Mind-2-Matter

You may remember Gnorman from earlier this year.

This was my free sculpture for my figure modeling class during the Spring 2013 semester at AAU.

This may be the piece of work that I am the most proud of ever. EVER. (and I've made a lot of art in the last 30 years). Needless to say I was most saddened when I was too busy to properly finish Gnorman and have him fired (I went straight from work/school to wedding prep/work and he dried out!).

I had been crossing my fingers that we could get him scanned before he was a total loss since June/July. Our method of scanning wasn't the easiest but Justin and I worked through a variety of methods using Kinect cameras for another project and I figured that we would, at some point, rig that set up again.

Well, we didn't have to.


The Gnomes (thanks to the Elder Gnome) have acquired the Sense 3D Scanner.

A few minutes time and we had a model to print. I was so excited I could barely contain myself last night! The original Gnorman is 8" W x 13" D x 24" H. New Gnorman is about 1" W x 1.5" D x 4" H!

So exciting!  

And it was just in time. Gnorman's ear fell off after we finished scan!

try to do it silently and sans heels

I've still got some tweaking to do but this is promising :)

Instead of a tangle or working with M0rt, I decided to do some organizing. I went through stacks of paper and have organized them by color and print. Previously, I'd peruse a stack and have to pull pages out to see how I was going to combine them. Well, not any more (well, not entirely. There are still a few more that need to be organized but my wrist was starting to hurt).

Speaking of, I had a wicked case of the dropsies today and it freaked me out somewhat. Hopefully it's just a one off kind of day.

I finally remembered what I wanted to talk about yesterday:Shoes. And screaming. We watched Olympus Has Fallen (which was really not as bad as I had expected) and there were so many ladies screaming. And having to run barefoot through shards of glass and smoldering debris because they had to ditch their high heels because they couldn't run/escape in them.

My first thought was (not that I can say how I would act in some sort of shooting/bombing situation - though I can handle my shit in other emergency type situations) "why are you screaming? You are totally going to draw attention to your self." The logical part of me thinks "be quiet. they will aim indiscriminately in your direction if you are making noise."

But then I wonder how I would react to someone shooting at me. I know how I reacted when someone was shooting at someone outside in my neighborhood. I stayed down and didn't move. I didn't scream or start flailing about (or run out into the street from the house to see what was going on like some silly people). Hell, I didn't want to move or make a sound. And I don't think I did until a few hours later. (The one shooting I went to as an emergency responder doesn't count. As much as the "victim" wanted us to believe the shooter was on the loose, it was pretty obviously his lady who was the shooter - nearly taking off his junk.)

As far as the shoe things goes, I think I will be able to flee should I need to. I dropped flip flops (terrible shoes for trying to flee) a while ago (and wouldn't you know, my shins and calves are not all tight any more). I ditched high heels years ago (I still keep a pair for special occasions but in a city where you walk everywhere, I usually end up in flats). I've even ditched rigid soled flats for the most part (you need to get some Merrill Barefoot's. Need them - after the initial break in period which was hell).

My shoes these days are minimal, functional and I could escape almost silently (I've sneaked up on more than a few people while wearing moccasins). That's not to say that some how my overall clumsiness wouldn't give my position away. I'm just covered in the shoe department.

So I guess what I'm trying to say is always be prepared. If real life is anything like the movies, you may need to flee at any time. But try to do it silently and sans heels.

Insert something witty here......

I decided to change things up a bit today and add some gold into the mix.

Had class tonight and missed out on company bowling night. Booo. And for what? So I could sit in a lecture about how to use the computer and do research at the library.

I guess sometimes I forget that people aren't necessarily willing to "figure it out" themselves (I forget this at work as well). Apparently curiosity is not natural and most people need step by step instruction for everything. Personally, I would rather just be let go with something and figure it out. The way someone tells me how to do something may not be the most efficient way.

I guess my desire to "figure it out" helps me in the workplace as well. I have to look at photos of products that I have never touched and answer some insane questions some of the time. I also have to figure out how to explain assembly instructions over the phone for products I've never seen. I'd like to think I'm pretty good at it.

I've got to provide MMR vaccination records to SFSU. Really?! I can only assume I had the MMR vaccination in Placerville somewhere, so I will have to ask my mom.

I'm working on some ideas and will have some cool projects coming up. I'll share them as I get them together.

Nothing to see here

today.

After last night's frustration with M0rt, I spent some time in the kitchen today. I made broth (a Sunday activity for me), home made sausage meatballs, harvested some volunteer collards and arugala from the plot that is slated to be a compost plot, planted kale, swiss chard and lettuce and researched laser cutters.

I'm currently testing how M0rt, Make the Cut and eCraftshop Pro work with Lappy. Perhaps it will all work better with 64 bit v 32 bit?  Who the hell knows. All I know is that if I am to produce quality work of any sort with M0rt, things better start acting straight. Or I will get lasers. Seriously. We're LaserGnomes with no lasers at the moment.

I seriously spent some time researching laser cutters/engravers. I would love to have one in the Gnomery. It was the main reason for going to techshop, but these days it's neigh impossible to get time on the laser since everyone and their brother is running a business out of techshop AND people are booking far more than 2 hours at a time.

So far MTC seems to be okay running on Lappy, but the first cut almost always runs all the way through. The problem usually occurs on cuts 2, 3 and so on.

The real issue with eCraftshop Pro is the speed at which it runs M0rt. MTC runs a lot slower, which allows for fewer issues with delicate cuts. Neither offers speed control and there is no speed control on M0rt himself. This is a fatal flaw. Running full tilt isn't so much a problem if you are cutting 5x7 rectangles (which I was for my first project of wedding invitations). But high speed and small cuts don't mix well. Same with the laser. You don't want to run full speed, especially if you are doing delicate detail work.

The prospect of a laser cutter would open up a lot of doors. I wouldn't be limited to paper products, fabric and the like, as I would be able to cut items up to 1/4" (some models 3/8" thick). I would also be able to glass etching as well.

Last night in all of my frustration, I busted out the scissors and started cutting (I know I said I could have cut my pieces faster than M0rt by hand, but that was clearly an exaggeration on my part). I still can't use scissors. I have regained A LOT of use of my hand and arm back, but scissors are still NOT one of those things. My arm burned and hurt so badly and I really only was using scissors for about 15 minutes. It was frustrating. That compounded with M0rt issues and disco disco made me feel ready to punch somebody.

I have days where holding a pen is difficult as well (like Friday, I'm not sure what was up, but I really hope my instructor doesn't grade based on penmanship - it was atrocious). Luckily those days are fewer and farther between than they used to be.

M0rt is currently 82% through the first cut in MTC with no problems. We'll see how he does on round 2

Zentangle.......

But I'm really not sure what day to call it. I think it would be #38 based upon the sequence from when I was doing it daily. While I haven't been doing a tangle daily, I have been "making" daily. "Time Goes By" took quite a few days of work and layout to get it all assembled and framed.

We also went to the Elder Gnome's home to do some metal casting. That was pretty rad and a few more crucibles have been obtained. Which means more metal types. Which means brass. I need to figure out some modeling software and make something for my gramps. Every time I see brass, I think of him. Before his hands (and head) started bothering him a lot, he spent a lot of time buffing brass. Every time we include antique brass items in a collection at work, I think of my gramps! He should have been buying up used brass and selling it on Etsy! We sell so much brass (and throw pillows, which I still don't get the point of).

I did tangle today. I went in to work late so I could help Justin with some additional rack installation and got home around 8. I did some yoga (I highly recommend myyogaworks.com for home practice - there's a lot of variety and it costs less than drop in at a single class!).

I had a thought recently about homeless people. Perhaps they are so fried in part due to dehydration (it can make you pretty weird). They are often wearing 5-6 layers of clothes, they drink mostly alcohol (I've never seen a bum drink a bottle of water) and they are exposed to the elements all the time. Something to think about.

Time for bed.

365 Days of Zentangles - Day 37

Day 37! I did it. And a bunch of other stuff this weekend too. I swear sleep was what I needed. It was the first weekend I didn't feel stressed about work, which made my weekend that much better.

I battled ants yesterday in the garden. I tried to make muffins (fail). I succeeded in making tiny pumpkin pies. I doubled down on the tangles yesterday. I did something else but am not entirely certain what it was.

Today I got up and did yoga for an hour. I made coffee. I sat on the porch and drank said coffee while reviewing for my Contemporary Art midterm that is tomorrow night. I made a slideshow of all the pieces I may be tested on for that class (not sure why people make flashcards anymore, putting together a slide show is much more efficient). Started this project:

I've had this vision in my head for a couple of weeks now. When it is finished, I am going to mount it in a shadowbox frame.

This is where I got today:

I'm using M0rt for this project. I read a lot of people's complaints on the forums over at Craftwell. "it's not mat free. You have to use something." "It's ripping my paper." "It doesn't work right" "I should have kept my Cricut"

Having used a Cricut for work and having used M0rt, I have to say I like the e-craft (M0rt) more than the Cricut.

First things first, the cutting mats. e-craft is a "matless" cutting system, meaning it doesn't require consumable sticky mats that are a proprietary design and you don't need to buy a new one every couple of projects. Cost aside (they range from $7-$12/ea), they stink. They have an odor I cannot stand. It's repulsive. If I had to smell that every time I wanted to make anything, I'd get rid of the machine. Paper stick to the mats horrendously (I ended up losing a large number of cuts to the mat alone). Hair sticks to the mats. Dust sticks to the mats. It's gross.

The e-craft (M0rt) is matless in the sense it doesn't require a sticky mat. Some materials will need a "carrier" though. Light weight paper, fabric, cellophane, things like that will need a "carrier". What's a "carrier" and how is that different than a mat? The carrier can be anything that is thicker and sturdier than the paper in question. When I need a carrier, I just use the chipboard or lightweight cardboard from the back of a paper stack with a bit of Scotch "blue" tape (removable tape) to keep the edges down. I'm re-purposing materials, which is a big part of LaserGnomes.

I have to say that both M0rt and the Cricut actually aren't that rad for cutting really detailed pieces. Both end up having a bit of blade drag (which I have observed a way around, but can't exactly figure out what the eCraftShop Pro does to calculate a cut path). That being said, as frustrating and wasteful as it sounds, you ultimately need to have a new blade every 5 sheets of paper or so. In one of my art classes, we were told to use a new x-acto blade for EVERY CUT in order to attain the best results and cleanest cuts possible. Mind you, we were masking areas off with frisket for renderings and that takes a ton of cuts. This is the equivalent of that.

Cricut blades are about $10 for a 2 pack, whereas e-Craft blades are $22 for a 20 pack. This makes switching blades out a lot less painful.

There are some other reasons I really love M0rt that I will get into another day. It seems like a lot of the people who complain that it's not a Cricut are people who just want to push a button and choose from predetermined designs. Not how I want to craft, but hey, to each their own, right?

Garden Party!

I've been working feverishly on a new project: 3D printed garden markers.

I saw this image featured on the Shapeways blog:

And thought to myself, WTF!!!!!

How is that a feature worthy print?  The design is boring (and the print quality is the SUCK).

A garden needs character. That garden says "Meh. I'm here and I can tell you what else is here with me."

While I know we ultimately DON'T want Peter Rabbit and company hanging out in our gardens, we should at least want our garden to be inviting enough for a cast of woodland characters to want to have a tea party amongst our plants. (But then again I imagine Pi has tea parties with the mice that we are trying to run out of the house.)

While my personal garden plot is only 5'x4', I'm utilizing square foot gardening and packing as much in as I can.  I've got a variety of herbs including mint, savory, fennel, sage, garlic, chives, lemon balm and catmint. I've got several types of greens including Swiss chard, kale, spinach and lettuce.  I've got a few larger plants in there too, including zucchini, lemon cucumbers and rhubarb.

My current (and long time) favorite font is called Charlie.

If it looks familiar, it's the font we chose to use for our wedding invitations (a future blog post will be dedicated to the entire wedding stationary and Save the Dates).  It's wonderfully reminiscent of the Arts and Crafts movement and makes me think of the work of Charles Rennie Mackintosh.

Here are some of the results.

The last photo includes the Rogue Rabbit Gardens sign made for me by Justin.  It is also printed from PLA (as are all of the markers featured) and has been in my garden since March.

I will have these markers and others available for purchase in the next few days.  Follow my blog for the announcement when they will be available (the announcement will go up on Facebook as well).

I have a few really awesome ideas for garden accessories that I will be working on in the coming weeks.  Stay tuned for those as well!

Sooooo EXCITED to cut paper!

I put M0rt1m3r to work yesterday as soon as he arrived.

I have wedding invitations to get out this week.  Let's just say my printer (who has not been named like all of other other mechanical items) was not cooperating, so I have to go back to the paper store in the morning and get more paper. Luckily, I can use the cards I cut with M0rt1m3r for other purposes since the printer won't cooperate with the size requirements.

Some really cool stuff I found out about M0rt1:  M0rt1 is dual head.  I knew he could draw and cut, but I didn't know he could draw and print at the same time!  Most craft cutters require you to swap out heads from a cutting head to a pen head to draw vs cut.  Not M0rt1!  He switches back and forth between a ballpoint tip and cutting tip flawlessly.  I tested some of the preloaded designs on the SD card provided with him.

Granted the designs are fairly simple, but the bird turned out cute! With other craft cutters, I would have had to try to print the line work, get the page lined back up and then cut after swapping blades. With the e-Craft, it was as simple as selecting the design and letting it print/cut.

I also made Trogdor the Burninator stickers last night.  I had some issues with the page shifting while cutting the second pass (I probably should have used a heavy card stock backer as the sticker paper is considerably thinner than the other paper I've cut so far), but they turned out AWESOME!

First I created the cutting template in Illustrator and saved it as an SVG file (scalable vector graphic - this is what you will import into the e-Craft software to cut from).  I scaled and placed my Trogdor images in Photoshop and printed without the outlines from the template.  I placed the sticker sheet in M0rt1 and hit cut in the e-Craft software.  I set the pressure at 2, trying to just score the paper for a sheet of stickers. That wasn't QUITE enough, so I sent it through again at a pressure of 4, which was too much (it cut clean through).  Also on the second pass, the page skewed (hence the thought I may have needed a card stock backer), which messed up the cuts on the second row. I got six usable stickers from one side.

I'm going to try using manual mode to cut out the rest of the stickers that didn't get messed up (which was only one sticker, but it threw the cut pattern off for the entire thing, so I canceled the print.). 

Unfortunately, I had homework to work on this weekend, so it was a mix of trying out M0rt1 and doing work.  I have to tell you, I wanted to blow it off completely and just cut paper!  I want to blow everything off and cut paper!