Father’s Day present wrapping crafts

So today is Father’s Day! For the first time in a while I had a good idea to decorate/wrap a present. It all started with Dad’s present being about the size of a person’s body, which led to this:

One of Dad’s shirts is the wrapping, “tied” with a tie! There is also a handle on the box right where the neck of the shirt is, which makes everything easier to handle.

Then keeping with the shirt and tie theme, I made an origami shirt with regular printer paper and added a ribbon for the tie, similar to this tutorial, however I really just looked at this photo and then did it myself. I didn’t add buttons to the collar, but I added three eyelets down the center for buttons, usually hidden by the tie.

I really like how it turned out and eventually I might make more for special occasions. It’s certainly a reason to buy a few more ribbons. And I’ll definitely be pinning a few of these photos on my Pinterest board.

All together, now:

So have a happy Father’s Day to all the families out there, and remember those fathers that have been lost to us. (These too.) And I hope this post inspires you to get crafty as well!

My Instagrams through the months: Part 1

Like a lot of people, I use Instagram. I still like the rectangular photos better than square photos, as I find rectangles to be more closely related to the rule of thirds. But of course that doesn’t stop me from using the square photographic medium, it just means I have to work around it and do things differently, making sure the square versions don’t crop out important parts of my photos. I also don’t Instagram like a lot of people do, uploading (not photographing) viral photos or screenshots, or just photographing everything that happens to them. Sure, I photograph my food sometimes or silly little things that I see, but I do my best to do everything artistically. I center or off-center my subject, keep the rule of thirds in mind, and (possibly too often) photograph with my DSLR, edit in Photoshop, upload to Dropbox, save to my iPhone’s photos, and then upload to Instagram. It’s a long, arduous process for the design-inclined.

That being said, and because I haven’t written in this blog for a few months now, I thought I’d give a bit of a recap of my life through my Instagram photos. I won’t post all of my photos, just my favorites, ones that are significant to my life or are just particularly pretty. Because I have 232 photos as of right now, I think it’s a good idea to make more than one post for this. So here goes…

This photo was one of my first Instagram photos, taken in one of the practice rooms at school. It’s certainly not an innovative photo, but I clearly wanted to use up some time.

And so the food photos start. This was back when I first realized I should try cooking but I mostly only knew how to make grilled cheese so I made one with avocado. I’m pretty sure this was taken with my camera at the time, not my phone.

If you know Doctor Who, you might enjoy this. I was playing around with my Adipose toy and realized my TARDIS mug top could be a hat.

The next three photos all go together; they are of my neighbor’s cat.

We took care of this cat after my neighbor passed away and I felt bad, but we’re all allergic and I’m also just not too good with animals anyway.

This is the game Rummikub, or Rummy-O as we say, or Rummy-K. I really like the placement of the little red car.

Back at school for September, the dining hall had cupcakes, even though it looks like it should be for Halloween. It may look like I’m outside, but I’m actually at a window.

With my school’s photography club, I went to the local orchard. Again, this was photographed with my camera first, edited, and then I posted it on Instagram.

This pasta just looked really pretty.

I was pleased when I bought a stylus and it looked like a quill. So of course I had to photograph it when the inkwell was on my Kindle.

My cousin had a really tiny book so of course I photographed this too.

And that is the end of my 2012 photographs. Next are my 2013 photographs which seem to be more numerous than my 2012 photographs, probably helped by the fact that I switched from a Droid to an iPhone in December for my trip to Europe in January.

Next stop, 2013.

Happy Birthday, Grandpa

Today would have been my Grandpa’s 90th birthday. I feel upset at myself that I didn’t remember until I saw on Facebook this morning that Mom said it was. But anyway, today, April 17th, is his birthday. It’s been over five years (will be six in November) since he passed away so suddenly, and it upsets me how much I forget over time.

Logo commissions: logos don’t have to be expensive

Do you have an Etsy shop or a business that needs a logo, but you’re a bit tight on cash? Designers are usually expensive, right?

Wrong!

Being a college student myself, I of course understand that it’s hard getting around without money. And when you’re crafty with Etsy, you want potential customers to get interested, right? Right! But what a customer wants to see is an appealing store with appealing graphics, and their inner voice will tell them: this shop owner knows what he/she is doing.

So here’s my offer: you need a logo, banner, whatever: I’ll make it for you.

Tiers:

1. One-color (black) logo ($8-$10, depending on complexity)

2. Color logo ($11-$15, depending on complexity)

3. Logo with matching banner ($20-$30, depending on color and complexity)

These prices are not set in stone, and are decided on a case-by-case basis. More complex and time-consuming requests will be priced higher. If you are dissatisfied with initial designs, additional consultations will cost more, beginning with $5 per consultation. (You will only pay, via Paypal, when you are completely satisfied!)

Send me an email at kt.hambor@gmail.com (if you could, put “commission” in the subject) and include what tier you would like to use, what the the logo is for, any information about your company, what the size should be, and any additional information you think would be useful. The more specific you are in the first place, the more likely you will get what you want in the first place, so less consultations will be needed (which makes for a happier you and less confused me!).

Please don’t hesitate to check out my portfolio at http://mezzotessituraportfolio.wordpress.com and/or ask me any questions you may have. Additionally, I reserve the right to include any designs in my portfolio, as long as I include a link to your online store or in some way credit the client.

Thank you!

Long break from blogging

I know it has been a very long time since I wrote anything on this blog, even though I have been doing a lot of blog-worthy things. For one thing, I went to Europe for almost two weeks in January. I have over 800 photos that I felt were good enough for Facebook, yet I haven’t edited any to deem them worthy of a blog post (okay, blog posts)—yet. There will certainly come a time when I finally do something about it, and unfortunately many months will have passed by and it will probably be spring by then.

The reasons I haven’t done anything about this yet are twofold. One, I have been busy with school work, so those things always should be more important, and they are. A major part of this is the five short essays I need to write about the trip, so I think it’s safe to say that I should write essays about the trip before I edit photos from the trip. Two, I find the prospect of going through so many photos daunting, and I have enough stress in my life as it is. I have been having great difficulty with headaches, in fact, and I’m on my second round of Let’s See What Prescriptions Will Help Katie This Time, courtesy of my wonderful neurologist. That isn’t sarcasm—my neurologist really is wonderful. This is the first time that I was able to call a doctor, say my medicine wasn’t helping, and get a new prescription filled so that I could start the medicine a week before another appointment, at which point we can talk about how the medicine is helping. So as much as medicine and going to the doctor is annoying, it can actually help!

Anyway, the point is, I’m sorry for not blogging as regularly. (Okay, I wasn’t going to blog as regularly as November which was every day, but certainly more than lately!) Hopefully after this month is over, when those essays are done and submitted, I can finally justify blogging again.

In other news, I now have a new portfolio here, so it can’t really be said that I’ve been completely absent from WordPress! The designs of which I am most proud are there, and I hope the portfolio will include more as the weeks roll by.

Happy Holiday

I know I’ve been a bit MIA here lately, but I have been busy….doing nothing. Well, I’ve been sick at home with a cold. I finished my semester on a high note with great grades. The next exciting thing in my life is in exactly a week from now I will be flying to Paris and then London for a class that includes visiting museums, seeing shows, and overall sightseeing. I can guarantee that soon I will be talking about this here in the coming weeks.

Today we had our first real snow of the year, just two days after Christmas. I photographed a little this afternoon—my camera’s first winter, how cute.

Attempting International Typographic Style

This semester, one of the classes I was enrolled in was History and Principles of Graphic Design, which I generally shortened to Design History because that’s such a long title. We began with 20,000 BCE and learned up to almost the present day.

One of the more recent topics was the International Typographic Style, also known as Swiss Style. This came out of Switzerland in the 1950s and generally uses grids, sans-serif typefaces (most notably, Helvetica), and flush-left ragged-right text. I am all for Helvetica all the time, and I love typography of course, so I think it may be safe to say that this was my favorite topic from the whole semester.

Click the photo for the original source.

Throughout the semester, we were able to make a design based on any topic we covered, whether it be a parody or just something in that style. Of course I took the opportunity to focus on the International Typographic Style.

Instead of starting completely from scratch, I decided to recreate a particular specimen, which was created in 1972 in Canada as a catalogue cover. It was meant to incorporate two languages—French and English—into one cover.

I loved the idea of the change in stroke thickness, so I decided to try it with my university’s name, in Helvetica Neue, of which I have five different weights. I also gave myself a bit more creative freedom, and included the university’s founding date, 1865.

Rider University, founded in 1865: now in Helvetica.

What do you think? Please let me know! If you have any other project ideas for me to try, I’m all for suggestions!