Staying on the Ball

The other day I made myself a project to motivate myself to make more projects.

Camera Dolly

Over the past several months, I've been slowly building a dolly for my camera based on one I saw being used on a shoot I was working on awhile back.

I first built the platform with scrap wood, including notches at the top to hold the tripod and some triangular pieces at the bottom for the wheels. I bought some skateboard wheels for about $15 from eBay and screwed them in with some large bolts and washers I picked up for a few bucks from Ace Hardware on Trumbull. I then took a long piece of PVC pipe my Dad had laying around in his basement and cut it in half.

Next I built two saw horses with lumber I bought new for about $10.

And finally, here it is in its fully-functioning form for about $30. The one I originally saw from Dana Dolly retails for almost $900.

Relief Carvings

Since my last line carving, I've been working on some simple relief carvings. So far they've all been Michigan-themed. I got all of the wood from The Architectural Salvage Warehouse of Detroit so parts of the wood were faded looking or pre-chipped, which I like in some cases and not as much in others.

This is the first one I did. I ended up not really liking the lettering because a) I free-handed it, which was stupid and b) they're just too large. Either too large or I shouldn't have carved out the whole letter and just left an outline.

The water tower in Ypsilanti.

I added a bear to this one, but didn't end up liking the carving around the bear and thought it would look better just around the state, which I changed in the next one. Also, I gave the bear an ear, which shouldn't have happened.

The most recent one I did and also my favorite.

A Plush Whale

I have a niece coming soon, so I made her a plush whale. I hope she enjoys it.

Line Carving

I got a wood carving kit for Christmas and attempted my first beginner-level project, a line carving. For a line carving you basically just draw a picture on wood and then carve the outline. It's pretty simple, no three-dimensional stuff, but it got me familiar with some of the tools.

I took a scrap piece of wood I had laying around and went to work on a scene of musk oxen in the arctic tundra. Musk oxen are pretty rad dudes as they're a lot like bison, but they live in the tundra and get snow on them.

I obviously haven't added color yet, so the image is sort of hard to make out, but there is a way to get color in the grooves, so I'll be figuring out how to do that next.

Generation Why: A Damn Good Night

I recently shot some footage at a party and then slapped a trailer together using a new feature in iMovie that requires little effort and guarantees the cliche-est trailer possible. Some of the best stuff I couldn't fit in because the segments were longer than would make sense in a trailer. Maybe I'll find a use for them someday.

Either I don't know what I'm doing or Blogspot has an inability to embed videos without cutting off the ends, so here's a link: Generation Why: A Damn Good Night

Bison Bookend

I added a shelf on my wall a little while ago so I'd have a place to put the rest of my books, but I quickly realized I needed a bookend to actually keep those books up.

I got a couple pieces of scrap wood that I thought would make a good bookend from Arts and Scraps and just nailed them together. I then added a bison from Learning Express Toys in Ann Arbor just to make it rule a little harder.

The shelf was recycled from an earlier shelf I had in a closet in Chicago, having cut it in half for this, the wood was free for helping clean up from the car that ran into Arts and Scraps' building, and I got the bison at cost since I used to work at Learning Express Toys and still have an "in" with the manager. This made the total expense for shelf and bookend three dollars.