So maybe I’ll see some of you this summer!  Allison

So, any guesses?  Did anyone think, plastic bags?!  Yep, that’s right, I used plastic bags from my local grocery store to create this fun new drum shade.  Some of you might remember my previous plastic bag light from my 30x30x3 project, and I used the same black and white bags for this new light.  (In fact, given the success of this shade I’ve started collecting them in ernest, and I swear I get dirty looks in the checkout line from eco-friendly shoppers with their reusable bags in hand and I keep wanting to turn to them and explain that I have a project planned, and I’m normally eco-friendly at the supermarket too!)  I’ve actually had this light in the back of my mind for a while now, or at least the idea of doing some sort of drum shade version of my plastic bag light, but it wasn’t until recently that I had the time to do any sort of experimentation.

Originally I was thinking of trying to do a light that looked more similar to my original pendant, with lots of small strips and pieces of plastic, like a shag carpet.  But, after a few hours of frustration and way too many little pieces of plastic to count, I gave that idea up. So, I started brainstorming what other shapes or ideas I could create, and I eventually came up with this rosette scheme.  

Essentially I cut the bags into long strips, rolled them loosely into rosette sort of shapes, and then glued them to the shade.  I alternated between dabbing glue directly onto the bag rosettes, and smearing glue on the shade first and then pressing the rosette into place and honestly they both work equally well and equally poorly, if that makes sense.  There’s really no good way to do it, but like with all of the paper projects, each rosette is very light weight so as long as there is some connection with the glue its not going to pull away and fall off without some strong help from someone with opposable thumbs.  (Though I guess Basel could probably cause a good bit of damage with his teeth, if I gave him the opportunity…)  

I really love how this shade turned out with the black and white color palette, but I’m also equally excited about the future possibilities, both in size and in color!  I’ve already started collecting bags from all sorts of places and am brainstorming other options.  For instance our local pet store has nice bags with a gray and yellow graphic that would look pretty, either alone or mixed in with the black and white.  A friend saved a bunch of raspberry pink bags for me, as well as some lime green ones.  Then there are Zabar’s bags (a famous local NYC deli) that are white and orange, plus ones from another big grocery store Fairway that are sometimes white with a big black and orange graphic (they sometimes use a blue and white graphic instead.)  I also think a completely multi-colored light could be cool too.

One caveat is that the bags I had were of a slightly thicker and sturdier plastic than traditional supermarket bags.  They are opaque, and almost slightly milky in texture, if that makes sense.  I’m not saying that thinner plastic bags wouldn’t work, but I think the look would probably be somewhat different, less structured and more crumpled, if that makes sense.  You could also try more crumpled looking rosettes if you intentionally wanted that look, but personally I liked seeing the swirly shapes that were created.

So I hope this project was worth the wait, and maybe helped give people a bit of inspiration!  Personally this is my favorite sort of project, one that reminds us all that you can create really gorgeous design, without needing to spend money on fancy materials.  Just buy a quart of milk!

Ciao, and happy President’s weekend to everyone in the USA!  Allison

P.S.  If it seems like I was a bit skimpy on the tutorial aspect of this post, well, I was.  Unfortunately I’ve felt a bit burned recently, when someone else on Etsy started selling lamps just exactly like my artichoke book page lights.  I know that the technique isn’t groundbreaking or anything, but its still a pretty unique item to sell and while I tried to think positively that being copied meant that I had officially ‘made it’ to be honest, it still bothers me.  So while I still want to share my projects and how I made them with all of you wonderful, loyal readers, I guess I’m currently feeling a bit hesitant about giving away all of my secrets.  (At least for projects I’m also selling on Etsy, like this one.)  I hope you understand, and if you are hoping to make your own version of this project for your own purposes, and have any really pressing questions please don’t hesitate to email me at the3Rsblog@gmail.com.  And of course, thank you all for being such a wonderful audience, always.

Ciao for now, and have a lovely Sunday!  Allison (and Basel, who wanted to be part of the photo shoot but was having a hard time sitting still enough…)

And here’s the sneak peak, enjoy!

Etsy, Local Artists, and Technology

Etsy is an e-commerce website that features handmade and vintage arts and crafts.  Join representatives from Etsy as they showcase local Etsy artists EarthSeaWarrior, 1AEON, Oktak, and Zipper8Lighting. Learn how they use technology in their work and how they have grown their businesses online. Explore the creative process with the artists and hear about their struggles and achievements. A Q&A session will follow the discussion.

January 7, 2:00 p.m., Apple Store, Soho (72 Greene St.)

Happy New Year Everyone!  Allison

I know I’ve been a bit MIA recently, and I’ll blame the combination of the holiday season and the holiday shopping rush, and my lack of time to create/photograph/write new posts.  And so as a celebration of the holiday season I thought I’d feature a fun, colorful and completely non-religious piece of art I happened to stumble on not far from my office building one day during lunch!

Really there isn’t too much else to say about it, you take zip ties, some very rambunctious street artists (I honestly have no idea who does these) and a few street lights and you have art.  Colorful, fun, art.  And let me tell you, stumbling on these unexpectedly would bring a smile to just about anyone’s face, they are so much fun!

Its funny too because I’d been talking with a co-worker about lights and the weird materials I like to use and she had mentioned these street lights (apparently they were rampant around the East Village over the summer, but somehow I had missed both seeing and hearing about them completely.)  So we had googled the photos and thought they were super fun and cool and I was lamenting not getting to see them in person.  And then a month or two later, there they were!  I swear I started bouncing around from street light to street light like a little kid, waving my iPhone around taking pics from different angles, of different colors, etc.  The friend I was out walking with thought I was slightly nuts.  But hey, it makes for a fun blog post so who cares!

Honestly though, as I was hopping around I kept turning to my friend and saying “Who has this amount of time on their hands?!”  Alternating with, “Gosh I feel bad who has to take all these down…”

After originally looking at photos I of course thought about making a light using this technique.  Now I’m not so sure, or I feel like it would have to be adapted at least a little bit.  I worry that there aren’t enough spikey pieces to make a nice full lamp shade, but then again if I was using smaller zip ties with more layers maybe that would make up for it.  For now I’ll keep thinking, but maybe in the future you’ll see a light pop up and know that the original inspiration was these hilariously fun sign posts.

Happy Holidays!  And I’ll be back early next week with an exciting announcement!

Ciao, Allison

I’ve also realized recently that I have a tendency to be a bit long winded, and while that’s not always a bad thing, it might make my tutorials a bit harder to follow.  So, I’m going to do my best to start summarizing projects in a few simple easy steps, and then separately elaborate on any steps that need additional explanations.  Hopefully these tutorials will be easier to follow but if anyone feels I’m leaving out too much information please let me know!  I’ll try to do these shorter and clearer tutorials from now on, and maybe even go back and simplify some earlier posts, if people think these are much easier to follow.

Materials: Paper lantern, vellum (or other paper), paper punch, glue, light bulb cord

Step 1: Cut out your flower shapes using your paper punch.  Cut as many as you think you might need, you can always cut out more later.

Step 2: Open your paper lantern, and start gluing your flower pieces on as haphazardly as you like.  Make sure you are overlapping your flowers and adding new pieces on top, layers are key to the finished look!

Step 3: Keep gluing shapes on until you are happy with the look, you may need to cut out more as you go along, its all personal preference.

Step 4: Plug your light in, hang the shade up and enjoy!

I loved using the white vellum because it has this slightly translucent quality, which was really pretty both when the light was off and when it was on.  You loose a bit of the flower shape once its lit, but I actually think I like it better that way.  

I think the beauty of this project is the final results could look really different depending on what sort of paper you used, and how thickly you layer the pieces on top of each other, and I love that!  Any project where you can add your own unique spin is a great project in my mind.

Personally I’ve also been wondering how this concept would look if I used flower shapes cut from old books, instead of the white vellum.  I haven’t had a chance to try it out yet but I promise I’ll post photos as soon as I do!  

I’ve also wondered if this would look cool on a lantern of a different color, so maybe when the light was off it looked white but when you turned it on it suddenly glowed pink or orange!  I haven’t had a chance to try that idea out either but maybe I’ll buy more vellum one of these days and give it a whirl.

This could look really pretty with different size flower punches, and also different shapes.  I just have one simple shape at the moment but imagine a slightly more detailed Hawaiian flower, or something with more angular petals, they could look really beautiful layered together.  There are so many possibilities!  What shape punch do you think would work well with this concept?  I’d love to hear your ideas!

Have a lovely week everyone, cheers!  Allison

A long time ago, when I first started collecting project ideas from design blogs, I spotted this fun little project from Papernstitch.  They had framed a pretty piece of fabric, and were then using the glass of the picture frame as a dry erase board.  Brilliant!  I have a lot of extra random frames but I also have some simple little dry erase boards already and I find they only have so many uses.  And then I spotted this project on Pinterest.  It takes the picture frame dry erase board to a new level as a calendar, AND it uses paint chips, only my favorite project material ever!!  I knew right away that I had to make this happen, though I’m a bright and colorful person so I decided to use bolder stronger colors instead of the subtle yellows from the pinterest post.

Overall it’s a pretty simple project.  I found this big square clip frame I had lying around from Ikea, and actually really loved the fact that it was just essentially a piece of glass with a backing but no traditional frame around the outside.  It’s a bit more modern and crisp, which is totally my style.  I had briefly had this idea of making my own clip frame with some plexi I had lying around, and bulldog clips, but when I found this frame I decided against it, but I still liked the visual aesthetic of the bulldog clips.  I decided to keep the clips that the frame came with for added support, but I still included the bulldog clips for the visual look, plus maybe I can also use them to hold notes or my dry erase marker, possibly tied to a string or something.

I decided to use a long piece from a Behr paint chip for the month, and then square pieces from Benjamin Moore paint chips for the days.  Initially I was worried about darker colors, but then I started testing them and once you add the layer of glass you actually can see the black marker on top of most colors.  First I cut up a bunch of paint chips, in all the colors I thought I might like.  Then I laid them all out, to make sure I visually was happy with the color palette and organization.  I added the days of the week label pieces at the end, once I had the regular calendar days laid out once I could see what colors would be best.  Of course not all projects go smoothly and with this piece I was about 75% finished when I decided I was leaving too much space between chips.  Oops!  Here’s a pic of the partially finished project, right before I started ripping paint chips off to start again.

In the end I left 1/4 inch of space between each chip (I had left 1/2 inch originally) and I like that it is more visually tight, while leaving a larger white area around the edges and on the bottom.  I used a few little pieces of double-stick tape for each chip, and it worked brilliantly.  Then I decided to decorate the blank spaces with my circular paint chip art (since I had a ton of circles already cut out anyway) and I really love how it turned out because it is both functional and really a piece of art in it’s own right!

I already have a calendar hanging next to my fridge for organizing my social and work life, but what I really needed is somewhere to physically (as opposed to online) keep track of all of my lighting orders, when they are due to be shipped by and any special notes I might have.  So far as you can see my calendar is functioning just as I need it to, and I even have plenty of white space for notes about specific orders!  I did debate adding an extra row of days at the bottom so I could start into the next month, but I figure that as I get closer to a new month (like December for instance) I can start again at the top and just add the last few days of the previous month.  Or I can start a simple list on one side of upcoming orders I need to keep track of.

So far it doesn’t have a home yet up on the wall, because the space I am thinking of hanging it is already holding a big cork board (which is going to be transitioned eventually to a different wall) so I can’t take any pics of it in place just yet but I promise an update as soon as its hung up since I’m still thinking of all the fun additions and accessories I could add to it!

Since I probably won’t post again before Thursday, I also wanted to wish everyone a very happy Turkey Day!!  Ciao, Allison

The fun thing about photography is that you don’t need a whole lot of fancy equipment to have fun.  Over the summer I discovered the awesome iPhone app Instagram, and immediately I was hooked!  I had been looking for something to occupy me during my commute to work, and now I had a fun new toy to play with.  I started scanning through old photos I’d taken, searching for anything that might make a fun new polaroid and that’s when I discovered this photograph, which I had taken in Medellin, Colombia on a school trip two years ago.

I had already loved this photo, but there was a new added pop with the increased contrast and cropping, thanks to Instagram.  And immediately, my eye gravitated towards the bright road yellow in the center of the photo, and a new project was born.  I’ve dubbed this “The Transit Project” and while it includes a few photos like this from past trips, the bulk of my journey has been capturing the mundane NYC subway system on my way to and from work.  (And one on Ferry to Ikea…)  I think what I love so much about this is taking something gritty and giving it a bit of a new spin, thinking about it in a more material way.  The gleam of the silver trains versus the bright yellow on the platform, and the dark black of the tunnels.  The quality isn’t high, because the photos are all taken in low light with my iPhone, but the point isn’t to have a fancy photography project, its to look at something in a fun new way.  So I hope you enjoy these next few photos, and if I capture any other great ones moving forward I’ll make sure to share them!

Ciao, and have a lovely weekend!  Allison

Personally I think the diagonal design is a bit more ‘shimmery’ and sort of reminds me of a fish.  Though then again maybe I’m just nuts…  Anyone else see a goldfish of sorts?  No, just me?  Maybe its this photo, something happened between the ambient light and the dimmed low level incandescent bulb, the orange color sort of reminds me of this goldfish hanging light I saw somewhere.  It certainly is a pretty result!  (Then again it also reminds me of chainmail, which isn’t connected to goldfish, so who really knows.)

I used the trusty Lobbo shade again, which I just love, especially because it comes flat so it is easy to store before use, and its especially easy for drawing guidelines on.  That’s how I made this light, I carefully drew guidelines onto the shade using a triangle I have left over from my architectural drafting days.  

I spaced the lines 1/2″ apart, horizontally, though I found out in retrospect they could have been a bit closer together for a proper overlap.  Though it does leave more white space which is an interesting and different look so its hard to say if it was a ‘mistake’ or not.  I’m still deciding that.

I discovered early that because of the diagonal, you ended up with a jagged bottom (and therefore top) edge, but I actually think its pretty cool looking.  To glue the tabs onto the shade, I picked an arbitrary spot and started by gluing two tabs in place, and then overlapping one tab on top of those two, plus extending it further towards the bottom of the shade.  Its a bit hard to explain, but it should make sense when you are looking at the physical pieces in front of you.  

The width of the tabs then widened slowly as I went around, working along in a growing triangle shape.  Because each tab is overlapping another one and there isn’t a ‘bottom row’ to start with you have to build it up slowly, rotating the shade as you go.  For me the right edge of the tabs basically started making a straight line, but because it is going diagonally up the shade the number of tabs needed for each row increases as that right edge gets further from the horizontal bottom edge of the light.

One thing I’m left wondering, though, is if this design would work well in a larger size.  I know the straight edged look worked really well in a wider shade but I’m not so sure about the diagonal.  There’s something about the vertical shape of the small shade that really helps accentuate the diagonal lines.  Maybe if I kept the largest Lobbo shade in its original squarer shape instead of cutting it down like I did for my large version, but I just don’t know.  I guess I’ll see if I get any nibbles on Etsy before exploring the idea.

I hope you enjoyed this newest iteration, and as I said I promise that this should be the last soda can pop tab light for a while, unless of course inspiration strikes!

Check back early next week, I hope to have some fun photographs to show everyone, followed by a bright and colorful new project (that isn’t a light!)  Ciao, Allison

As you may know, I make lights out of old books.  Old books that I cut up.  Specifically I cut circles out of them, to make my Artichoke Mixed Book Page Light.  (Which I first explored in this 30x30x3 post before discovering the key was full circles, not just simple scallop shaped pieces.)  Many, many circles…

I love finding a new use for a forgotten about item (often I collect unwanted books from friends or used book sales), but once I cut the circles out there is still a chunk of book left.  I always carefully save the left over pieces and recycle them with my newspaper and cardboard, but sometimes I’ve wished I could do more, that I could find some other cooler use for the left over part of the pages.  And then, a couple of weeks ago, I had a stack of the pages sitting there and suddenly a lightbulb went off.  Wait a second, I essentially have a rectangle with two circular holes in it.  What can you do with holes like that?  Use them to hold things!!

Of course I immediately began racking my brain as to what would be the right shape and size.  An existing metal pencil cup I had didn’t fit, and neither did a piece of cardboard tube I’d been holding on to.  And then I remembered these two small cardboard tubes that I had from a fancy invitation I got in the mail.  They were so cute that I had been keeping them hoping that one day I’d find a good use for them, and what do you know I found one!  They were the perfect fit, especially because they were just slightly smaller than the actual holes which made it easier to get through the stack of books, and it allowed for the small variation in exactly hole location in each page.

Overall, I think the key to this project was ‘less is more’ at least in terms of production methods.  Basically, I cut out a piece of scrap cardboard that was just a little bit smaller than my book pages.  Then I glued one book page down on top, to serve as a template for where to glue down my cans.  The bottom of the cans had a little bit of an edge, so I also cut out a piece of cardboard to fill-in that bottom part, and give me an even and level surface for gluing the cans down to the base.  After gluing the cans in place, I basically just started adding book pages, dropping them down from above, with the one hole going around each can.  I didn’t use any glue because you really don’t need it, and it can start making the pages wrinkle or scrunch up in funny ways.  

I also noticed with this first attempt that the spine-edge of the pages still had some of the rubber glue on it, so it looked different.  I probably could have just kept a nice mix of orientations so each side of the pencil cup had some spine edges and some clean edges, but I decided instead to keep all of the pages sitting in the same direction.  However, because of the glue residue the spine edge side of my pencil cups stuck up a bit higher than the other side.  But I discovered that if I pushed it down to be level with the clean edge side of the pages, and then smeared hot glue on the spine edges, they stuck together in this more compressed manner and you could make the top of your structure level again.  I think for my next version though I might try quickly trimming off the glue residue so that both sides lie equally flat.  And that way you’d have a double sided finished product instead of something that has a ‘good’ side and a ‘not-so-good’ side.

I also learned that my cardboard tubes were a bit tall for holding pencils and pens, so I cut out a bunch of cardboard circles to drop down into the bottom of the cans, to raise everything up.  I measured the height of an existing pencil cup I am using but I still think it might be too tall, especially for those short colorful pens!  Maybe I can use this for special items, taller special items like the unsharpened pencils and scissors.  

Another thing I love about this project is how it can get the wheels spinning in my head.  I already have ideas for how I can take this and build on it!  For once I’m cutting circles out of books thinking as much about the left over pieces as I am about the actual circles!  Its fun to see a supply like this in such a different and unique way, and it makes me feel like I’m doubly recycling these books!  So stay tuned, one of these days I just might have a project update based on this very pencil holder.  I guess it depends on how many circles I’m going to be cutting out in the future, and if I have enough time when I’m not supposed to be making lights that I can try some new projects.

Have a lovely week everyone, ciao!  Allison