amazing Archives - Roni's Blog

Canvas LOVE

Couldn’t be happier with how this turned out!

Getting crafty again. This beauty is my newest creation, stemming from a Pinterest pin that had a similar work. (see here) That girl is WAY more ambitious than I am. But it was beautiful and it got me thinking. What could Roni do? So I slummed my way over to Michael’s for some crafts. Found out they were having a “clearance” sale. Yeah, that just means they put stickers on everything to make you feel like you’re getting a deal. I worked in retail once, I know how it works…

So I bought these four mini square canvases (totaled $6, I believe) and some acrylic paint (50 cents a bottle) and a foam brush. Went to Walmart and also got mailbox stickers (L,O,V,E) and some heart shaped stickers on a sheet that were on sale for 50 cents.

Just some supplies, you know, for the crafting thing.

Before we get too far into this, let me preface with it took me three days to get this whole thing complete. I don’t know if it was laziness or me trying to let the paint dry. Either way, I wanted to make sure everything was really dry before putting colors on top of one another. So I started by covering two of the canvases pink and two of them black. In doing this, I decided to opt out of the Miami Dolphins teal and orange for another project. Just didn’t seem to fit here.

Starting to look mighty pretty.

Look how smooth and pretty those came out!

So with those successfully painted and dried, I took care to cut out the letters from the sticker sheets so I could just have their outlines on the canvas. Then I stuck some hearts around as well. The hard part was making sure when I put the paint on the foam brushes, that I remembered to dab some of the paint off so that I could have a light amount on the brush when I dabbed over the stickers. I tried not to cover everything, because I wanted to make sure the opposite color could be seen. So when I was painting the black on the pink, I could still see some pink coming through.

Exhibit A

Then I let that dry and then peeled off the stickers. That way I didn’t smudge anything. Really, I beg you to be patient. It will be worth it in the end.

Then I just hung them up on the wall kinda off kilter so that it looked cool. See?

I kind of want to make a ton of these, but I have no use for more. Maybe Christmas presents? Hmmmm

And ta dah. A canvas set for way less than the $30 price tag I’m sure people on Etsy are selling them for. And you can make it the color and style you actually want!

August 28, 2012 by Roni

Technology

OK Go: You are amazing

If you haven’t watched Ok Go’s new music video for “This Too Shall Pass,” then you’re missing an incredible spectacle of timing, gears and pizzaz.

As a kid, I had found old drawings of Rube Goldberg machines in books. They were of these elaborate contraptions that would have a chicken lay an egg, which would start a bicycle tire to spin, which would blow up a balloon that would pop and all of that would lead to an orange being squeezed for some juice. They were the most perplexing contraptions for the simplest of tasks.

Ok Go took it to the next level. The timing was perfect, down to the clinking of glasses to the tune of their song. Umbrellas flew, a television glided to its demise and pulleys dragged people and things all over the studio. It was delightful and done in one single shot. No cuts, no dramatic videography, just pure, simple engineering.

The video was filmed in a two-story warehouse in Los Angeles, Calif. The contraption was designed and built by the band and members of Syyn Labs. It took months to make and was well worth the effort. There are barely enough words to describe how incredible this one single video is nor how amazing the links to each part are set together.

If you haven’t seen it, watch it. It’s alread had over 10,000,000 views, so what’s a few more.

OK Go is a Chicago rock band which now resides in Los Angeles. It is made of Damian Kulash (vocals/guitar), Tim Nordwind (bass guitar/vocals), Dan Konopka (drums/percussion) and Andy Ross (guitar/keyboards/vocals.) Ross joined OK Go in 2005 to replace Andy Duncan. In 2007, the band won a Grammy for “Best Short-Form Music Video” for “Here It Goes Again,” in which the band had a choreographed routine on treadmills. It also won the 2006 YouTube Award for Most Creative Video.

March 27, 2010 by Roni