The art and science fair is this Saturday!

Art and sciene unite!

Saturday May 8, 12pm – 4pm

Harbourfront Centre
235 Queen’s Quay West, Toronto

Free, open to the public

“The Too Cool For School Art & Science Fair was invented to turn the spotlight on the unexpected feats of imagination and exploration that are happening all around us,” writes Sally McKay of her most recent brainchil on the home page of the project, www.artandsciencefair.ca.

The website was designed by me and the illustrations were drawn by Marc. We worked closely with Sally to come up with the name and identity graphics. I also designed some print posters that are available as  PDF downloads from the website.

What is an Art & Science Fair?

The event is structured like a typical science fair, with fifty projects and their creators assembled for one day to share their work and ideas with an audience and to compete for awards. The difference is that the projects are a mix of both art and science.

Additionally, the participants in the Too Cool for School Art & Science Fair are from all walks of life, amateurs and professionals, many sharing their pet projects with the public for the first time. Participants are selected from an open call for submissions on the basis of originality, depth of inquiry, creative innovation and the element of surprise.

Read more about the project and check out all of Marc’s awesome illustrations on the Too Cool for School website.

Ladilola earrings in black patent leather in a geometric, pointy shape.

Ladilola earrings in grape purple patent leather stamped with an alligator pattern cut to a geometric, teardrop shape.

Right now the shop looks a bit hodgepodge as a result of this experimenting. Soon a style will emerge and the shop will fill up.

Towards the end of my year in France (2008), my friend Nada who makes goregeous leather bags in Paris took me to a small warehouse in the Paris suburbs. In a corner I found a box of post-industry scraps of genuine crocodile leather and patent leather stamped with a croc pattern. I was on my way from France to India, and the leather travelled around with me for four months (yes, I know, crazy) until I was finally inspired in the cooler weather of Nepal to start designing and cutting. And that is how the eco luxury Crocodile Tears Earrings collection came to be.

Here are some of the items now in the shop:

Ladilola jewelry logo

This is a new logo for Ladilola casual printing needs, to match the silver foil stickers I had made while still in France in 2008.

I first made some earrings five years ago out of scrap leather and beads because I didn’t like anything in the shops, and I gave a bunch of pairs away as presents. They were a hit! My girlfriends from Paris to Hawaii reported being stopped by strangers in the street to compliment their earrings. How great is that, that a bit of colour arranged just so can do that!

This was just before embarking on four years of travel, so the progress on the Ladilola project has been on the slow side. Working with my hands with colour and texture has a constant attraction, and because the parts are small I was able to continue designing and making earrings from a small kit while travelling. More recently, the earrings also sold well in a Paris boutique where they were left on consignement.

The dream to do this full time grows and incubates, and so several years later I now do finally have a name, a logo I designed with a custom font, a colour palette, a shop set up on Etsy, a splash page at my own domain name of www.ladilola.com (still waiting for further development, ha ha), and lots and lots of designs made and more ideas just bursting to get out.

The next area of focus will be to print up some business cards and catalogues and get the earrings and necklaces into some real shops as well.

Below are a few of the photos – you can see the rest in the Band Practice photo set on Flickr. Thanks to Band Practice for the photo op. :)

Knit log pillows by Chick sin Design.

I just love these knit bolster pillow covers by Hong Kong based Chic sin Design. Originally I found the items in their Etsy shop.

The pillows are in the shape and size of tree logs “chewed by beavers”, and the tree bark and other texture graphics are knitted into the textile in several colours, rather than printed on the surface.

In this image you can see the stockinette pattern of just several colours of yarn knitted to make the white birch texture of one of the logs.

“Special knitting machine”. Hm. Sounds like I have some googling to do about a very fun process, because this stuff looks amazing.

Have a look at this cosily realistic looking grizzly bear bean bag.

And how about the pillow of… folded Hong Kong dollar bills…? And the three foot tall calendar pin-up girl calendar pillow that is… a functional calendar for 2010?

And the… Wait. What is that? Is that a pillow knitted to look like a 12 inch bag of weed, complete with a purple-blue press seal and glare off the “plastic”?!

It IS a pillow knitted to look like a press seal sandwich bag of weed!! Click the photo to check out the product webpage .

The product description for this series is a treat:

Drugs give easy way outs in life. They cause reliefs by de-stressing, unrevealing your true hidden self so one could express without boundaries, and providing an escape route to problems in life. However, all these “seen-to-be” enjoyable moments are temporary illusive and addictive.  The stronger desire for drugs the more you travel between unreality and reality and eventually you will lose the control over drugs and drugs will start taking control over you.

There seems to be quite a bit of travel between “unreality and reality” in this unlikely combination of pillow themes, and Chic sin Design explains on their website:

…our products are classified into two line: “Chic line” and “Sin line”.

Chic Line: A line of products, which are most emphasized on the esthetics, simplicity and visually impression.

Sin Line: A line of product that launches with a message conveyed uniquely and intently.

Different themes are set up for different seasonal products around the year. All products and created with true emotions and expressions, usually on dissatisfactions to the society today. As views to aspects of life and society may be something very personal and ephemeral, you might find some of our products presented in an unpleasant style. However, we believe it is this uniqueness and sarcasm which make this line of products attractive to like-minded consumers.

A lovely display of the flexible and forgiving nature of English grammar and a dizzying array of dualistic ideas on the home decor front.

The icing on the cake for me is that Chic sin Design makes for “chicks in design” in the website domain, www.chicsindesign.com, and the contact page for Chic sin Design lists Charles and Keith. Charles and Keith of Hong Kong. Of course. I love this world that is getting crazier and more wonderful by the minute.

New Happy Sleepies piled up for a group photo at the end of a photo session.

Cloudy days have lovely diffused light and big pieces of styrofoam make really good light reflectors.

That sums up the most recent advancements in my skills as a still life photographer. I’m relieved, too, because I’ve figured out a way to take the shots at our studio, which means I can do it any time (well, during daylight hours) and to a quality that doesn’t require hours of Photoshop afterwards to cut out the background or get the colours right.

Phew.

My setup right now is on a table next to a window, out of the sun. Prop a large piece of paper on a big piece of styrofoam to make a seamless tabletop and background curve. Stand the Happy Sleepy in the middle, held away from the background to minimize shadows by leaning in the back against an empty toilet paper roll and masking tape. Use another giant piece of styrofoam as a reflector on the side of the toy away from the window, to bounce some light into the shadows. And bracket like mad.

I’ve also been experimenting with darker, colourful, and textured backgrounds that lend a lot more atmosphere to the final presentation than a gallery-white background. What I’d like to do in the online shop is have a mix of contextualized photos, with props and whatnot, and some on white backgrounds.

Check out my fledgling product photography skills and the goods in the Happy Sleepy Art and Toys Shop on Etsy.

Happy Sleepy Tumble and Surf patch based on a drawing by Marc Ngui.

Marc had this patch made in Arambol, Goa, India, back in January 2009. It’s about 6 inches wide, and it is machine embroidered. I sewed it onto one of our bags while we were travelling, to repair where it was torn.

The workmanship on this patch is really rough and completely omits some of the details that were in the drawing. I’ve been spending quite a bit of time getting my hand embroidery skills off the ground, and I look forward to remaking this patch by hand.

The latest addition to the shop is Happy Sleepy Suavey, made from
orange cotton velvet with brown suede “sunglasses” applique. When turned upside down, the sunglasses look like a mustache.

The sunglasses/mustache were partly conceived to remedy a horribly botched embroidery job. It took me a long time to get better at embroidering, it was very frustrating, and this toy is from an earlier batch when I was still learning. I embroider the eyes at the very end of the making process, after the creature is all sewn and stuffed and closed, and the velvet is unforgiving. There’s no ripping out and redoing the eye embroidery because the velvet texture gets destroyed, so redesign was involved. Brown suede applique to the rescue, and another OOAK is born.

See Happy Sleepy Suavey in the Happy Sleepy Art and Toys Shop.

Creative mess also makes for good photo op. The images below show how two recent fauna were made.

Flurry of cutting and piecing on the work table. My favourite shears were recently profesionally resharpened and now glide through multiple fabric layers like a heated knife through butter. Whoosh-chuk!

Here are Happy Sleepy Cyan Tutu as a pieced and cut fabric, and Retina Adjuster all sewn up and ready to flip. That's my fabourite part, the flipping the pelt inside out. It's the most dramatic part of the whole process.

At this stage, I think of these as pelts, when they are all ready to stuff and you can start to have an idea of the Happy Sleepy will look like. After this I still have to stuff, sew it, and embroider the eyes.

Happy Sleepy Cyan Tutu in velvet orange and turquoise fun fur.

Happy Sleepy Retina Adjuster in turquoise silk and red wool. The name says it all - the colour is so bright as to be unphotographable, and it actually kind of hurts your eyes to look at him... Not for the colour faint of heart, that's for sure!

These two creatures are now in the Happy Sleepy Art and Toys Shop on Etsy – here is Cyan Tutu, and here is Retina Adjuster.

The new Happy Sleepy shop on Etsy is open!

Happy Sleepy Star Dipped stuffed animal art toy for sale on Etsy

Currently the shop features art toys in the signature Happy Sleepy shape of the reversible abstract animal that looks like he is either beaming happy or fast asleep, depending which way you hold him up. There is no top or down with the Happy Sleepies.

My personal favourite of the bunch is Happy Sleepy Star Dipped. When I first sewed him up and stuffed this design, I felt he was a bit boring with the dark blue wool fabric looking kinda dull. The addition of mirror lined seed beads really perked it up, and also gave this creature its name: he looks like he’s been dipped in a starry sky.

I have big plans for the Etsy shop. Up first will be adding all the other animals I made earlier in the fall, which turned out to be quite a few.

Group photo of toys from this fall, ready to go into the new Happy Sleepy shop on Etsy.