with the sequins, to create more unique ornaments.  Once I get my bulk order of single color sequins I want to try other patterns like maybe stripes, as well as solid balls, but for now I decided to try using the mixture of colors I had to make flowers.  Each sequin flower is 6 of one color, with a second color sequin in the center.  And while each flower is a different color, all of the in between areas are filled in with pale blue sequins.

Honestly, I’m proud at how this one came out, but it was a HUGE amount of work, hours and hours and hours of plotting out how to fit the flowers in perfectly, and cover a spherical surface, plus a lot of removing of pins and sequins to re-position them.  I even drew guidelines on the styrofoam before I started and it was still a bit of a nightmare figuring it out.  And honestly, it looks cool but at the same time because of the different colors it doesn’t quite pack the punch I was hoping for…  I think I might try this again with just one color flower, using the knowledge I have from this first attempt, but then again I may decide its not really worth it.  We’ll see.

And finally, an ornament I actually made a few months ago, which really embraces the 3 R’s perfectly!  Recycled soda can tabs, glued to a clear plastic ornament.

I absolutely love how this came out, including the sort of spiky shape it made!  I’ve had it hanging over my desk at school and everyone in my department wanted to buy one, so maybe one day I’ll start making and selling them on Etsy.  For now it is happily decorating my Christmas tree, along with its sparklier sequin cousins.  Basically I just hot glued the tabs onto a pre-existing clear plastic ornament, the kind you can buy to decorate yourself.  Starting at the bottom and working my way up to the top I just overlapped the tabs like shingles, keeping approximately half of each tab sticking out under the overlapping layer.  I have also purchased a small selection of red tabs, so maybe one day I’ll try a candy cane sort of striped ornament, we’ll see.

For now I hope you are all having a happy and sparkly holiday season, and I wish you all the best in the new year!  Happy 2013!!  Allison

I wanted to post a few photos to show everyone my newest lighting creation.

As usual, this project started with a different concept in mind, and blossomed unexpectedly into something completely different and yet, totally awesome.

I have debated long and hard, but decided not to post instructions for how I made it.  Now that I am beginning to realize that my lighting business could actually be a real business, and having been a bit burned with what seem like copycats on Etsy, I’ve decided that sometimes I’m going to make projects that I want to share with all of you, without necessarily giving away all my secrets.  I hope everyone understands why I’ve come to this decision, because I do believe in sharing the wealth and making tutorials and teaching you how I created my lights so you can make your own, but I guess I just feel the need to draw the line somewhere.

However, I will share more details on something else I’ve been working on, which is taking newer staged photos of some of my lights.  I will always want photos of my lights completely on their own, against a white or gray background, to show them in the simplest and clearest fashion.  But, I am also making an effort to show them in context a bit more, to give a bigger picture to my products.  So, on a recent trip to Ikea for a new bookshelf, I spotted some interesting new props for my photographs.  My favorite ones so far are the set of white glass vases featured in these photographs, but I also bought a set of simple glass cylinder vases for flower arrangements, or bunches of branches and berries.  In fact my mom has this gorgeous bunch of hydrangeas in her front hall right now that she has promised to me after Thanksgiving for my photos.  I think they will look so beautiful not only with my white lights, but also with my Artichoke Book Page lights, with the subtle pinks and greens in the flowers, and the browns and tans of the books.  Can you tell my mind is already whirling?

For now I’ve only done one photo shoot with this newest light, and the actual lighting in my apartment is beginning to wane now that it is winter so I may be a bit limited going forward, but I’m always hopeful and worse comes to worse I’ll set up shop at someone else’s apartment who has more light!  So I hope everyone in America has a lovely Thanksgiving, and for any international readers, have a lovely rest of your week!

Ciao, Allison

I’m finally back with a new post and a new project!  This is a project that I actually completed last April, but it has taken me this long to get the photos edited and posted.  Last Spring was my 10 year high school reunion, and I was talking with my friend Elizabeth about the party we were going to have, and the topic of piñatas came up.  She has her own awesome blog called The Occasionist and a while back she had done a post about amazing piñatas.  We had both been really inspired, and realized that neither of us had ever made a piñata before, so we decided we had to try making one for our party.  Now don’t laugh, but the mascot for our high school was a Beaver, so for our reunion party we made a Beaver piñata, who we nicknamed Pickle.  (Why Pickle?  Well apparently in the 80′s Pickle was the nickname for a typical student at our school, because someone had joked that they were always ‘getting into a pickle.’  And we thought it was funny.)  Before I include a tutorial, here are a few photos of the finished Pickle!

Ok, now a “how to” for our piñata.  We googled a few instructions from various places online, but basically just made our own instructions from there.  (Photos at the end.)

1. Balloons.  Build a form out of balloons, we chose to use two to make Pickle, one for her body and one for her head.  We also filled in some additional shape with both newspaper and tape, for instance we filled in the neck with tape, and we also built a squarer beaver nose for the front of the ‘head’ balloon with some extra newspaper.

2. Papier Mache.  Tear newspaper into long strips, and make a glue out of flour and water. We chose a no-cook recipe from somewhere online, 1 part flour to 2 parts water.  Just mix the two parts together until the consistency seems right.

3. Cover your piñata with papier mache.  There’s no right or wrong way to do this, just remember to leave an opening where you can add the candy later.  We chose to leave a hole near the rear area of the beaver because it would be covered with the tail eventually.  Overall we probably added 2 or 3 layers of newspaper on most of the shape, but we didn’t bother letting it dry in between layers because we wanted to get all of the papier mache finished on one day.

4. Adding Fur!  After letting our papier mache dry for a few days it was time to add the tissue paper fur.  We decided to just stick with a simple brown for the body, because we weren’t able to find other colors of brown to mix in.  Each layer was two pieces of tissue, folded in half so that the strip was 2 inches wide, and four layers thick, with the folded edge at the top and the 4 open edges on the bottom which we cut into fringe.  Then starting around the opening we had left for adding candy, we started wrapping our beaver with fur from tail to head.  We also made hind legs and front paws out of newspaper wrapped in tissue, and added those as we went.  Finally I made a big beaver tail out of cardboard which we covered with alternating black and brown tissue paper.

We had a real ball making our piñata, but it was also so much work!  I can’t believe how cheaply you can buy them, even on Etsy where they’ve been handmade by someone.  I now have a lot more respect for those handmade piñatas.  So don’t look for me to start making and selling piñatas in the future!

Most importantly, don’t forget to take the time to make the little details like eyes and a nose (or big front teeth!)  We had a lot of fun adding personality to Pickle, from her cute little front paws to her pretty red bow.  

Pickle was a big hit at our party, though she was so heavy once we stuffed her with candy that we had a hard time figuring out where to hang her (inside an apartment in NYC.)  So maybe our future piñata endeavors will involve a backyard and a tree…

Has anyone else made a piñata before?  What shape or animal did you make?  I always love hearing everyone else’s crafting stories.  Ciao!  Allison

So I know I disappeared again, sorry about that!  And here is why.  Not only have I been crazy busy juggling teaching full time with my lighting business (which is feeling more and more full time also) but I have also been working on launching my new website!

I’ve been thinking about making an official website for my lighting for a while, and finally I did it!  I was able to get the domain name http://www.Zipper8Lighting.com and I’ve been working on adding more and more info and photos and features as fast as I can.  It also includes some new portfolio photos I’ve been working on, like the photo here which I took a few weeks ago.  It features my large coffee filter pendant (or now a slightly smaller size actually) and is set up to evoke thoughts of summer weddings and garden parties.

It has been a labor of love, with emphasis on both those words because although I absolutely am in love with it, it has been a lot of work!  It is still in progress, as I collect more photos and get more products posted, but for now I am considering it officially launched and I could not be more proud.

All in all life is a bit crazy right now, but things should calm down in the next week or two (after my 90 progress reports are due) and so hopefully then I’ll have a chance to write a bunch of new posts about some exciting new projects.

Ciao, Allison