I’m leaving (again) (kinda)

Friday saw the end of my third placement with IBM in three years. Only to start my fourth two days later. I had an excellent time this year working with the ETS guys and the CPSM guys, and I’m really grateful to have been part of both teams and gained such a varied experience from both!

To say thanks, I made an (eboy inspired) isometric drawing for my friends in ETS.

and some cakes for my friends in CPSM.

I should point out here that one of the cakes was also a birthday cake… guess which?

I’m feeling a bit jumbled up about leaving and starting my next placement, Extreme Blue is going to be absolutely fantastic, but I’ve had a truly brilliant placement and I’ll be sad to leave it too.

Post Is What I Like The Most

I really love postcards. Sending, receiving, it’s all win. It’s so exciting to get one and then I stick it up on my wall and look at it and grin. A lot. One day, when I’m too old to have things blu-tacked to my walls anymore, I’ll gather up all my postcards into a book and put it on my shelf. And the book will be called “Post is what I like the most”

I have horrible handwriting and I talk to the people I send postcards to quite a lot, so by the time they have received my letter I have usually phoned them and told them my hilarious anecdote/big news/non-event already. Much better to send a couple of sentences or a phrase

Usually I take a photo then print it and stick it to a piece of card, sometimes I take a regular postcard and add a dymo label to it. I have sewed messages onto the front of cards too, though that gives me sore fingers. I think everyone should send each other postcards. The world would be a better place.

Baby I got ya’ Munny

Tonight is the Industrial Trainee leaving dinner, where we all get together and celebrate out year at IBM and all our super-awesomeness. Maybe there will be a prom king and queen? Maybe there will be a slow dance? It’s going to be crazy-fun. Instead of going, I have decided to embrace the role of bitter nerd, the one that got asked out by her dream guy as a joke, only to have raw burgers thrown at her as she stood on her doorstep. Thats right, instead of going to the dinner, I’m spending tonight: Blogging.

It started with a birthday. For my 21st my brother gave me a DIY Munny. Munnys are great, there are some amazing custom ones by graphic designers and regular bods alike. Inspired, I decided to try making mine into a clock. First thing to do was find a clock to combine with my Munny. I live in a rented house, and there is all kinds of crap here including, according to our itinerary, “miscellaneous items, scraps of carpet and a pair of size 7 work boots”. There is a drawer in our kitchen that has an old and utterly hideous clock which I managed to dismantle though it was absolutely filthy, and I had to sort of squint and look away like a valley girl changing a soiled nappy.

Munnys are made out of vinyl, so they are easy to cut, though its hard to do it neatly. I started by making big holes in the front and back of the head, then I fixed in the clock part (arms removed) and covered it with milliput. Milliput is good because its sandable so you can be as cack-handed in application as you like, and then just rub it all off until its passable. Perfect :) .

Here is a photo of poor Munny with a clock in his head.

Spot the lovely curtains on the left there too. Mmm.

Following this I had to paint Munny all white. I bought some white gloss paint from ASDA, my least favourite place in the world. The paint did the job though.

Then I had to decide what to paint it. This was an easy choice. I really love Roy Lichtenstein. There’s such an unpretentiousness to his work which he exemplifies here:

“I’m not really sure what social message my art carries, if any. And I don’t really want it to carry one. I’m not interested in the subject matter to try and teach society anything…”

I love how bright and simple yet striking his pictures are, and also how distinctive. His painting style is also easy to emulate :)

The paint work is pretty messy, but I’m OK with that. The Ben Day dots took FOREVER. I had to dip a little tube in paint and the print it onto the body, then fill it in with a paintbrush. This would have been fine except I accidentally bought flipping oil paint instead of acrylic. So it took about four days to dry after each application, and I kept smudging it. I had a lot of fun with this, and I already have my next one planned…