A Studio and Semester in Review

I'm pretty sure there was supposed to be a blog post on here approximately four or five months ago, and that is about where my life hit the ground running.

The second my studio class began a lot of things had to take a backseat to deadlines and designs, and this blog was the major casualty.  Between a business and a family, school is a major addition, and a major time suck.  The reality was that my blog had to take a serious backseat, and may have to again in the future.

But, for now I'll give you a sneak peek of what I was working on instead of blogging these past five months. In syllabus there is currently no way to get course equivalency for studio projects done in the past, which means that I have a lot of studio left to do.

Frustrating on some levels yes, but on others completely freeing.  This was the first design studio where I wasn't worried and stressed.  In fact it was the first studio that was really a lot of fun, and that is a big statement to make.

There were a total of five projects for the semester, each project building on the other.  Rather than a heavy focus on architectural design, there was a focus on design and art in general.

Project 1 was a logo design, my concept was how to build a logo out of voids, nodes and paths of movement.

The initials were mandatory, as was the black and white.

Project 2 was to create a 2D compilation of five pre-given elements; My concept was about transparencies, what happens when two elements overlap, and simple colour addition.

Project 3 was to build a 3D model based on the plan described in project 2; My concept was to look at extrusions based on a single focal point, forced perspective, void, volume and construction.

Project 4 was to take an image of a "space" and to abstract it in a drawing, the drawing then had to be abstracted again into a sculpture.

Le Corbusier Apartment in Marseilles, photo credit: myself

The fifth and final project was to create a portfolio case that would hold the final product of each project, one through four.  My final ended up being a mockup, as the final case will be constructed of laser cut and laser etched 18g steel.  One major boundary of a non-traditional university set up is that you no longer have easy access to tools like laser cutters and digital printers, instead you have to rely on local resources, which sometimes won't always meet your school deadlines.  C'est la vie.

My concept was to create a portfolio system that would allow my logo to create the overall form; everything held in one compartment; a system that would unfold and allow those viewing it to interact with the portfolio as well as with its contents.

Everything was held in by magnets, and could be moved as desired.  The entire box was also held together  in its closed form by a series of magnets.

Each book showed the design process and was bound with a Japanese Stab Binding.

I should be picking up the final steel pieces this week, and hopefully will be doing my final assembly this weekend.  So excited!

Working With What You Already Have

I still haven't taken photos of our new front yard, what can I say, I'm pretty fantastic at procrastination.  In all honesty though, with the ridiculous heat wave we've had for the last couple of weeks its been a battle just to keep my new plants alive.  Twice a day I've been dragging our hose to the front yard just to keep them from wilting, sadly we may still lose a couple of plants.  But, with the heatwave easing off and the rain coming my plants will hopefully rebound and we can take some pictures soon!

While our front yard has been coming along nicely everything else has kind of been put to the backburner.  If you have ever heard me talk about our backyard, you have probably heard me utter the words ugly and hate.

Our backyard is a giant deck, landscaping brick everywhere and a garage strategically located right in the middle of the yard.

While big plans are on the horizon for the backyard, these last two years haven't seen much use beyond being utilized as a painting area.

Marc, decided that for our first anniversary he would make that backyard a little bit more palatable.  So with the help of his brother Dan, his sister-in-law Rachel and my mom Carol, Marc put together a pretty good backyard.

I couldn't believe that such a small change could make such a big difference.  This last week I have found myself sitting out in my backyard enjoying it!  All because of a patio set and a few planters.

I'm still looking forward to completely renovating the backyard, but for now, we are working with what we have and it's going pretty well.

Sometimes you finish a project, and sometimes you run out of brick.

The title pretty much says it all, we ran out of brick yesterday for our walkway, a whole 30 bricks short.  When we decided to widen the walkway I forgot to adjust my oh so careful brick calculations. Thankfully the lady who sold us the brick still had about 300 left so we will pop by sometime this weekend and pick up the last batch.

I did manage to get 8 plants planted yesterday as well, so it is actually starting to take shape as a yard, and it feels really really nice!  Hopefully we can finish this weekend and have pictures ready for Monday!

These last few weeks have been a bit ramshackle with posting, its been a busy time for us, so posts haven't been regular.  But, I'm going to try and get back on track today with the usual "Pictures of the Week".  


Enjoy!

Confessions

This Canada Day weekend was exhausting. Long, hot, humid and exhausting.  While people were watching fireworks and drinking beer, Marc and I were cutting sod and smashing concrete.  I think we need a vacation from our long weekend.

Now here is the hard part, I have a confession you guys.  My yard is 100% not at all complete.  It's about 50% of the way there, I guess, maybe...

I have about half a walkway and three plants planted, but considering that at 2pm yesterday my yard looked like a brickyard and a dirt pile had blown up, three plants isn't so bad.

It wasn't meant to be, finishing a yard in a weekend.  Thunderstorms, stuck pickup trucks, concrete and tree roots added up to an eventful and long weekend.

Many, many thanks to my inlaws who drove 2.5 hours on super short notice just to help us out!!  Without them I don't think we would have gotten nearly as far as we did, and our walkway definitely wouldn't be as level as it is.

We will keep moving along, and hopefully tonight will be last night of laying bricks and pulling sod.

Farmer Joe

Anique was ready to work hard this weekend, and between the rock throwing and dirt eating it was a lot to accomplish for one little kiddo. She did a pretty good job though, and even got a couple of naps in on the side.

Big Changes

The reality of owning a home is spending money, the bigger the project the more money, time and people you need.  So, in two years of living in our house we haven't really had the resources to tackle some of the big projects on our wishlist.  Until this week!

Finally, we decided to start on a big redo.  The front yard.

That right there ladies and gentlemen is my completely underwhelming yard.  

It's not bad, just really boring and fairly unkempt.  Three scraggly cedars right next to my house (completely blocking sunshine by the way), an overgrown honeysuckle bush, and a sidewalk that is pretty much no longer in the ground.

So a fair portion of this last week has been devoted to this

Between Marc, myself and my brother Craig we've gotten about half of the sidewalk pulled up.  It only took an entire day.  That is a 4 inch thick, reinforced sidewalk.  I mean, if you're gonna do it, you should do it right.

The last of the sidewalk should meet it's end today, and so will a large portion of the lawn.  Perennial garden, here I come!

Busy weekend ahead, full of big changes.  The ultimate goal for the weekend will be to keep the entire front yard reno under $500 bucks.

Lot's of work ahead!

Organization For the Not So Organized

I love organization, or at least the idea of it.  See, I'm not as organized as I would like and I'm always astounded by my friends and family who can organize in their sleep.  Their houses are spotless and everything has a place and is in it!

Organizing is a system, a system that I am very slowly learning.  When you work from home being organized is pretty paramount to getting anything done, so I'm starting to figure out how I like to organize.

One of the biggest things I've learned about organizing is that you need containers to organize stuff into.  I like to organize by function and type, and I found some cheap organization tools to help me put items away.

Ikea has the whole organization thing CASED.  If I know that someone is going to Ikea, I send a list, and then hope they have enough room in their vehicle for everything.

I recently got the entire Kvissle set for my office and the whole set quickly became a favourite.  Clean, modern, white and with just a nice touch of cork.

Kvissle Desk Organizers, set of 4 Boxes

Kvissle Desk Organizer

My office just happens to be in my dining room at this point in time, so being neat and organized is key.  Some quick, cheap and easy mount shelving from Rona along with some more Ikea makes keeping all my work odds and ends in site and neat.

Tallisker Containers from Ikea

You don't actually have to spend money to get organized though,  It can honestly be as simple as re-purposing items you already own or found or made.

For our wedding my husband and I made almost 100 vases out of old wine bottles.  While we gave a lot of vases away we still had a couple of boxes left, and ultimately they were suited very nicely for pencils and paintbrushes.

Mason jars are really popular right now for decor, and here's why.  They can be used anywhere and for anything, and they look pretty cute at the same time.

Here was my tea and coffee cupboard pre-organization and pre-mason jar.

It was pretty much a total disaster.  Bags of tea and coffee everywhere, and I never really knew what I had.

Post mason jar organization:

Clean and simple.  Everything stacks, I can read all my labels and I know exactly what I have.  Apparently, I have a lot of tea.

I'm tempted to add some Chalkboard paint labels at some point later down the road, it would up the cuteness factor by at least 10%.

The downside to this whole organization thing?  I no longer have any excuse to stop by my local tea shop, not until I empty a few of these containers anyway.

On Pink and White

It's finally done, nearly a year later and my fun, stained, beaten up chair is finally finished!  Remember the before?  Bad fabric, nails and screws everywhere, horrible deep red stain and creaky joints.

This chair had some really great bones though, and ultimately there wasn't anything that a bit of paint, epoxy and fabric couldn't fix.  

Beyond revitalizing the wood and fixing the joints and some of the cracks in the legs with epoxy and wood putty it was a fairly simple redo.  Can't believe I didn't do it sooner!  

It was also a really budget friendly redo, I managed to get that lovely coral fabric for $2.50 a metre. Crazy!! Plus I finished the edges with leftover fabric from my bedroom lampshades and sewed my own welting. The cording for the welting was about $4.00.  Paint was at a cost of about $6 a can, for 4 cans.  

Since my father in law was amazing and picked up the epoxy and wood putty supplies, then gifted them to me those were free!

Total cost: $30.50

Not too bad for a ramshackle $75 bishop's chair.  I love it, though I haven't quite decided where it's final home will be.

Also for a bit of fun, instead of covering the bottom of the cushion with the usual black mesh netting stuff, I used the last bit of my lampshade fabric.  Waste not, want not, right?

It's our excitement for the day when we need to pick up toys from underneath our furniture.  I'm so happy with the finished project, not to mention just getting it finished felt so good!