Amanda Makes Things

A few Sweden Pics

There was not much salvageable from my Swedish photo efforts—I think my lack of interest in this being a primary documentation method and a poorer than usual performance from my camera itself combined in the perfect storm to create a just a huge pile of crud. Here are a couple I pulled from the wreckage...

Uppsala Cathedral

Uppsala Graveyard

A lake somewhere in northern Sweden

Caitlin and the swan

train station

swedish meatballs

pretty picnic!

smorgastorta (fish sandwich cake)

Old Stockholm

Old Sotckholm

Old Sockholm

Stockholm Waterfront

Umlaut! {I love umlauts.}

Movie Theater

Uppsala

A very typical Swedish house {they're all adorable}

Viking burial grounds

Swedish wilderness

Anders Zorn estate

Amanda Goes to Sweden!

This 58 page adventure documented my recent trip to Sweden in real time—I dew each page as the trip unfolded. It was a vacation, so I made one rule to keep this from becoming a burden—no digital editing! The whole thing was done entirely in marker and colored pencil. Click here to check it out!

What a Great Addition to a Busy City Intersection

Just a Thought

Gettin' Fancy

The plan:

My friend Jason and I wanted to treat our friends for their birthdays with a gift certificate to a fancy restaurant and an evening of us babysitting their kid so they could go to said restaurant. The problem:

Unfortunately, the restaurant was so fancy that they sniffed at the mention of gift certificates.

The solution:

So we decided to make our own.

My style doesn't lend itself to frequent opportunities to write in script, so I was particularly interested in the lettering. After a bunch of tries, I got some half-decent letterforms that met my standard of cuteness, but the whole land of cursive is obviously one I'm gonna need to spend more time getting my head around. I learned a lot from this exercise, so I think it was a reasonably successful first exploration.

Mattias Gets a Present

A little drawing for friends;

colored pencil on cardboard

An Amateur's Guide to Roach Killing

Click to see full size:

Nusnäs, Sweden

One of my recent adventures in Sweden was a trip to the little town of Nusnäs {population 724}, the center of the traditional Swedish craft of dala horses. The hand carved and hand painted wooden creatures are in every gift shop in the land, and it was pretty neat to see where they came from.

{old style}

{contemporary style; the most popular kinds are red and blue}

My friend Katie with an awesome giant Dala rooster :)

My favorite items in the shop were these amazing {and large!} carved wood flowers—so cool!

Paint Color: One of the Most Important Life Decisions

On Board the Comics Express!

{cut-out sign intended to be placed on a refrigerator door}

Comics Express is an independently-published free comic book created for the kids in Joplin, Missouri whose town was recently devastated by tornadoes. Spearheaded by the amazing Carmen Morias, and created by a team of former Nickelodeon Magazine staffers and professional cartoonists, this venture was a treat to get to be involved with. I created my three pieces, part of a series of cut-out signs, by hand.

{cut-out sign for a bathroom door}

{another cut-out sign for a fridge door}

Just an FYI

If $2.50 per load was not traumatic enough...

The Pelachick Triptych

This was my first adventure into the world of fabric printing, a result of operation wedding present for my buddies Darbie & Jon. Darbie somehow in my visual system has become commonly represented by a bird, Jon's nickname is cloud, and one of the prominent themes of their wedding was the ampersand. I thought these visual elements would work well together in a series of three drawings; they had decorative pillows on their wedding registry—bam! Pillow triptych. It had to be done.

The original art was inked by hand and digitally colored, and I used CafePress to print the actual pillows, which are about 18" each. The second and third came out lovely, but the green one was fail. {Reproducing semi-subtle variations in green is apparently not CafePress' forte.} The other hitch was that the pillows come with a horrendous white border around the art. I black-fabric-painted that business up, and all is now as it should be.

Here are the originals: