Filed under: Collaboration, Holiday by ramune

Martina Topley-Bird – Something To Say

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I am back and hopefully the technical issues are all taken care of. As usual, the Saturday before Easter I spent most of the day decorating eggs. I won’t go into the specifics since they are already mentioned in previous posts here and here. The only difference this year was that I bought Ukrainian dyes to test out. I bought edible and non-edible dye and was kind of shocked to see which colors worked and which didn’t. I thought for sure the non-edible dyes would be more vibrant, however some of the colors (like the green) barely stayed on the egg. I will have to try again next year and see if I did something wrong. I was pretty impressed with the black, both edible and non-edible (as you can see I used it a lot).

To view the images larger, just click on them.

It’s always great to see what other people come up with. My brother went with a minimal design on some of his eggs this year and focused more on playing with color. My cousin, on the other hand, was a big fan of dots and filling her eggs completely with the design. Below are some of my favorite margučiai from some friends and family.

Filed under: Collaboration, Photography by ramune

Wall of Voodoo – Mexican Radio

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My friend “hoi” and I both like to take photos and have talked about collaborating on some photography projects. Our first one was to take photos, exchange a few raw files and process each other’s photos to see how we do things differently. A little over a week after we had nearly two feet of snow dumped on us we went to Great Falls to take some photos for this project. Two of the comparisons can be seen here and you can view his version of the above photo here.

The photo of the branches was taken by hoi and the photo of the falls was taken by me (I’ve noticed that in winter I want everything to be black and white/sepia toned). We are going to try to make this a regular project. I think the results will be even more interesting when there are more colors involved. Click on the images to see the results larger.

View large versions of photo by hoi
Original
Processed by Ramune
Processed by hoi

View large versions of photo by me
Original
Processed by Ramune
Processed by hoi

Filed under: Collaboration, Silliness, Words by ramune

I know it’s all trendy to like bacon these days, but when the majority of your nationality’s dishes consist of some kind of pork product, it’s hard not to have had a passion for bacon all your life (note the photo for “Appetizers” in the wikipedia article. Is there any actual meat in that bacon or is it just a slab of fat?). Having said that, I don’t actually eat bacon that often, and usually opt for sausage as a side if I go out for breakfast (picky about bacon). Last week however, my friend Maya invited me along with a few of her friends to a three-course bacon meal. The day of the big meal Maya and I wrote a few bacon haikus. Here they are:

Pre-Bacon Haikus

Bacon, thick and crisp
Artery-clogging goodness
My reason to live
-Maya

Oh happy piglet
Sorry you are so tasty
Get in my belly
-Ramune

Post-Bacon Haikus

Oh bacon coma
Delectable salty dreams
Please pass the water
-Maya

Lifespan cut in half
No need to find a job now
Thanks tasty piglet
-Ramune

Filed under: Collaboration, Design by ramune

My portfolio!

Since I am constantly looking for work now and (thinking of) applying to grad school, I figured it would be a good idea to have a physical portfolio. I also happen to have a wonderful resource called my (amazingly talented book binder/conservator/master of all things book and paper related) sister. Together we worked on a few ideas that were both professional and unique to my style. She sent me some links to materials and I came up with a few digital mock ups and picked out the leather (please refrain from splashing red paint on my portfolio). This was the winning design and I am happy with how it turned out . . . now I need to fill it and rework my website so they work well together. This design can also be seen in quite a few of my fig.ments pendants.

My name embossed on the portfolio spine

My original design/mock up of the portfolio

Filed under: Collaboration, Holiday, taste by ramune

My favorite of my Easter eggs this year

This past Saturday I spent almost the entire day (nine hours) making margučiai (Lithuanian Easter eggs). Some of my friends came by to learn how to decorate the eggs and I was pleasantly surprised to see them pick up on it so quickly and develop their own styles. I find the whole process very meditative and wish I could decorate eggs more than just once a year. If only I could start a career in decorating Lithuanian eggs . . .

For more photos from Easter, you can see my Flickr set here.

One of my favorite eggs

Cherry blossoms

Vaidila made some really elaborate eggs

A bundle of eggs, as you can see the blue worked the best

Vaidila’s video of my sister, me and my mother making margučiai. My sister pointed out that we all use the same “pinky on the egg” technique.

Filed under: Collaboration, Experimental, Photography by ramune

Back in November or December Scott gave me a roll of film to start a double exposure collaboration, the idea being that I would shoot the full roll, rewind it and give it back to him to shoot over. I wanted to try something a bit different, so I put the roll in my lomo fisheye, hoping that it would create an interesting result. I gave the roll back to Scott in early January and he shot over it with his Konica. He then scanned and cut them how he thought they looked best. Here are a few of my favorites and the rest can be seen here. Some of them turned out pretty well and others were not as exciting.

If you have a film camera and have any interest in doing a double exposure collaboration, let me know, I would love to do more.

Filed under: Collaboration, Favorites, Photography, Silliness by ramune

Attempting to break into National Airport?

The other week when I went to my friends’ Christmas dinner party I got a lomo fisheye camera from my secret santa (Brandy). I was pretty thrilled and have had a chance to play around with it. Normally I post smaller images but I could not help posting these ones large, I think they are so much fun. The ones on this page are from this past Saturday, but you can see more in my Fisheye set on Flickr.

Have a fantastic New Years and see you back here in 2009!

My sister looking “troubled”

Filed under: Animation, Collaboration, Silliness by ramune

Since I have been behind on the posts and it is the last day of the year, I am updating twice so that I can start 2009 on track. This past Saturday my sister, brother and I went to Gravely Point by National Airport with my dad and his wife. What usually ends up happening is we watch the planes for a bit, walk around and then we take random photos of us either frolicking or doing handstands. This time I tried to get a photo of my brother doing a handstand and my sister doing a cartwheel simultaneously with an airplane coming down to land at National Airport. It isn’t meant to be a smooth stop motion animation, it’s more just to show the progression of the motions.

Filed under: Collaboration, Design by ramune

This year my brother decided to take on the challenge of running the Chicago Marathon. The last time he planned to run it he broke his ankle several months before the race (ouch!). I had only been to a marathon once before and had a great time supporting not only my friend Ashley but the other runners as well. This year since a whole slew of my family members were planning on coming out I decided to design shirts and print them myself. I figured it would be fun for everyone involved.

The first step was to get the design done. After talking to Ashley about it she suggested I do something with cowbells since she had bought cowbells for her support team when she ran the Philadelphia Marathon last year. I had worked on several ideas along the Christopher Walken SNL skit theme (if you haven’t seen it, you are missing out on a classic), talked to my brother about it and he [being the excellent artist/illustrator/(insert other creative things here) that he is] came up with the idea of a cow coming at you with a bell bopping it over the head. He is a much better illustrator when it comes to things like this so he did the sketch and sent it to me (last minute).

My brother’s sketch for the t-shirts

As much as I loved the sketch of the cow that my brother sent me, I wanted to sharpen it up and smooth out the lines. I have come to realize that I really love vectorizing (don’t think that’s a real word) files and making all of the lines nice and smooth, point by point. It’s probably something that other people find tedious and time consuming but I find it calming and therapeutic in some strange way. Here it is below all cleaned up. The screen-printing project will be coming up next . . .

My vectorized touched up version of the t-shirt design (notice that is says MMVII and not MMVIII . . . a mistake I almost missed too late)

Screen shot of the vector points

Filed under: Baking, Collaboration, taste by ramune

This past weekend I was in Chicago (for oral surgery and to see my family) and made cupcakes at my aunt’s house. I wish I had set up the camera to take photos of the process as it was quite unique. I am used to baking by mixing the wet ingredients and then adding in the dry. This recipe started out with the dry and then I had to add butter (a bit messy) and then the liquids. Either way, the cupcakes came out fantastic! When it came time to decorating them my aunt made the frosting and then we decided to add some color. Three of my cousins, one of their friends and I all contributed to the decorating as you can see below.

Collection of Buttercream Frosted Cupcakes

One of my decorated cupcakes

Detail of the buttery buttercream frosting

My cousin/goddaughter cleaning up the leftover cupcake dough (one of my favorite pastimes!)