Archive for the ‘Reader Projects’ Category
Posted by Andrew Wagner to Craft and Design and Home + Garden and Materials and Reader Projects on
22 December 2009, with 5 comments so far.
I’ve been thinking about yurts for a while. A long while actually. Generally these thoughts are pushed to the back of my mind, surfacing only momentarily while daydreaming about a great escape from the day to day or remembering a Compton roller-skating trek with the founder of the unfortunately long gone Dome Village in downtown Los Angeles (yes, not technically a village of yurts but a close cousin if nothing else).
Recently though, yurts have resurfaced front and center in my life. First, our creative director, Stephen Perfetto, returned from Marfa, Texas in late October and happily reported that his findings in the West, Texas desert included some none-to-shabby yurts (as well as some incredible vintage trailers) that will soon be available to desert adventurers of all types (look for our soon-to-be released February/March issue for more on that). Then, not too long after Stephen’s return, I got a message from an old friend, Philae Knight, who wanted to introduce me to a friend of hers. “Hi Andrew—It seems like you and Kate Pokorny would have creative and internet simpatico. Plus she is a new friend whose parents are old friends of my parents friends. She is giving away mini Yurts to people who donate to her project. Have a great Thanksgiving!”
I couldn’t ignore two yurt beckonings in such close proximity so I very recently got in touch with Kate to ask her about her yurt undertaking, also know as the Yurt Alert. (more…)
Posted in Craft, Design, Home + Garden, Materials, Reader Projects | 5 Comments »
Posted by Alexa Fornoff to Fashion + Style and Reader Projects and ReadyMade News and Uncategorized on
14 September 2009, with no comments so far.
Anna Rusk from Lawrence, Michigan, sent in some rad photos of her take on two of August/September’s (RE)FASHION projects. Riffing off of the button front mini and drawstring skirts, she made two adorable pieces to flirt around in during the remaining days of summer! Hooray Anna!
Anna writes:
Although almost every project in your magazine goes on my “to try
someday” list, the (RE)fashion section of the August/September issue
actually prompted me to get busy. I headed down to the Goodwill and
picked up two men’s shirts, which I turned into cute, casual skirts
per your instructions. They’re my new favorites in these last hot days
of summer!
Do you have photos of any projects that completed straight from, or inspired by, the pages of ReadyMade? Go ahead and send them our way, we would love to see ‘em!
Posted in Fashion + Style, Reader Projects, ReadyMade News, Uncategorized | No Comments »
Posted by mikeperry to Design and Materials and NYC and Places and Reader Projects and Work on
19 August 2009, with 10 comments so far.
Mike Perry, Anna Wolf, and Jim Datz report this week on the progress they are making building out their new workspace in Brooklyn. See the first installment here.
So, as day two progresses, we have almost everything we need for our desk setups and we are ready to start working. We spent most of the day with Jay (the creative mastermind for the desks and space) telling us what to do. First we sand all the edges of the 32×80″ solid core doors that are soon to be our desk tops. We first tried a dark walnut for the stain, but after a little deliberation we decide that the color will be too dark. We felt that the natural wood was too light, so we decide on a middle ground between the two. We landed on a stain color called American Heritage. Here are a few iterations of the tables.
Natural, unfinished
Dark Walnut
Yes last night I cut all my hair off. Couldn’t take the heat.
Our final stain, American Heritage.
Total trips to the hardware store so far: 7
Posted in Design, Materials, NYC, Places, Reader Projects, Work | 10 Comments »
Posted by Andrew Wagner to Art and Design and Environment and Materials and Reader Projects and Travel and Uncategorized on
28 July 2009, with no comments so far.
Last week I was in Chicago for just over a day. Though time was short, regardless of how long I’m there, I always try to get together with my friend Shawn Hazen. I’ve always known Shawn was a great graphic designer (that’s one of his t-shirt designs below)
but I wasn’t fully aware of the depths of his creative output until this last trip. Being that I was going to be in meetings until 10:00 or so and since Shawn is the proud husband of Lisa Hazen and the happy father of two boys (Finn, 4, and Cormac, almost 1), I told him I’d come over to his house in Irving Park and we could just have a quick nip in the kitchen and I’d be on my way. However, upon getting to the Hazens’ around 10:30 Shawn suggested we head out for a drink after all since the rest of the family was sound asleep and he didn’t want to wake anyone up.
We decided to keep it local and walked around the corner to Sabatinos.
This is an old school, family-style Italian spot that, as Shawn said, is fairly infamous in Chicago for, among many things, the various cars parked on the front lawn every night. That evening a beautiful ’60s era Corvette graced the 10′ x 30′ swath of grass seen below but unfortunately sans automobile.
(more…)
Posted in Art, Design, Environment, Materials, Reader Projects, Travel, Uncategorized | No Comments »
Posted by Katherine Sharpe to Reader Projects and Weekend Warriors on
10 July 2009, with 4 comments so far.
Hello and welcome to Weekend Warriors, a series of posts appearing each Friday, about the good stuff: the things people make in their free time, when they’re not working for the man, feeding the business, or otherwise doing the kind of work that’s ‘for work.’ We hope it’s a dose of inspiration for your own weekend’s makings…
Some people prize the hospital-green look of vintage steel filing cabinets and office furniture. Other people don’t. Some people just get tired of after a while, which is what happened to ReadyMade reader Seth Greenia. He writes:
Hello ReadyMade,
I’ve been inspired by your great magazine to give my standard steel filing cabinet a new look. In your Oct/Nov 2007 issue, I saw a similar cabinet covered with wood patterned contact paper (“Who-wood-have-thunk?). With a lack of interesting contact paper, I decided to recycle a bunch of old cork squares by adhering them to the sides of the cabinet. A variety of wood stains were used to distinguish each cork quadrilateral which were adhered to the steel in an amorphous pattern. I feel the final piece looks great! Thank you for the great ideas!
–Seth Greenia
Kirkville, NY
We weren’t able to reach Seth by email to ask him a few of the detail-oriented questions we had, such as how he got the cork to lie so smoothly under the front keyhole. (Seth, if you’re reading, maybe you’ll tell us in the comments?) But we like the way his project glows in the afternoon sun.
Got a project, finished or ongoing, that you’d like to share? Write to info@readymademag.com and let us know.
Posted in Reader Projects, Weekend Warriors | 4 Comments »
Posted by Katherine Sharpe to Design and Reader Projects on
7 July 2009, with 1 comment so far.
Why is this man smiling?
Maybe there’s something really funny hidden inside of the secret compartment in his corrugated cardboard stool.
Maybe, having built an additional seat, he can invite that critical extra person over for dinner.
Sam Tanis, a student at Otis College of Art and Design, created the “Annex Chair” for the American Association of Architecture Students’ 2009 ‘Chair Affair’ competition. Eighteen inches high and 14″ wide, the chair is completely made of cardboard, though Tanis is contemplating using Masonite for a stronger seat/lid on future versions.
Tanis writes:
The intention behind the ANNEX chair is the creation of additional seating that is light in weight ( just 2.25lbs., therefore easily transportable from room to room as its use is needed) and with a storage space housed within. To achieve this, the basic structural form is a 10” wide by 18” high cylinder with its flutes running perpendicular to the ground for strength, set around a removable lid/seat. But this left a precarious perch; a chair that is nearly twice as tall as it is wide. The width of the ANNEX would need to be increased, but any increase in width to the cylinder would cause a loss of compressive strength and the lid/seat would buckle when sat on. The problem was overcome by adding a 2” hollow ring around the outside of the structural cylinder, as shown in illustrations 5 and 6 bellow, so the overall diameter of the chair was increased to 14”.
The construction of the ANNEX chair is fairly straightforward. Every component piece, with the exceptions of the lid/seat and base, are made up of single wall corrugated paper with one linerboard removed to create a flexible sheet. The only materials needed is that corrugated paper, a straightedge (at least 36“), a mat-knife, tape (to hold portions while gluing), a high-temp glue-gun (with glue sticks) and a clothes iron (for tightly laminating the lid/seat together with hot glue).
Brief instructions and a downloadable PDF instruction booklet after the jump.
(more…)
Posted in Design, Reader Projects | 1 Comment »
Posted by Katherine Sharpe to Reader Projects on
2 July 2009, with 9 comments so far.
Reader Tori Bishop has rescued and rehabilitated this slightly Space Age-looking magazine holder table (which looks to be just about the right size for a year’s worth of ReadyMade).
What do you think?
Posted in Reader Projects | 9 Comments »
Posted by Katherine Sharpe to Reader Projects on
30 June 2009, with 1 comment so far.
A (relatively) easy as pie DIY shelving unit made from fir boards, threaded metal rods, nuts and washers from Ali of Design Public, over at Hatch.
Full instructions and fun process shots at the original post.
I love that this technique seems endlessly adaptable—to different shelf materials, different heights and shapes of shelf, and so on. A raw edge on the front side of the shelf boards? Yes.
Posted in Reader Projects | 1 Comment »
Posted by Katherine Sharpe to Reader Projects and Weekend Warriors on
26 June 2009, with 4 comments so far.
Hello and happy Friday, everyone. Today I’m pleased to debut the first in a series of posts that will appear each week, on Friday. The series’ working title is Weekend Warriors, and it’s about the good stuff: people who make things and the things they make in their free time, when not working for the man, feeding the business, or otherwise toiling on the j-o-b. We hope it’s a dose of inspiration for you going into your own weekend…
Another awesome reader project for today. Peter Von Erickson lives in New York and has a garage workspace in Brooklyn. He’s a professional maker—he freelances building custom furniture and props for advertising and also teaches model-making part time in the industrial design department at Pratt—and it shows in the recycled wood desk he recently built for his wife.
The desk is made from “parts found on the street, in my basement, in dumpsters, and at flea markets.” Peter says it took about two years to find them all. They include:
• Ball and claw legs taken from a sideboard found in Astoria, Queens
• Glass knobs purchased at a flea market
• Butterfly doors and hinges taken from a piece of discarded furniture Von Erickson found in his basement, thrown out by a neighbor moving back to Japan
• Wood of the bottom drawers made from a headboard Von Erickson’s wife found in a dumpster on a rainy night. She pulled the massive panels out of the trash and called her husband to pick up both her and the wood.
Von Erickson’s Brooklyn workspace includes “pretty much all the basics,” he says. “Tablesaw, bandsaw, scrollsaw. It’s pretty cramped right now as I recently acquired my grandfather’s non-running 1955 Packard car as a restoration project.”
More pictures after the jump!
(more…)
Posted in Reader Projects, Weekend Warriors | 4 Comments »
Posted by Katherine Sharpe to Design and Reader Projects on
24 June 2009, with 2 comments so far.
Holy re-use, Batman! This intimate yellow chair looks like the perfect hideaway for a mod super-villain (who might sit in it while discussing evil schemes on this phone). The yellow chair frame is made from a reclaimed jungle gym slide that the chair’s maker, Evan Dublin, found at the Build It Green salvage yard in Astoria, Queens.
Evan recently finished his undergraduate degree at Pratt Institute, where he majored in industrial design. Jonas Workroom, a Manhattan upholsterer, did the upholstery work on the chair, which Evan describes as a wing-back. The upholstery fabric is a wool blend, with foam padding underneath. The legs are white oak. Evan calls the one-of-a-kind creation the Slide Chair. We call it a promising start to a young designer’s career.
Posted in Design, Reader Projects | 2 Comments »
Posted by Katherine Sharpe to Reader Projects on
22 June 2009, with 4 comments so far.
This is the best kind of reader mail: someone writing to say they’ve not only done one of the ReadyMade projects, but improved on it. I appreciate David Hershey appreciating the galvanized metal look of the shanty cap and pan in June/July’s birdfeeder project, and his modification to make the birdseed self-replenish. He writes:
Hey,
I just wanted to say that I loved the bird feeder in the latest issue (“Step 1,” June/July ‘09, page 12) and went right out to the hardware store to get the supplies.
I changed a few things around. First off, I did not paint it; I really liked the shiny metal look. Also I cut out three holes in the bottom of the shanty cap, so I could fill up the inner tube and have it refill the pan as the birds eat. I was able to cut through it with plain old scissors. The final change was I found metal wire and clamps for super cheap and it really makes it look quite professional. The wire was a quarter a foot and the clamps were maybe a buck.
All in all the bird feeder was a huge success and I have been enjoying birds in my backyard ever since.
Thanks,
David Hershey
Lancaster, PA
It looks like the birds have been enjoying it, too. Thanks for writing, David.
Do you have a project to tell us about? Go ahead and send us an email.
Posted in Reader Projects | 4 Comments »
