Tuesday, April 28, 2009

In Which My Button Fancy Gets a Little Ridiculous

So you might remember that one of my ongoing projects is to incorporate some digital design into my product line--prints, perhaps, or digital collage elements, or even scrapbooking supplies. It seems like a better long-term crafting choice, since I can continue to get payback from the same piece of work over and over, along with the physical handicraft option of one payback for each piece of work that I craft.

Add to this the crazy amount of time that I've been spending lately rifling through my button collection, futzing around to make monograms and such (I'm also trying to reinvent the button ring--more on that later), and I've been thinking that likely the whole world would really pretty much enjoy digital access to all my beautiful physical buttons. I listened to this one episode of the some crafty podcast in which Maggie Taylor Carroll, who did this super-awesome digitally illustrated edition of Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland ( Other illustrated Wonderlands that I like are ) talked about how many elements of her work were made from actual stuff that she just threw on the scanner and scanned, and...
I'd title it "Button Porn," but when I titled a Crafting a Green World post Quilt Porn a few months ago, I got some weird traffic.

But see, that's not even porn-y enough for you, is it? I know that you're looking at the big scan, and you're thinking, "All those buttons make me so happy, but they're so small that I can't really see the detail in each button. Darn!"

Here you go, then:


So now instead of just futzily gluing and hand-sewing buttons to make each monogram, I can first futzily lay the buttons that I want to use out on the scanner and scan them, and then later I'll be able to futz around some more with the digital images of the buttons!

My summer is looking so fly, I tell you.

In other news, it's a rainy morning here. That means that instead of letting the girls run around outside for hours on end (they keep taking their pants off outside! What's UP with that?), we'll be spending a hoppin' few hours on...
You guessed it. Dinosaur Bingo.

9 comments:

Anonymous said...

Knowing how much your girls love dinosaurs, I just wanted to let you know that 'Walking with Dinosaurs' will be at Conseco Fieldhouse in July. It's pretty pricey, but it looks amazing. My son is WAY too little to take, but my husband and I are totally going; in fact, I just bought pre-sale tix LOL! :-)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m_9GnP-lhaY

julie said...

Oh, my freakin' gawd, I could give you a big open-mounted kiss right now!!! I have been stalking the Walking with Dinosaurs site for YEARS, waiting for it to come near enough to us.

The kids will freak.

Anonymous said...

I know! I'm so excited I can barely contain myself; I've been running around bragging all morning...and I'm 31 for heaven's sake! I can only imagine how excited the girls will be!!

julie said...

It's going to be the highlight of their lives, basically.

Or it will scare the crap out of them and the dinosaur obsession will be OVER.

I'm pissed, though, because I just signed up for that Conseco Fieldhouse mailing list thingy, which I NEVER do, but I think it's too late to get the Dinosaurs pre-sale info. Was it a coupon code kind of thing to be able to do the pre-sale? Password? Secret handshake?

Anonymous said...

I'll share the secret handshake with you (and your entire readership LOL!)

password: CONWWD

Have fun :-) It's going to be amazing!!

Unknown said...

I think either one of the button pictures would make an awesome puzzle. Also we took Zack to the Dinosaur ride at Disney when he was seven and it scared him to death. I have heard these dinos are just as lifelike

Lisa said...

LOL, my girls like to take their pants off too....still laughing about the "what's up with that?"

Weird traffic about quilt porn, so many odd people in the world.

I love the button photos. Silly me passed on some glass and china buttons last week which I saw in an antique shop in VA (I'm in Ohio now)....will be a few months before we are back there, regret that one a little bit.

julie said...

I LOVE the puzzle idea. I am totally going to do it.

Even though I bet you could go to jail for sharing your pre-sale coupon code, we decided that the girls and I are going to drive up to Indy on Monday morning, when the tickets go on regular sale, and buy them at the box office. We'll have to drive back down if I want Will to go to school, but apparently I can save the $12 per ticket Ticketmaster charge if I buy at the box office, which totally makes the drive worth it, except they don't take the pre-sale coupon code at the box office, which sucks, because it would be so better to drive up to Indy on a Saturday. Oh, well.

The show is going to be a surprise, I think, but I've been showing the girls some of it on YouTube, and they LOVE it! I cannot freakin wait.

Anonymous said...

I really hope you're right about the ticketmaster fee. I used to work at a Mr. Video/Karma eons ago. I cannot remember for the life of me what the deal was with the 'handling' fee...other than TM's way of screwing consumers over.

Every person that has seen the video for WwD has said, and I quote, "That is BADASS". Indeed, it *IS* badass.