Staining, messing up and having fun.

All of the production is taking me a lot longer than I thought. It is a ton of fun, but I think I shot a little high with what I could get done in a week. Oops.  I guess there goes my break after the summer class is over.

I stained so many pieces of wood this week, I am pretty sure I had a contact high for 3 days from sitting for hours in my little apartment breathing it in. There goes some more brain cells. Oops. I also found some perfect wood containers when I bought strawberries at the market last week. I am hoping to score a couple more this week.... then more staining.

I got working on the little farmers t-shirts, and messed them all up! I used a different printer and apparently that was a bad idea. The ink was bleeding out and the colors were awful. I just printed more on the same printer I did my tests, so hopefully tonight goes better.

Not a whole lot to write about these past couple weeks, because I am doing the same thing over and over. Taking up lots of time, making a huge mess, stinking up the apartment and having a lot of fun. :)

Here is some pictures of the mess, I mean process…..

Some of the stained pieces.

Waiting to be ironed on to the t-shirts

Top back labels

First reveal

Awful! Bleed, terrible color! Dammit!

Being productive and counterproductive...

...All at the same time.

Getting into the swing of things is still a challenge this week. I kept getting stuck at times and felt blocked by something. I guess my brain is still on shut-down mode. Luckily I am feeling creative and ready to explore, so I changed up my to-do list for the week and took advantage of the mood.

I sketched out some ideas I have for my final book, the photography and general page layout. What I then needed was a system. How will I show each program? Will it be in parts? Should the book also act as a brand guideline as well as a presentation?

I think I am mostly settled on a menu-looking book. It will be over-sized and will fold out like a menu, but containing many more pages. The back will have another flap that will fold out (like a specials menu) and this will reveal the mini-book of brand guidelines. Each section will be distinguished with images of food with the little cards photographed in it. (Sort of like the one’s I took this week, see below) Then be followed with the drawings, full pictures and detail shots of what I designed. That’s my thoughts for now anyways.

Here are some images I took this past weekend at the farmers market. It was not a sunny day at all and rained for a bit while we were there. But, ended up being a good contrast to the sunny shots from last week. It was also nice how all the food was wet. Not so great that my cards kept getting wet.

Back at it...

I blinked and break was over. Getting into a summer class can be really hard because we are just coming out of months of no sun and lots of cold days. We finally see blue skies, get to wear flip-flops and everyone is out and about. It is so hard to walk to my office to do school work instead of walking to the beach and relaxing. But, I must. Next summer I will be done with grad school forever, so.... just. one. more. to. go.

Luckily, the summer is all thesis. No other classes. So I am able to dedicate my brain to one topic and swim in it. The summer semester is ½ the time of a normal one, but after it is “over” I will still keep working, so technically I have the whole summer. For my mental sanity, I plan to only work one weekend day instead of both. Then I can have a beach/hiking/wandering day, every week. <---- good plan.

On the summer agenda is finishing the promote program, producing all the pieces I have designed, and beginning the sketches for the final book and website. Lots to do!

I have already started with promote. I made a trip down to City Hall (my proposed City Farm location) to check out the area. Luckily there was the Boston Market that day and it was beautiful out. I was able to take a ton of pictures. Here is a sample...