Styles has been an indoor cat his whole life. Starting a couple of years ago he’s been allowed out on supervised excursions. But more and more he’s been free to come and go as he pleases. This was his first triumph in the wild of our neighbor’s backyard. It’s good to see him doing what comes naturally.
Logo design and illustration for kado, a high-end business specializing in flowers for weddings and events.
I needed to find something for Brenna’s birthday. I always start this search at Supermarket. A couple of years ago I bought her this Pop-Out necklace at a small booth during ICFF. She loved it but lost it. I had been trying to find a replacement and I finally found the company again. I picked up another in a different color in case she ever finds the original. I also got her this incredible laser-cut felt necklace from a company called Nervous System.
I just picked up a set of 6 of these beautiful vintage Herman Miller fiberglass chairs from the Green Ant. They are the super-rare popsicle green color. The only problem is they’ve got the wide mount base. We’re trying to talk our friend Tom into manufacturing eiffel tower bases, like he promised. The Green Ant has more from his secret stash.
When we moved in we were focused on the interior renovations. What was supposed to take 6 months took 3 years+. The inside is basically finished and now we’re focusing on the outside. We have a really nice entryway, but it was completely overgrown and there was this weird pile of rocks alongside the stairs.
My overall idea for the exterior is to consolidate materials into fewer and more cohesive choices. Instead of 10 different types of stones, maybe 3. I already had a nice rusty metal planter that I liked, so I thought I’d bring more rusted steel into the mix. My concept was to visually extend the stairs and add low ground cover. We first planted Irish Moss but that didn’t live and this year we replanted Whooly Thyme.
We’re pretty happy with the results, I love the way the stairs have rusted.
My wife Brenna is starting another flower shop, she took over a franchise location called Flowerama. It was an established shop with a cheesy name. She’s pregnant right now and was convinced she was having a girl. Her name for the girl was going to be Pearl. Well she’s having a boy but she got to name her new shop Blooming Pearl.
As a designer I should love working on logos, but without enough time they can be a struggle for me. My original concept was a pair of hands that look like petals holding a pearl, presenting as a gift. Below are the final 2 versions.
I think we’ll go with the top version. The store has a big horizontal awning that we’re reusing.
At least I’m trying to make it that way. My wife has been making me a cake on my birthday for the last 4 years. It started with Cartman, then Professor Chaos, followed by the Vitra Polder Sofa!!!?, and last years awesome Obey Obama Hope poster. I’m trying to not expect a cake every year but when they’re this amazing it’s hard not to. I hate blogs that go off on how talented and amazing the authors wife or husband is, but what the hell, she’s pretty cool.
The renovations continue and it’s time to for another project in the side yard (the fence was last summer). I got some ipe deck lumber from my friend Scott, who had it left over from some of design/build company’s jobs. The problem was I had a lot of short boards and there were some 1″ and some 3/4″. What to do? Ah ha, fly my 73 year-old, retired, engineer Dad for a week of manual labor. He’ll be able to figure it out.
We came up with a rough plan, use the 3/4″ boards for the small deck and because we had so many short lengths we hung the joist every 12″. I thought we’d have enough wood for the whole deck but we only had about 50%. Luckily MacBeath Hardwoods in town had a bunch of ipe boards in a pile out back of their warehouse. They had been there a while, so we were able to negotiate on the price, they even milled some down. Ipe turns grey over time so it didn’t match the other lumber I had. I was going to sand the whole deck but once it was installed I really liked the effect of different colors.
The problem with the lumber I had was a lot of the boards were warped and crowned. I did a little research and found this tool called the BoWrench which worked amazingly well. Without it we would’ve been hosed.
As for the hardware we bought screws specifically for ipe decks. Stainless steel, special threads, powder coated heads, but the crazy thing was they were 30 cents apiece! x 600. We had to counter-sink and pre-drill all the holes anyway so probably not worth it. It’s rock hard wood, funny enough the first hole I attempted to drill broke the bit. I had to get some Bosch titanium bits and they worked fine.
Anyway, the deck came out great. We lucked out on buying the exact amount of treated lumber for the structure. We weren’t really measuring the width of the boards to the final side but it worked out perfectly with out needing to rip the end board.
This is the card I designed for my wife Brenna, a floral designer. It was printed by my friend Ben at The Mandate Press in SLC. The cool thing is, he posted these photos on his Flikr page and this card is now on like 10 different design blogs.
