athenaeum inspired card holder

Posted on October 15, 2009

i’m not exactly sure how i came across this piece, but i found it on the anthropologie website. my wife is a huge fan of their home decor and especially their clothing. i’m actually jealous they don’t have men’s clothing because i love their style as well.

anyway, i decided to try to build my own desktop card holder. i’ve been in search of something to hold letters, cards, envelops, papers and any other odds and ends that clutter up the desk and this seemed to be the perfect piece.

so, i bought a sheet of metal from lowe’s and was able to cut everything i needed out of that one piece. i had some leftover scrap cedar from an earlier project that i used for the wood. it turned out really nice. might look into painting it a darker color, but it works great for now.

create

Posted on September 15, 2009

I like to have small projects going all the time. This one was started as a demolition job. My sister and her husband were getting new closets installed. I was enlisted to tear out all the old shelving. A few wide pine boards remained.

I cut the boards to two lenths, mitred the corners and made an L-shaped building block. These were left free of each other to allow for different configurations when setting them up; depending on the space desired to fill. I sanded them down fairly well, and then we painted them and put a few coats on polyurethane on them to give the surface a little protection.

It turned out to be a fun project and gave us some much needed shelf space and a nice little end table for the couch.

direction

Posted on August 25, 2009

This is where I hope to be heading:

See more of TYIN tegnestue’s work at Below The Clouds

storytelling

Posted on July 24, 2009

this is a great storytelling feature from the new york times:

An Ancient Society Faces New Change in Brazil

stencils

Posted on July 2, 2009

i was working on something for the reception the other day that obviously involved letters and stenciling. i was hand drawing the letters on some heavy cover stock and cut them out with an xacto knife to make the stencils. i had 2 letters on one sheet of 8.5×11. not only did i love the way the paintbrush created a splattered edge around the letters, but also as i began to stack the stencils on top of each other, it gave it a nice quality of depth. just wanted to share.

storyville coffee

Posted on May 30, 2009

i had seen their website before, but had never ordered anything. i had motivation behind this order too… during the whole month of may they have been donating 100% of their revenue to the International Justice Mission. so i got to donate to the IJM and try Storyville coffee, great!

i received my shipment in the mail today. i expected a brown kraft color box with a bag of coffee inside. i was more than pleasantly surprised this isn’t what arrived.

What a great package. And it only got better when I opened it.

There was a letter placed directly on top and the remainder of the contents wrapped in custom tissue paper. Here’s the rest of the contents.

not only do you get coffee! but also a dvd and booklet.

now, i’m not sure if this amazes me because i’m a designer or if it’s because i love coffee… but i couldn’t help it. i had to take pictures as i opened and share the experience. i thought this was amazing branding, product design and packaging. well executed. what care was taken in representing the company name. Storyville. Check them out.

playing for change

Posted on April 6, 2009

Wow. This is so great. What a beautiful collaborative effort.

From the Playing for Change Foundation, dedicated to connecting the world through music by providing resources to musicians and their communities around the world.

(Via mustard and sage.)

home built letterpress

Posted on February 28, 2009

[Design note. This is the completed letterpress. I added a few rails to the bottom. They need to be as long as, or longer than, the press arm. If not the whole press raises up off the floor when you try to apply any amount of pressure.]

This post is a spin-off from our wedding blog. There seemed to be a lot of interest in this DIY technique.

When I first started looking into wedding invitations, I came across the letterpress. It’s a beautiful technique that really leaves a ‘bite’ in the paper. It’s also very expensive to have your invitations printed this way.

So, I started looking into some way that I could do it myself. There are letterpresses for sale. What a beautiful piece of machinery. Unfortunately, they too are quite expensive to buy. This is one of the first documentary videos I saw on letterpress. It’s from Firefly Press.

I began searching for ways to imitate this technique. I found this video created by a guy who had built his own press. I pretty much used the same technique, but altered it a bit and used different wood to make it more sturdy.

Also, here’s another style of letterpress that someone built at home. It’s modeled more after the Gutenberg press:

Build a Letterpress

But in the end, this one would take too long for printing high volumes of material.

Hope this helps some!

a great compilation

Posted on January 31, 2009

true musicians.

amazing

Posted on January 29, 2009

I just couldn’t pass this up.

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