ahem

Ok. So I failed to post for a long, long time again. I have been up to things though! I lost a job, got a (much better) job, moved, redecorated my apartment with actual furniture, bought a laser printer, joined twitter in exchange for Delicious Library, went to DIY for CHI, got some models printed by Shapeways, and built a fantastic Lego brownstone.

And, in case you ever wanted to know what one image of every project I found in my iPhoto library looks like:

One of Each from Jenna Fizel on Vimeo

now you know.

More posts to come soonish, as usual.

you really like me!

Thank you internet! My latest instructable is featured, popular and in the weekend builder. I'm so proud.

instructable!

I've just published another instructable. You can take a look here.

It documents a project I did as a present for Erik and Marty.

Enjoy!

cranergy

My friend's boyfriend's sister was in the city this summer, interning at an marketing firm. Her team was pitching a redesign of Ocean Spray's new energy drink/juice Cranergy. She needed some help developing a design in Illustrator, and my Wacom tablet was just the thing. We also decided to visualize the design in 3D, something I do all day at work anyway. I managed to model the bottle from some eyeballed circles lofted together and slightly filleted. I then mapped the wrapper onto the middle portion and, presto, a pretty decent looking rendering. And the whole thing only took about ten minutes. Technology is marvelous.

return to acrylic

One of my friends, who has, as far as I know, never crafted in his life, imed me a month and a half ago with a deep and overwhelming urge to paint a bear on a 3' by 4' canvas. In oil. After explaining to him about the time, effort, skill, and money involved in such a project, we settled for two small canvases in monochrome acrylic. Thankfully a medium that I've had experience with, albeit, not for many years. The results were...not terrible. He painted a polar bear modeled from a photograph (a very good first try) and I painted my impression of a single ostrich feather. While not up to my old standards, I don't think it turned out too bad.

yet more zipper blobs...er, i mean bags

My sewing machine has seen a decent amount of action in the past half year. It's recently made a pencil skirt from some old jeans and a set of five pillows (two with flanges and two bolsters).



But, of course, its mostly been used for zipper bags. I departed from my curvilinear direction with my current bag. It's bottom is a Cheerios box cut into a rhombus sandwiched between two layers of felt. Its sides open completely to help me find phone when it gets lost. There are two pockets sewn into the top seam that just fit my phone and iPod.




I also made a new purse for my mother. Her black and red felt bag has been pilling for awhile now and driving my father nuts. So, new bag. I've been scared to try to force leather through my very basic sewing machine, but, while at Mood getting pillow fabric with my friend for her apartment, I discovered their section of light weight upholstery ultra-swede. I found a nice light gray and combined it with bright red zippers for a aummery bag. I also, for the first time, messed up while cutting the fabric. One side of the bag turned out much shorter than the other, making the zipper misalign. To fix this, I had to cut a deep curve into the short side of the bag (making the edge longer). And thus my first asymmetrical bag was born. I'm pretty happy with its final shape, and it's given my motivation to come up with a systematic way of producing asymmetric (but equal length) curves. The zippered pockets are an actually planned improvement.




I just made and sent out a gift package to (finally) thank Erik and Marty for, well, being them. Included in the box were these two belt-bags, specially sized to fit small electronics. Just thread a belt through the two slots and you're all set.

davita dialysis

My family vacation this summer was a five day trip to Naples, Florida in towards the beginning of June. We stayed in a very nice hotel. We went kayaking in the everglades. I drank every night at dinner. My sister and I had mud wraps at spa.

And.

I saw a building devoted entirely to dialysis. Just check out that sign.




Oh, and here are some real vacation pics. Oh, the glories of nature!





My father looking stalwart.




My sister looking outdoorsy.