Saturday 24 October 2015

Making (hopefully not breaking) Things


 Sorry for the big gap in blog posts - think of it like a musical hiatus due to that pesky thing called study and exams. I'll try and be more vaguely regular from now!

Even though I work in a bookshop and have been obsessed since always with them, I never fail to be surprised by what kind of things you learn from books! They cover virtually every single topic you can think of and I don't know if it's just me that finds it cool that you can legitimately learn new things from reading a piece of paper. But then again I'm still impressed at what you can do with computers and I am a supposed 'digital native'. Maybe I'm a time traveler. Or just an old person inside. Anyway! Enough weirdness. Here are a couple of my choice pics that I found mindlessly (although not mindlessly because how can you be in a bookstore?) wandering around. 

DO IT YOURSELF and THE SUSTAINABLE DESIGN BOOK help you to convert pieces of literal rubbish LITERAL RUBBISH into cool things/pieces of furniture/art. I mean, what's not to love. Personally I love making things and I have since been made to feel bad about throwing things away, fine I may be a semi hoarder. And it always seems like a good idea as well - making things I mean and not being a hoarder, because it's virtually guaranteed that no one else will have/wear/look like you! And it's not because you accidentally wore odd socks this morning. But what I like about them is that they're not your average oh, here let's turn this gross old sock into finger less gloves but interesting projects that are pretty freaking cool.


Exhibit A, this Floating Forest (pictures from the Phaidon site). LOOK HOW COOL IT IS!!
And I swear it's not because I secretly work for Phaidon, although that would be extremely cool, but just for people who think that all books are must, outdated and old. I mean, you can never get the feeling of a real book from a tablet can you? Nope didn't think so.


 Here is an introduction... and then how to make it...

Okay and secondly, there is this cool website called Spoon flower in which you can get fabrics printed with whatever you want on them! Yes I know what you're thinking, I can finally have that guy who never notices me on the train as my curtain! Check out the site here. Need I tell you that this is one of the greatest things ever?





Anyway, this book (along with Print Make Wear) has heaps of awesome ideas to try. If only I knew how to use a sewing machine. Damn.  But in the meantime at least I can marvel at the examples in the book. It even talks about formating for the technically challenged. What more could a girl - or boy, want? A holiday to Japan that's what. But anyway as the Rolling Stones said 'you can't always get what you want'.



Look! Handmade plaid! I'm amused.