Vancouver Destination for you...

Have you ever been to Dressew?

Well, if you're ever in Vancouver and you like fabric, you should go there. It's A. MAZE. ING.

Last time Dad was in town, we went there upon recommendation by my cousin. Here's me in front of their ric-rac wall.

There are also floor to ceiling walls of cord, ribbon, lace, brown buttons, orange buttons, snaps, straps, sequins .... and then there are the bolts and bolts (and bolts) of fabric!

Its fun to look at even if you're not a sewer. I couldn't leave without a few meters of the giant green ric-rac. And Dad even enjoyed it!

Just TONNES of stuff. Like the kind of stuff you always wonder if you can get somewhere, y'know?

Go if you ever get a chance!

My Morning

Today I got up at 1030 and took my bike to "Banana Grove", the little grocery store a few blocks from here that used to smell really strange but they seem to have remedied that!

This is how my bike basket looked when I got home. I went over a bump and the strawberries flew out! I need some more practice at this! But it was only half an hour from the time I left my house to the time I got back with a bunch of food! I've gotten better at buying fresh stuff that I have to use up instead of stocking up once every couple weeks and half of it going to waste.

By the way, here is my bike (minus his basket)!

So I made a big asparagus, mushroom and tomato omelette  scrambled eggs for brunch and it was yummy!

Now, I think today's goal is to see if I still know how to sew before work. It's raining now so it will be a good day for it!

Directed Studies: The End

Directed Studies: 19 hours to go

Progress...

Directed Studies: 2 Days to go

Progress...

I am pretty much in love with the colours I've chosen for my walls, base and hardwood flooring in the apartment. The Base colour is called "fossil" by Benjamin Moore and it's so great and greyish but creamish, I just love it!

Thats the stuff!

Directed Studies: 7 Days to go

Here's what I've been working on this week!

Drafting... oh how I have a love/hate relationship with thee...

You see, drafting is an art. But it is a pain-staking one. And it is more complex than it may appear (I dunno really, how does it appear?) But if you've never done it, let me enlighten you a little bit.

There is a special way to sharpen you lead so that it doesn't break and make a mess on your clean white paper.

There is a special way to roll your lead holder as you draw a line so your lead stays sharp.

There is a special way to get clean, crisp lines (doesn't always work, unfortuntely, but it looks so nice when it does!).

There is a special way to draw curves with a french curve (that I wish I could master. Always dread the curves!)

And then of course there are line weights. The #1 reason any student gets a crappy drafting mark.

4H, 2H, H, HB leads, all produce a different weight of line. Today I didn't switch out my 2H one, I just go over certain lines harder or press light if I need a lighter line, it is my favorite, most versatile lead.

The blue-ish tone you see in my walls will not be blue after it's copied, it will be a nice grey faded look that is called Poche`. Created by colouring in the back of the paper where the walls are. Wall Poche. "Nice wall Poche". I'm strange but I do like my poche. I wish I knew how to do the hyphen right.

Floor Plan

A closer view of the apartment side of the plan

(See what I ended up doing with the living room, Britta?! Because I was told to not have my two exits that close together so I moved the door which inspired the loss of the curved wall.)

Section through building 5'-0" back from the front door. Poche still in the works as my marker is drying out - can't switch now though, can I!?

Elevations of study carrels, custom ethanol fireplace in lounge, art classroom wall and dining room wall

The perspective

And my RCP (reflected ceiling plan; as if you looked at the ceiling in a huge big mirror). This is still the rough copy and i will trace over it tomorrow so I'll then officially have ALL my drafting done!

Proud of me?

Now, I have to assemble my furniture and material boards, assemble these onto boards after getting them printed, print my AutoCad drawings (fix some of the specs in them first), write up a concept statement, render everything ... and voila! Done!

Directed Studies: 9 Days to go

I am so not in love with sketchup right now. Brilliant program. But just not worth my time this time. I've used it as a "SHORTcut" for creating the perspective drawing that is required. But this time, I think it would have been easier to do it the proper way and draft out the vanishing points, station point, base line etc. and draw a quadrillion lines all over a million pieces of trace paper to make it as perfectly in perspective as we've been taught. Instead, I am going to print this on a big sheet of paper and sketch onto it until I've faked it enough to trace over and make it look "drafted".

But seriously... what a mess. I couldn't even get it to draw windows this morning (added for a little drug-dealer-monitoring. Like it would really make a difference.)

Good Mail Day!

Instead of dwelling on this morning's critique about accessibility and the possibility that people could do drug deals in my library.... I'm being positive!

It was a good mail day - GREAT actually!

This awesome card from the awesome Susie, who, if you've never met, I feel sorry for you quite frankly. :P

And my free Moo cards that I ordered!

They came in brilliant packaging (love)

And they feel great and the pictures all look crisp and bright and nice like they were supposed to!

So Impressed!

Yay!

Have a good LONG weekend everyone!

Directed Studies: Day 29

The rough draft of my floorplan is complete! Tomorrow morning I will get a critique (hopefully  a useful one, not one where all I get out of it is "oh...hmmm....I see....what about this - points - ....mmmm....okay, yeah.....") and I'll let you know how that goes!
And then I am going to look after Claire for a few hours! Very excited!

Why is it that my 2nd half of the day is always way more productive than the first?
Anyone else like that so I don't have to feel so bad?! hehe!

Goodnight!

Can I just say...

..... I love blogs!? I have been reading blogs all morning. It's been a while since I've done that. And yes I am putting off a certain drafting job that needs doing. But guess what, it's me that will reep the consquences of procrastination and I am well aware, so never you mind! (tee hee ... words I will regret)

So, yeah, I was feeling slightly guilty that I'm not getting anything done this morning save feeling inspired by my on-lap computer sitting in my pjs  in front of a warm fire. (on-lap...lap-top... I think I like my version better :D)

Do I use perenthesis too much? (Do I care?)

But I do need to share something I painted a few weeks ago when I had a free Sunday with the girls and they showed me this idea of pasting images from a magazine onto a canvas and then filling in the background! You will not believe how much fun this is!

I did this on a little 9 x 5 inch ish canvas and, as you can see, pasted an image of a girl diving off a diving board with clouds and sky in the background on the top and an image of diamonds on the bottom. The diamonds got covered with a lot of paint with just some of the magazine image still showing through. Same with the diving girl I suppose. But I like it, I like it a lot. You should try it and let me know how it turns out!

Directed Studies: Day 27

So yesterday I went to Crown Wallpaper & Fabric to look for both wallcoverings and fabrics for my project. Unfortunetly for students they gave me some bins of old samples to take from so I didn't get to pick from their entire fantastic and amazing showroom. : (

Basically it was slim pickins. I did find a couple fabrics though, and some nice pieces not for my school project, such as this one:

and this one (love those animals!):

I see some sewing projects on the  horizon!

So this morning I laid out all the materials I have picked so far to use and I have over half of what I need I think, so that is good. Here's what I've come up with:

I've changed the yellow and the purple because I happened upon some glass tiles that came in all 4 of the other colours I had chosen - crazy! - and a slightly different yellow and purple so I thought it made sense to go with the tile colours. The tiles will go on the wall in the front entry where the ceiling stripes meet the wall. You know. Basically the rooms will be white/grey with feature walls or other touches of a colour featured in my fantastically colourful colour scheme. Yes, I'm Canadian, therefore I shall not spell colour without a U. Thanks very much!

The Fabrics that I was able to work with from Crown are pretty great, but I need more fabric for all the different seating and stuff still! I've recycled a bit from last year's Architect's office project, but I'd like to find a plain grey upholstery fabric to do the rest of the chairs in. Here's a closer view of the fabrics that worked:

Circle-y, eh?

... so those are all put away with their sheets of paper, each representing a room/area on the floorplan.

My plan is to start drafting tomorrow! My least favorite part, but it will feel good to get that started!

So...?!

(tell me what you think!)

Lighting Smighting

As I was looking for some lighting (what I really want and can't seem to find a picture of is something dangly and small that would look raindrop-like. Help?) I found this amaaaazing designer who makes stuff like this:

And then, google made me stumble upon this art by Stuart Haygarth:

And  I had a thought! Maybe the fact that I've always enjoyed the lighting aspect of Interior Design could be paired with this artsy fartsy stuff that looks like it would be SO fun to make!

Who knew?!

K back to work...