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Read the Signs

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Either way, the intrepid trespasser can expect to be served his own ‘nads on toast. I do have to wonder though what this place is storing that requires bloodthirsty command dogs and radiation hazard on the premises. Ask not ‘who let the dogs out.’ But ask ‘do they bite?’ My guess would be YES!

Doggie Dump?

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Water pollution is a threat, and most communities require that you pick-up your dog’s fecal droppings. Dog waste (poo, poop, feces, etc.) that is unscooped gets swept into storm drains with the rain and ends up in the rivers and lakes where it contributes greatly to high levels of coliform bacteria. This bacterial pollution chokes and kills aquatic plant life, which further poisons the water. It becomes more stagnate and unclean. Fish die. The water is unfit for swimming and recreation. Clean up after your dog. No emptying of your dog allowed.

But still, -the wording of this warning sign is rather unwieldy.

As Seen on TV - Home Shopping Channel Maybe?

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I bet that there must have been marital discord in this household. I would clearly have to side with the wife on this one though. The boat is blocking the driveway and the yard. I am pretty sure she made someone an eye-waterin’ deal on it to get that boat and wagon out of there.

When I got married, I had my own stuff. And so did my wife. It was two households coming together and yet I have to paraphrase a favorite comedian from television and say of this that most of my stuff didn’t survive the merger! That’s okay though. Most of my stuff was crap anyway. Just ask my wife, she’d validate this! (Just kidding, honey!)

Right Hand Knows Not…

…what the other hand is doing.

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 I am positive that giving up Sunday Services for Lent was not what was intended here.

Oh Dude! I’ve Got the Munchies!

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These go pretty well with herb brownies I am told. They look pretty good though. Damn, -I’m hungry!

This Could be ‘Engrish-worthy’

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My son had a musical keyboard that had what without a doubt would qualify for inclusion on Engrish.com. I really should submit this image to them and their site. Engrish.com is a web site whose motto is “Engrish for Suddenly Laugh.” The site is not meant to embarrass, harass or persist any stereotype of any particular race, society or people. It highlights poorly-translated product descriptions and products and is for entertainment purposes only. You have to love those Japanese and Chinese for they give us so many humorously-translated products! You should check out Engrish.com for that happiness feeling!

CAPTCHA

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This is awesome funny! I wonder how often certain letter combinations come up that actually spell something, either real words, vulgar or maybe even leet? This might make for an interesting study. What is “leetspeak?”

 Well for example, “4n¥0n3 (4r3 70 74|{3 4 7r¥ 47 £337$p34|{?”  is “Anyone care to take a try at leetspeak?” Study the leet closely, you will start to see the words obfuscated in other ASCII-characters. It takes patience and practice.

“CAPTCHA” on the other hand you may be more familiar with. It is the contrived acronym (read about acronyms) for “Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart.” It is a process that is intended to protect websites from spambots that might attempt to access restricted zones within the site.

This CAPTCHA image above suggests some bad potty-mouth expression and is rather funny.

The makers of CAPTCHA now recommend “reCAPTCHA” as the official implementation. This involves two (or more) scrambled words, thus is of a higher security assurance that a human has read/rendered the code correctly and not an optical reader which could as of yet, not complete this task.

No Bills, Please

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 That is Bill Gate on the top-left, Bill Cosby on the top-right and of course, Bill Clinton on the bottom.

Oh Really? They Can ‘Bill Me!’

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Funerals are expensive, so what’s another $200.00 more-or-less? So yeah, -send me the bill.

Expensive to Eat Out?

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 Germaine, but there really should be a decimal point in there somewhere.

Anything Greater than 4-cyl. Goes in the Lake

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That’ll keep our highways clean.

Cat: Dead or Alive. Maybe

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“Schrödinger’s cat” is a thought experiment. A paradox. In quantum mechanics this thought experiment describes a cat in a sealed box with a vial of deadly poison and a Geiger counter. The experiment describes a condition of a random event which occurs in which causes the vial of poison to shatter and this kills the cat, or not. It depends upon the earlier random event. A state can exist whereby the cat is both dead and alive simultaneously within the sealed box, yet if we open the box, the conditions are of either dead OR alive.’ This type of paradox is also referred to as ‘entanglement’ in quantum physics, but I think Mr. Schrödinger got into those stoned wheat crackers mentioned earlier.

Movie Parody

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You know, I have not seen “Brokeback Mountain.” For as much as I enjoyed Heath Ledger’s final performance as ‘ Joker’ in Batman: The Dark Knight, I really do feel that I should check out this movie too.

They Killed Kenny!

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Poor Kenny… he dies in every episode of the Comedy Central hit series “South Park.” And we’ve sent him to Iraq. We’re bastards!

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Fun and (I am happy to report :) ) busy day today at the South End Open Market. I tell you I LOVE this side of town! Lived in Boston or Cambridge for most of my life. Now WHY have I not spent time in this vibrant little shoebox-cozy part of town? Let's look forward shall we! I'm going to drag Matt out of Cambridge for a leisurely South End Saturday one of these weekends. The dog count ALONE here is worth the trip -- so many adorable, sweet, big, tiny, licky-friendly and then also of course the non-chalant, stand-offish doggies, and I love to meet every last one! It's like a big dog party! :)

Weather was nice today -- very warm but not too sticky with intermittent sun and overcast skies. The a.m. was just a little bit harried because we did not have a lot of time to set up our tent and area. It was a race but it all worked out just fine in the end.

The crowds were intermittently thick or moderate at any given moment. We had an aisle spot, so there were a couple of "Now you see them, now you DON'T" types of moments, but in reverse: "Now you don't see them, now you DO!" That was fun and kept us on our toes!

Today, SOWA hosted a group of NYC artisans called "The {New New}". (The {New New} group is similar in philosophy and concept as the group to which I belong, Boston Handmade.) I think that having The {New New} here today may have helped to increase foot traffic over a typical summer Sunday. In general, the overall number of vendors was high as well, so it was a very good day to be here,whether vending or shopping or just hanging out! I was not able to do a good walk through, greet our NYC guests and see what kind of cool stuff they were making and selling. I was too busy today. with my own booth, which is a good thing, I can't complain about that but I sure would like to meet the NYC artists some time. For now, I will have to depend on their Flickr photostream to check out how the day went from their end!

I also did not take too many pics today (see the photos I did take HERE). I just didn't have many chances. I was able to take a few of my table and a few of my booth mate / sister / jewelry designer NancyRosetta's. (Those did not require that I leave the booth. It's no wonder I could get a few pics!)

Well,that's my SOWA report for Sunday, August 9, 2009. I might do one more SOWA date this month ( Aug. 30) . It's not certain yet but I promise to keep you in the loop!

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Graphic 2D symbols that express security services, used as prints on a company car.

I love creating 2D graphics like these, next to my 3D work.

More at Sevensheaven.nl

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I made this Ballerina Wall Decoration for another neighbor girl's birthday. Here's what I did...



1. Buy a 12" x 12" square of pine from the hardwood store.

2. Paint around the edge with green acrylic paint.

3. Mod Podge pink polkadot paper to one side of the wood.

4. Find a basic dancer shape on Google Images (you could search for 'ballerina coloring page') and draw it (or print it) onto cardstock.

5. Cut out your image. This will be your stencil.

6. Trace your stencil with pencil onto the back of adhesive vinyl. Cut out your dancer.

7. I cut the word "Dance" out of adhesive vinyl with my Cricut, but I believe you can buy letter stickers at the craft store.

8. Place your letters and dancer on the polkadot paper. Decide exactly where they will go before removing the backing.

9. Hot glue a bow in the corner.

10. Attach a picture hanger to the back.

And you're done!

PS. Sorry I didn't take pictures along the way!

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...that the universe just may be conspiring against me:

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Aaron Draplin runs a tight ship. Not only is he an amazing designer, he puts together one hell of a blog. I look forward to checking his site every morning. The guy is a knowledge farm for all things vintage and he always digs up incredible stuff on his notorious road trips.

Lots of great stuff to see on his site, but start by checking out some of his design work.

Required viewing: If you haven’t seen “Why America is F***ed” your missing out. This is a must see! It’s the story of a motel sign that went from an American classic to a seagull crapwich. It’s from an upcoming mini documentary.  Check the video here. (Warning this has some lumberjack language so make sure your kids got ear muffs on/boss is in the other room).

Recent ad design for Coal Headwear

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Congrats to JAN D you won the Raymond Savignac poster. Please email us to claim your prize.

©2008 -Visit us at Grain Edit.com for more goodies.

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My daughter’s friend, Ben, is vacationing in Destin, FL. He told Rachel that he saw 2 Speed Limit signs - one was 23 MPH and the other 19 MPH. Sounds strange to me! Rachel didn’t believe him and thought he was just poking fun of her OCD, so he took a couple of photos with his cell phone to prove it. Wonder why the city has such odd speed limit numbers? It cannot be easy to drive 19 MPH!

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The 'new thing' in yogurt is (NEWSFLASH! You are *not* going to believe this, but...) it is a digestive aid. Yogurt companies are making a very big deal out of this these days. Like it's new news. If nothing else, I find it entertaining (except for the shameful overpackaging of most of these).

The packages look a lot like they are prescription food, they have funny names (Activia - that could be a car! ...or a line of fitness wear), and then they wrap everything to look like vitamins! The cute little (overpackaged...grumble) bottles for their yogurt look like big vitamins (or like little vitamin bottles, depending on your point of view.) Like a shot of wheatgrass, a B-12 shot: Your daily shot of friendly bacteria... I guess.

Oh well. I love yogurt (but I'll stick with my old stand-by's, thankyouverymuch. )

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On Saturday February 9th, my friend Jen and I met in Salem, MA to shop around at the town's "Salem's So Sweet" promotional day (running for a week)! See photos here.

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***Design Geek Alert***

Here is a fun article which dissects the design of the candidates' type treatments / logo / branding (take your pick) :P

How many of us do this every time we see one? I do!! I love the fact that an article about this has been published in the mainstream media. It's certainly something I could anticipate seeing in a design magazine / web site / blog, but not necessarily in The Boston Globe... Go Globe!!

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Went to NYC this weekend with a group of friends. Took lots of pictures! This sign I spotted on a snack truck was particularly cheerful, charming and appealing! In particular, the likeness of the Sponge Bob ice cream treat has a great amount of personality, I think.



Bloomingdales' font is interesting: it looks like a mesh of past and future. Clearly it's Art Deco period but seeing it today it has a very "Sky Captain", "Matrix" twist. It feels very lost in time to me and all alone, even though I am sure there are many that are similar to this, that would be very easy to find on the web. But I can't think of any that are really, really close to this one (knock off of it).
The building has much tile detail relief. I'd have liked to get several shots of this building, but not this trip. They don't make them like this anymore (at least not here in the USA).

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This another sign illustration I produced in Freehand as a vector, then imported into Photoshop, and then added multiple texture layers to make the sign and bricks appear to be weathered.

I first created the vector illustration of the sign.


I then imported sections of the vector into photoshop and applied textures to give the sign a weathered feel.


I did a similar sign illustration for a previous SFG exercise where the subject was texture. Click here to view the post. I think I'm going to do a series of these signs. They are a lot of fun to produce.

Enjoy!

Steph D.

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For this weeks challenge I chose an old neon sign that has a dead president's name on it as the subject of my composition.

I first created the vector illustration in freehand. See below.


I then imported sections of the vector into photoshop and applied textures to give the sign a weathered "dead presidential" feel.


I think I'm going to do a series of these signs. They have been a lot of fun to produce.

Enjoy!

Steph D.

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This design was done for a restaurant that has a bluegrass theme. I was excited at the chance to use some of my Sad Scribble techniques in the design process. I was slightly nervous though as to whether the client would like or appreciate the design, since it was not what they were expecting. But they loved it. The finished sign was 2' x 8'. As a bluegrass boy myself, I just really liked how it turned out.

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