Wednesday, June 22, 2011

Designing. Processes. And my brain hard at work.

Some times I forget the whole reason we started this blog was to tell people about Brightside and what we have been up to, prints were doing, stuff we are selling, and all that fun stuff. So I thought I would take a min and talk about something Brightside-ish, and that is DESIGNING!! A very important part about what we do if you didnt know! So I guess this is for the one follower out of the two we have that is somewhat interested in our actual Brightside doings (i know the only reason you read this is because of the crazy things we come up with and you didnt think it was possible for one person (me) to be that sarcastic in one blog post) So here it goes:

It just came to me last week as I was working on a custom print for our cousin to give her dad for fathers day, we talked about what type of design would suit him best, and the things he is interested in and how we were going to take all of that and shove it into a nice simple design, sounds tough right? Well maybe you werent thinking it sounded tough, but maybe you were thinking "How are you even going about starting to do that?" and the honest answer is I have no flippin idea. All I know is when we were talking, I started going through all of the stuff in my head and taking out all the pieces i could use for this particular design. I know that sounds like crazy talk, but I have so many patterns and shapes and randomness in my head that while im about to start a new design i "flip" through them all take out the ones that will help me. I know again with the crazy talk.

When I actually sit down with a pad of paper and a pen (or marker, or pencil) I just start sketching a very rough sketch of what I came up with in my head, and to tell you the truth it looks like crap it is a VERY ROUGH sketch, I would be so embarassed if anyone got a glimpse of one of my rough sketches again ROUGH is the term that most identifies these sketches. Anyways, its just so interesting how I take this ROUGH sketch and transform it to be a (in my opinion) a good lookin design. I usually will take something like a simple line and place it easily in 15+ differnet places and either my brain will say "YES!! That is the perfect place for that lovely line" Or sometimes "NOOOO way, that line is not going to go anywhere on this design" So I guess im writing about this just because im so intrigued with the idea of taking all of this randomness from my head and compiling them into a design. This is just something I have been thinking about while designing, and I wonder if there are others that process the same way. It is all just so.... interesting to say the least.


Floating in head---> paper---> computer--> printing screen--> t-shirt/textile---> the feeling of no longer worrying about whether or not people will like it (its a big leap, I know)





Im on a Avett Brothers kick lately if you haven't noticed, and their songs just always seem to match my head ramblings.

Monday, June 20, 2011

Kickstarter.com

Ive already done a blog post about Brambles kick starter, but I thought I would take a minute and talk about kickstarter.com. I am seriously in love with this website (you didnt think that was possible, but oh it is!) its super cool and I think everyone should take a stroll (or scroll, computer humor haha (yeah im that person sorry)) through it at least once, and if your not hooked, then its your loss! So the basic idea of it is you go on and find a project that you are interested in, its usually either a band trying to get money for a new album, or an artist trying to create a cool new project, film makers trying to make films, and so and and so forth. You donate money to the project you think is deserving of your hard earned money, you donate what you want, (Now this is where the cool part comes in) and each amount has a nifty prize attatched to it, that you get if the project gets funded 100% of what their goal was,  its super neat, usually bands do like signed cds, t-shirts, new albums before they are out for purchase, and other goodies, its super awesome, you get cool stuff and they get money to produce their project. We have gotten some cool stuff from it, and if you donate to some projects, you can get some sweet nifty gifties as well, so go check it out, I dont think you will be disappointed!

-- Have fun kick starting it up--Zoei


Thursday, June 2, 2011

I Like to Eat...

If there is one thing that the brightside girls like to do more then screen printing is eating. After eating out almost everyday I think me and Zoei finally realized that we should probably stop eating so much junk food. So I set out on the quest to find something that's easy to cook and somewhat healthy. Then I was reading about Bento boxes and how fun and healthy they can actually be! Plus they are OOOOBER cute, which makes them super fun to make and eat! If you don't know that the hell a bento box is start here-->http://justbento.com/. I love this website and I love her book, its full of super easy recipes. So me and zoei have been cooking our little hearts out and eating soooo much yummy food! I thought that when we started Zoei wouldn't enjoy it as much as me but man I was wrong. She has some mad cooking skills! She hasn't even burnt anything! I wish I could say the same, but I think its safe to say that I'll leave all the actual cooking to Zoei and just help chop the vegetables.




One of our first bento boxes! We made ham and cream cheese rolls, stuffed with veggies. Also chicken stir fry, chopped cucumbers, blanched broccoli ( I didn't even know what blanched was before now) and rice! Not the prettiest bento but for being one of our first it tasted pretty darn good! Pretty soon we will be making rice balls that look like panda faces. (Ok, maybe not too soon but we're working on it.)


I'll be posting more pictures of our bento adventures, hopefully I'll get some recipes posted also. Untill then, we love all of you.