Friday, May 19, 2006

Frankenstein's Monster

Here is a green Frankenstein's monster from Ultra Fractal. I was playing with some ideas, but the end product is not really what I had in mind. Fractals do grow organically, and I rarely plan them out, but in the midst of creation, there comes a point of synthesis and of decision in which I decide what I am going for. This one eluded me, though the end result has interesting elements. A true collection of parts that do not quite make a whole, the anti-synergy. The sum is less than the parts.

Sunday, May 07, 2006

INVITATIONS!!!!!!!!!

Finally, our saga of hand-crafted invitations is over. This is what has been keeping every free moment, if not working on them, then thinking about them.

Supplies were purchased at the Paper Source. We had taken an invitation making course there earlier this year. Many trips were taken to the store, in Cambridge (located a small walk from our apartment) and in Brookline (a drive away), and we even ordered some materials as a special order.

Then, we assembled the tools we needed to create the invitations. The big items were a Konica-Minolta printer. This printer was won at an auction for my school. We had been wondering how we were going to print out the color pages of our invitation and avoid the hassles of going back to change files or dealing with the inconvenience of being away from home to do the printing. That was taken care of by this serendipitous auction, and a family from the school then turned around and paid for the printer for us. Wow!

Other tools and supplies came from Staples, Pearl Art, Bob Slate Stationer, and many other sources. In this picture, you can see the cutting board that made life easier. It had a regular cutting head as well as a perforator. Also, it was made of steel, so I stuck some business card magnets to the back of a ruler and was able to use that as a positive stop to speed up the cutting process.

After the printing was completed and the paper cut, we worked for a long time assembling the pieces. Envelopes lined the floor as the glue that ended up not working was drying. Stacks of unsewn invitations waited to be punched and sewn. The finished invitations then had to be stuffed in the envelopes, no mean feat if you have tried to restuff yours, and the envelopes had to be addressed.

Much work, and now it is mostly over. Yay! On to the next priority.