Whew! What a relief!

      I legitimately can't believe that I am done with my project! And its not even midnight the night before or three a.m. the morning of-- and I'm not wallowing in a puddle of my hopeless, desperate tears of failure and self-loathing like I would normally be doing in a similar life-altering-project-due-tomorrow kind of situation.
      So-- To prove that I'm telling the truth, and frankly just because of my pure exultation at being done, here are some pictures!

Here it is still in progress:

(Some assembly required. Batteries not included... and all that jazz.)

Front and back: 

      I'll be honest and admit I'm not the hugest fan of how it looks from the top. I think I'd like to add a cardboard "cushion" or something to slightly cover up the grid pattern. It isn't very chair-y, if you get me. 

       I then went on to attempt to show via picture that the chair was indeed successful in its required function to support human weight. This, as you may imagine, went very badly. I pray that there are no cameras in the classrooms of the Art&Design Building, because I am frankly embarrassed at how difficult I find it to take a picture of myself!
      This was the best I could do:

      I would like to conclude by mentioning that without my mother's help, I WOULD currently be lying on the floor, washed away by a river of my own tears due largely to procrastination. So, thank you mom for forcing me to be more productive this weekend then I was motivated to be and putting an end to my attempt at skivving off. It also helps massively that you happen to have a degree in industrial design. So thanks for that, too. I also owe some credit to the extra cardboard I found stored away in the basement. I couldn't have done it without you, cardboard! You industrial scissors- on the other hand- I have some things I'd like to say to you! But, seeing as how you could care less, being an inanimate object and all, I will sit her and nurse my hand-bruises in silence. So, aside from the few small wounds I acquired (my chair may or may not have a spot of my own blood-- sodding X-acto blade!) and the parking ticket (damn you KU parking!), it was altogether not a bad night! 

      Just completed and turned in the first assignment from my Art Concepts and Practices class! Got a 4.5 out of 5, hurray! I don't currently have any pictures of the actual box, but here are the contents:

Here are the unfinished chairs (cardboard) before I painted them appropriately:

 This is the tablecloth I painted, and the actual one I was semi-replicating. I had to make adjustments due to size limitations (tiny table can only take so much detail!), but I like the way it turned out. Just enough to be reminiscent without being too intricate, I think.

 This gives you some concept of the scale of the polymer cutlery. I actually made these even smaller later on because they didn't leave enough room for the plates and wine glasses.

Yup. That's all, folks!

Found an awesome font site! Posting the link, mostly for myself just so I know where to find it again slash remember to look at it.
http://losttype.com/

Sitting on a loved one? Figuratively, of course.

      So my second assignment for my Design 102 class this semester is to design a chair out of cardboard that somehow exemplifies my relationship with someone. Interesting, right? I just keep thinking about how this would sound to someone who didn't understand the assignment. Something along the lines of:

          Stranger: "Hello, there. What are you doing?"
          Me: "Oh, hi! I'm thinking of people who would make a good chair."
          Stranger: "..."
          Me: "No-- I'm not making people INTO chairs literally! Wait, don't run away! It's CONCEPTUAL!"

      I can easily imagine someone getting the wrong idea. But, back to the assignment. Thinking about portraying a relationship, or a person for that matter, through an inanimate object was very interesting to me. It forces you to really analyze what that person and your relationship is like, but broader and deeper then I have ever considered before.
      I was actually quite interested in what I had come up with during my brainstorming process. For example, I was surprised that I drew my brother as a throne-- but when I thought about it, it actually made a lot of sense because I put him up on a pedestal in my mind and he is such a model for me to live by. And a chair about my mother I drew as a see-saw, which made sense because we can both be quite moody.
      But, as usual, I am having trouble deciding on which particular person to narrow this assignment down to. I am an extremely indecisive individual, which tends to be a problem. However, I think I have settled on my grandfather. I feel like there is enough to go off of here and make a solid final product. My relationship with my papa as a chair I picture as being big enough to seat two, comfortable, sturdy/supportive, old-fashioned, and reliable/grounded. But I feel that the material (cardboard), while having the benefit of being fairly inexpensive, can be limiting as far as design. Especially considering that this chair, being for a design class, has to FUNCTION and support human weight. In my mind, however, cardboard is such a flimsy material. I guess I'll just have to work with it, experiment, and find out what works.
Until next time!

Its a beautiful day to be an amorphous blob of pond scum!

      Weather last night said there would likely be a thin layer of snow on the ground today-- they couldn't have been more wrong!
      Wish I had a real camera- at least more decent then my mobile... but it captures the general sentiment well enough.