iCraft

iPods dominate the world of mp3 players, being the choice player of over 70 percent of American consumers (Disclaimer: this is a Wikipedia statistic. Insert grain of salt). This means that 70% of the people in the United States who are listening to an mp3 player right now have owned or do own a pair of those awful white earbuds.

They're uncomfortable, get dirty almost immediately, and crap out right when you need them most. Even so, wearing them is a status symbol - It's like saying, "Hey, you might not care what mp3 player is in my pocket right now, but I'm going to tell you right now that it's an iPod." Other people, like me, just wear them because we're lazy and they're free.

I, having gone through three iPods (a first generation mini that was outdated almost the instant I got it, an iPod touch that was outdated almost the instant I got it, and an iPod classic that may be outdated, but, by God, it has enough storage space that I no longer give a shit what anyone else thinks), had a small hoard of those chintzy white headphones, and not a single one of them worked properly. So I, being the crafty girl that I am, and also being in pursuit of anything to do that wasn't homework, decided to put them to good use.

With a bottle of super glue, a pair of scissors, and the little spring-loaded squishy thing that was supposed to keep my laundry bag shut (I actually dedicated some time to finding the name to this sucker: it's called a cord lock) in hand, I went to town.

The result was, I think, Plankton's audio-robotic cousin.





He now lives on my bookshelf, and I am the happy recipient of this eternally judgmental glare.

Science!

One of my favorite classes that I have taken at Lawrence was Weird Science, which I originally took to knock out a graduation requirement, but actually turned out to be an amazing class.

We didn't really learn all that much chemistry, which is what the class was supposed to be, but we did learn some good things about science in general, and about ourselves as people. We all came pretty close to death at least a few times, I'm sure, using fire, tools, and dangerous chemicals without the proper safety equipment or procedure, and I saw more beakers broken in that class than I ever knew was possible.

The most underrated part of the class, however, and the most weirdly underused, was the chalkboard lab tables. I left lovely drawings on there quite often, although no one got to use the room and enjoy them besides our class.

This one is my favorite.





It turns out that drawing in white on a black surface is really difficult, at least for people who are more used to sketchy line art and are suddenly crippled with a complete inability to sketch at all, instead relying on picking up highlights with gentle washes of white.

Difficult, but fun.

Now, if I could only get better font for handwriting...

Job Monkey

Ah, yet another long hiatus, and yet another return with more random uploads in one giant post dump.

In my most recent Computer Science class, our final project was to make a web application using Java, similar to one that has already been created by a company called TaskRabbit.

In case you don't feel like reading the article, the basic gist is this: employers post jobs, and potential employees make bids on the jobs. Employers select the best fit for them, and then the site facilitates the completion of the job.

My group and I decided to name our project Job Monkey, which was one of the more creative titles, if I do say so myself. We divided the assignment into three parts - design of the employer side for one of my teammates, design of the runner side for the other, and design of the administrative component for me.

Since designing GUIs (Graphical User Interfaces, or windows with buttons and text fields and the like)is fairly simple using our design program, I took a few minutes to whip us out some graphics for our main page.

They are by no means the most amazing graphics ever created, but I am pretty proud of them for a few reasons:

1) I finished all three of them within about two hours.
2) I used no stock art, reference images, or ideas outside of my own mind.
3) We were the only group with any graphics at all.

First I created the site logo:





And then the icons for each individual side of the site:









It rekindled my love of graphics, and of photoshop, and was, overall, delightful.
Also, monkeys are cute.

The AstraeA Saga (An Image-Laden Journey)

As I have mentioned before, my friend Todd is in a band called AstraeA. I have never actually heard any of their stuff, since they are very picky about what they have been doing in the studio, but I do know their album art, because I sort of had a hand in that. Sort of. It's a long story.

So. I was first given this, along with a couple of stock photos snagged from deviantArt and Google and some vague color descriptions, and asked to see what I could do.





With that in mind, I came up with this:





Although it's not my greatest work ever, I really liked this beginning, and I was pretty proud of it, but then I was introduced to the wonders of making things for other people when they already know what they want.

(As a note, this is not intended to be some sort of passive-agressive blog bitchery. It took a looooong time to get to the end of this, but that's part of the process. Plus, I had fun!)

Anyway, following my new instructions (the girl needs to be greener, the halo gold, and the whole thing centered), I updated, also adding detail to the halo, since I liked that better. (Note: freeballing not recommended. It just gets you emotionally attached.)





Now that the figure was at least settled, I realized that I did not know which logo to attach, which was fun. Todd had drawn and facebooked a logo, which looked like this:

.



Using that logo (with a little added tweaking on my part, since it's me), and my new directives (adding mist, making her look more ethereal), I came up with this:





Now here is where my emotional involvement and stubbornness sort of fought with my desire to please. I was given the official AstraeA logo, and asked to make her more transparent, add more mist, and generally make it more space-ghost-ish.





Since this was sort of displeasing to me, and, as it turns out, to the band members themselves, I made this other one (Direct quote from me at the time, "I had another artsy bitch moment and am trying something different, just because I want to"). I centered the person to match the symmetry of the logo, and handed this one, my favorite, over.





At this point, I am not sure if the poor guitarist got sick of my shenanigans or if he just decided to second opinion it, but he sent it to the guy who did their official logo to tweak.
(As far as art etiquitte goes, probably not the nicest thing ever, but I am sort of alright with it, since this guy is sort of amazing? Check him out here)

Aaaaand, as it turns out, he's making them pay for it. So there's that. I'm sure the story will have a less anticlimactic end some day.
Hopefully?
Yes.

Ganache

It all started one fateful afternoon.

My friend Nathan and I were going out to lunch to catch up and hang out, whine about boys, etc., when we were served the artsy nutjob's favorite dish -- fondue. I, personally, am not actually a fan of eating fondue, but I am a fan of making art on the plate with the leftover chocolate and skewers. And so it began:





Poor Danny, our waiter, was blown away by this (or, according to Nathan, the creepy, sensual way I [accidentally] explained the concept of paisley to him.), and Nathan was inspired. He insisted that for his next dinner party, I would be decorating his plates, for pay, and so, a couple weeks later, I did.

Having been forced to take home the leftover fondue chocolate, I had surmised that the chocolate was not simply melted chocolate, but was, instead, ganache -- a smoother, softer mix of chocolate and cream that stays liquid longer, and has the consistency of a thick pudding when chilled (and eaten for several days later by a chocoholic homebound girl with no impulse control).

You (or I) can make ganache by combining cream and chocolate in a one-to-one ratio (one cup of chocolate, one cup of cream, etc.) in a double boiler and heating them together, stirring constantly to mix the two together evenly and avoid burning. As I learned when making mine the first time, it is highly important that you both use baking chocolate and heat the cream with the chocolate. If you add cold cream to melted chocolate, you will get a settled out mess that tastes delicious (imagine an incredibly moist brownie), but is actually impossible to paint with.

Anyway, given this chocolate and a set of beautiful, crisp white plates, I went to town.




This was my first paid gig (a whole $25!), and it was highly satisfying.

All you need is a wooden skewer, a double boiler (or a sauce pan and a glass bowl, really), and some chocolate and cream. And maybe a plate. Then, pop a couple slices of fruit on your fancy new plates, or serve ice cream, or do something else. Any way you do it, it will be both beautiful and delicious.