Roses are the flower I would prefer

Sorry for the lack of posts lately...I've had nothing much to post about! All work and no play makes Kerri a dull girl. But I had the day off yesterday (stat holiday, hoorah!), so I decided to get down to some serious crafting.

One of the projects that I know I'll have next year is "60 Rings" for my Material Explorations class. The point of the project is, you guessed it, to explore materials. So these sixty rings have to be made of all different things. I decided to get started on it yesterday, because I know that this coming school year will be pretty busy and, when it comes time for this project, I'm sure I'll have a hundred and three other things to do.

Anyway, one of the rings I made yesterday turned out really well, and it's super simple. I wore it to work today and got quite a few compliments. So here are the instructions!
Genova Heights by Stars

Why don't you sit right down and stay a while?

A few months ago, while I was still in school and just in Guelph for a visit, a friend and I went for breakfast. Driving back from the restaurant, we spotted this chair, lonely and dejected on the street in the rain. We both feel in love with it immediately, but I was the one who got to take it home.

I used to have mustard yellow furnishings in the living room in my apartment in BC, so I was almost tempted to keep the padding as a homage to it. But to be honest, it was in pretty rough shape, plus it just looks so much better with the olive green!

I had the satin kicking around (I am absolutely in love with olive green these days. And just olives in general. Yum...) I used that to cover the buttons and piping, then found some coordinating upholstery fabric. It wasn't the cheapest ($14/metre; I got two) but I get a 10% discount at most fabric stores when I tell them that I'm in textile design.

I painted the frame with "Rustoleum" brand high gloss paint in Almond which turned out to be much cheaper than having a colour mixed. (Though it doesn't look very almond-y to me.) The store didn't happen to have any nice mistints, so I splurged. But it seems to be a good brand of paint; I'd always see the ads in ReadyMade, but was never sure.

I screwed in a couple 2"x2" pieces of wood in between the legs and chair base as it was quite short before. It's still a touch on the shorter side, but I was scared that it might get unsteady if I raised it too much.

Recently, I've learned that there's quite the science involved in making chairs! Getting the seat the right size in proportion to the legs and so forth...I'm glad I'm in textile design, and not furniture. (Although I do love my power tools).

Anyway, from now on I'll try to restrain myself from picking things up from the curb. Until my next move, anyway. My current space is gettting to be quite full of furniture.
Why do you let me stay here? by She and Him

Electric feel now.

When I moved for school back in September, I decided not to take my scooter with me. I mean, I lived directly across the street from the school, plus I figured that I could only use it for a few months before putting it away for the winter anyway.
So instead, I lent it to a friend of mine who was going to the University of Guelph.
He ended up taking it off-roading. It goes a maximum of 34km/hour; I can't imagine it being fun at all. And he broke the motor.

Anyway, the lovely girls over at eRide, where I bought it, were able to replace the motor and get it back up and running for me. There's still some body work to be done; it rattles when I ride it, but it's okay.

One of the things that broke was the 'lisence plate'. Because it's technically a bicycle, I don't actually need to have it liscenced, although it does need to indicate that it is electric. So I made a new little plate for that! I just cut out a piece of really thin wood similar in size to the old one. I sanded the edges (note the slightly rounded corners!), and spray painted it white. I wasn't sure what font to use for it, so I took a poll over at Twitter (follow me here). However, the only response that I got was to use Papyrus. For obvious reasons, that was ignored. (Sorry Perry!) Instead I went with Trebuchet, which I used when I made my agenda pages. I painted it with back acrylic paint, then went over the whole thing with a spray gloss . It's so pretty, and it cuts down on some of the needless advertising. (The scooter already says Motorino on two other places.)
Electric Feel by MGMT

Outside Curve Seam

Inside Curve Seam

Be sure to check out Picking Up Threads for a collection of awesome tutorials where you can put this seam into use!