Riusuke Fukahori is an amazing artist who pours resin and painstakingly paints layer on layer until the goldfish are formed in three dimensions.
Goldfish are a very lucky symbol in Asian culture as they represent wealth (an abundance of gold) and harmony. (One of most popular washi necklace pendant patterns over the years has been our goldfish pendants!)
video via The Awesomer
We’re winding down here at Blend Creations since the last day for holiday orders was yesterday. Any orders between December 20th – 26th will start shipping on Tuesday December 27th. If you’re wanting to give a Blend Creations jewelry gift though, you can always give an email gift certificate (no shipping and no expiry!) — for now, you’ll even get $5 off $100 gift certificates.
In the meantime, we’re preparing for our own celebrations and our Jr. VP has certainly helped out by designing some ornaments:
Santa and his elves? Nope. The Jr. VP did a self-portrait and drew his best bear friends, which we turned into ornaments.
We hope you and yours have a wonderful and restful holiday season :)
Last year, we created jack-o-lantern templates based on our Oog charmer necklaces — they’re cute, they’re spooky and perfect for Hallowe’en.
At our house, we went a little more personalized with our pumpkins and created Scary Eric, Scary Vivian and Scary Jr. VP jack-o-lanterns. Scary Eric and Scary Jr. VP are shown below:
To make the template, I started with a photo and drew on top of it in Illustrator until you get something like this:
For this year’s pumpkins, I’ll be attempting a very geeky jack-o-lantern that’s very much like our QR code jewelry, and here’s the template I’ll be using:
To use the template:
1) Click on the image and you’ll be taken to a full-size version.
2) Right-click the full-size template and “Save image as”, to save the template to your computer
3) Print out your image and re-scale as necessary.
4) Tape or pin the template to your pumpkin. You can use a pin to mark the outlines and then connect the dots of the outline. (The black areas should just be shallow chiseling that doesn’t go all the way through to the inside of pumpkin).
Wish me luck! It’s more geeky than scary, but it does encode a spooky message ;)
If you try out this template, I’d love to see how it works out for you!
Update:
Here is the carved pumpkin. It turns out, it does scan! (Eric was able to scan it using ScanLife and Scan apps on the iPod — it helps if you’ve got decent lighting). The photo below will also scan if you have some mad Photoshop skillz:
When we originally designed our Oog series of Charmer necklaces, we wanted something fun. It was just a coincidence that they happened to be a little spooky too:
If you haven’t yet carved your pumpkin yet for Hallowe’en, here are three free jack-o-lantern templates you can use:
To use the templates:
1) Click on the template you’d like to use, and you’ll be taken to a full-size version.
2) Right-click the full-size template and “Save image as”, to save the template to your computer
3) Print out your image in landscape orientation with your printer, or re-scale as necessary.
4) Tape or pin the template to your pumpkin. You can use a pin to mark the outlines and then connect the dots of the outline. (You’ll be cutting out the grey areas of the template).
Enjoy! If you use any of these templates, we’d love to see photos of the complete jack-o-lanterns!
Update: Here are some photos of completed jack-o-lanterns, thanks to my friend Shannon!
I’m working on a custom ‘skin’ design for our phone, since a black phone on a black desk is often hard to find without having to call said phone. I thought it’d be fun to do the same pattern that we use for our Flower Lace necklaces, since it’s one of my favorites of everything we’ve ever designed:
In looking through my working files for this design, I came across this bookmarked blog posting by Oh Joy! with the original inspiration for the pattern:
Oh Joy! had blogged about NY Fashion Week in September 2007 and the Lela Rose‘s Spring 2008 collection. It’s been 3 years, and I still love that dress and our engraved wood necklace that was inspired by it.
While Pantone names a Color of the Year every year, they also release Fashion Color Reports for each season. Pantone says, “[these colors build from] the color palette from the spring… and conjure images of travel and adventure, whether real or aspirational”.
If you’re looking to Fall 2010 modern accessories either as jewelry gifts or for yourself, we’ve got some suggestions!
Get this color with our “Cherry blossom” jewelry (as pendants, necklace or earrings) in the yellow-green version.
Get hits of both of these colors with our “Gerbera” jewelry (as pendants, necklace or earrings) in the gold version.
If you have a penchant for purple, show off a hit of Purple Orchid (18-3027) with your fall fashions with our burgundy hydrangea, or a dotted floral washi (available as earrings, necklace and pendants).
The name, Lipstick Red (19-1764) conjures up something sexy, spicy and fun and you can also do a something on the sweeter side with our Boronia foliage necklace.
Such a delicious name for a color that has such overtones of deep violet in a rich brown. Our pick for showing off this colour is our Bouquet washi jewelry in the purple and pink version, which all have a background color in this rich brown-violet. (Available as earrings, pendants and necklace).
While Turquoise is the color of the year for 2010, the Fall 2010 version of this shade, is a little more subdued; a little cooler perhaps. Our pick for showing off this shade is our peony pendant in light green (also available as a necklace).
Of all the colors in the Fall 2010 palette, Woodbine (18-0538) is the one that when seeing it, I can almost feel the cooler fall air, and the crunch of leaves underfoot. Our pick for this color is the Nepalese floral paper inlay jewelry in the green version.
Neutrals are can’t-miss colors and for that reason, we’ve chosen these updated classics: Pink faux-pearl torus necklace and a genuine freshwater pearl torus necklace. It’s 2010, and these aren’t your grandma’s pearls!
Did you know that world-renowned color authority Pantone, named Turquoise 15-5519 their color of the year for 2010?
Pantone names a trend-setting color every year, so if you’re ever wondering what to get someone you know who keeps up with fashion trends, the ‘Color of the Year‘ is an excellent jumping-off point.
If you’re looking for a contemporary jewelry piece to give you that pop of turquoise, we suggest:
Our Aqua Hydrangea foliage necklace. While this vibrantly dyed flower is a slightly bluer hue than Pantone 15-5519, the variations in the color of the flower shows a nice range of blues to turquoises. It’s a great pop of color without being too overdone.
Our Nepalese floral pendants in the tone-on-tone turquoise color. These pendants feature an inlay of paper made from the lamali lokta plant made by Nepalese village co-operatives.
Our carved Asian turquoise lends texture as well as color as an accessory. We love the contrast of the very smooth machined steel against the curves of the turquoise.
And finally, one of our most popular washi patterns — plum blossoms in a slight variations of turquoise.
It’s easy to see why turquoise was picked as the color of the year for 2010 — it’s versatile, cheery and just plain beautiful.
Obviously, we have an affinity for things that are laser-cut (all of our engraved wood designs are made with our laser-cutter).
So color us impressed when we came across Fluid Forms‘ Streets Clock. While the laser-cut design is impressive in itself, what really pushed it over the edge for us, was being able to make a personalized clock on-the-fly using the street map of the city of your choice.
I made a clock of our hometown of Ottawa, ON with the hands centered on Parliament Hill:
Or you can check out this neat little gallery below:
These iPhone cases are from Freedom of Creation and they’re made by laser sintering (think 3-D printing). At first glance, I thought it was some sort of fabric, but I imagine it must feel pretty hard or even brittle. I love the textures that can be achieved by this process. Check out the rest of Freedom of Creation‘s products like their trays for other textural beauties.
We draw inspiration for not our modern jewelry in a number of ways, such as seeing what other creatives are doing. Since both of us have a design-background, we regularly use tools like Adobe Illustrator of Photoshop in our ‘ideation’ phase when we come up with new products.
When we saw this “Real-World” photoshop image, we knew we had to share. There’s a Flickr set of how they put this image of the Photoshop interface using real-life objects:
(via BoingBoing. See the full-size image here).
We also love illustration, which is part of the reason why we started up our Metal for Monsters line — it gave us an excuse to collaborate with some really talented illustrators. The second image that crossed our paths recently is a great illustration by Patrick Moberg:
© Blend Creations 2012
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