We’re Famous (well kinda)

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I just wanted to do a quick post and tell everyone that today on Design*Sponge Jake and I were featured for the door headboard project we did. Design*Sponge is one of the best websites for everything unique and creative and today we got to be apart of it. Needless to say it made our day.

Click here to check out their post about Jake and I. Also, be sure to click around their site. I promise you will find some fun things and maybe even a little inspiration.

What I do for a Living (and how I got where I am)

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Well, I just realized the other day that I never posted about what happened to me before Jamie and I were married; after I graduated in December. So I’m taking my lunchbreak to tell a little story of how Jamie and I ended up where we are now.

After graduation I spent Christmas and New Year’s at home in Michigan with my family, and Jamie. I dropped off some of my things from college, packed up my essentials, and began my trip to Los Angeles. First Jamie and I drove to Colorado to spend a week with her family before she went back to school and I went to Los Angeles. Once I got here, I moved in with four of my friends from the one semester film school I attended Spring of 2009. They were generous enough to allow me to live with them free for a month so I could get my feet on the ground.
The day before I left Colorado one of those four friends called me, asking me to send him my resume so he could pass it along to an employer he had a connection with. So before I even moved to LA, I was pretty excited about finding a job. Well, after I made it here, I didn’t hear anything back from that potential employer. So I spent the next three weeks looking for work, and getting next to no responses. At the end of those three weeks though, I got an interview with one job I applied for as an editor, and the original connection through my roommate also asked me to come in to talk about a new show they were starting. I was extremely excited that after three weeks of nothing, two people were interested in me on the same day.
To make a long story short, I spent a day working at the editing job, which turned out to be an incredibly tedious, uncreative job that would’ve only been part time. So I graciously took the other offer.
That offer was with Eyeboogie Inc. A production studio located on Hollywood Blvd. The position I took was co-animator of a brand new show for Yahoo! News called “Who Knew?”. Each episode is 1 and a half minutes long. I spent Two weeks in February at Eyeboogie developing the show’s look and feel with a co-worker, as well as the workflow for a whole day. There’s a new episode every weekday, and since it’s a news show that meant that we would have to not only create one entire episode each day, but that we could only be two or three episodes ahead before they started airing.
Unfortunately the show didn’t have a sponsor in February, and after two great weeks at Eyeboogie, I was suddenly jobless again. It was very frustrating because originally we thought that I would only be off for a week; but that turned into two weeks, and then a month, and then two months. It was especially discouraging because I needed to buy plane tickets for the fast approaching wedding; not to mention planning our honeymoon.
April came around and Jamie flew out here to visit me on her spring break. That was a great week, and since I wasn’t working, we got to spend the whole time together. The day she left I got a phone call from Eyeboogie. “Who Knew?” had finally gotten sponsorship, and was set to begin in two weeks. I was asked to start working the next day. I’ve been working there ever since (except for the two wonderful weeks of our wedding and honeymoon in Michigan).
Since then our show has been running 80 episodes long. That officially concluded the first “season” of “Who Knew?”. The show has been renewed, and it looks like I’ll be working on this show for a while. My specific responsibility is to animate half of an episode a day based on a visual description of the script in time to the voice over narration. I absolutely love my job and have become so much better of an animator since I started working here.
To see the show visit http://whoknew.news.yahoo.com. Like I said, there’s a new episode every weekday, and I animate half of every episode.
Well, my lunchbreak is up.

Redesign

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We’re designers. It’s what we love to do. So, we thought it was time to have some fun and redesign our blog. It’s not that we didn’t like our old design, it’s just that we can’t stop being creative. We both really like how this one turned out so I think it will stay this way for a while. Enjoy the new look and we hope it makes it more fun to read. Also notice the ad on the right side. We are getting closer to the unavailing of our Etsy shop.

For those of you who read this from an email or from Facebook be sure to click here to see the new design.

Cheers!

Our Dwelling Place

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Well since Jamie’s been posting so much lately I figured I should take a turn at writing a post.

Yesterday the couch that we ordered from The Sofa company in May was finally delivered. The fabric we wanted was on backorder until this month, but I was offered two free couches from a co-worker, so we decided to just wait it out instead of switching fabrics. Today Jamie and I tried taking some nice photos of our apartment that I’m sure many of you have been waiting for. Remember to click on the image for a larger view.

So, welcome to our home:

I merged four different exposures together for this photo, I love the way it turned out.
From left to right:
TV – Free (Found in trash)
TV Stand – Free (also found in trash)
DVD Stand – Free (Thanks Aaron)
Table Lamp – Free (…..found in trash)
Love Seat – Free (from co-worker)
Pillows – $10
Red Coffee Table – $50 (From craigslist)
Modern Floor Lamp – $30 (Wal-Mart)
Calling this place our home: Priceless


These are Twiggies. Jamie found the idea online, so we bought some yarn, found some sticks, and now we have an awesome centerpiece for our coffee table.


Here is our dining table and art studio. We got pretty much everything in this photo from craigslist.


Jamie and I livened this letter holder up by covering it in thick wrapping paper and sealing it with mod podge. It turned out fantastic.


Our kitchen is just the right size for the two of us to cook together.


We have every appliance you can think of.


Here is our bathroom. The cabinet above our toilet helped so much. I don’t know where would would be able to store any of our bathroom stuff without it.


And here I am putting it together 2 months ago.


Hanging on the wall is our soon to be available on etsy bathroom art print designed and hand printed by the Pair of Pears.


(Yes, we even love typography in our bathroom)


If you read our blog consistently, you’ve already seen this image.
But here’s what it looked like when we got it on craigslist for $8.



Don’t be fooled though, Jamie did her fair share of the work too :).


Since then we bought this ikea bookshelf on craigslist.

And that is our home. Feel free to drop by anytime, but give us a call so we can get you a parking pass.

What I WOODn’t Do for these

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Once again I became completely emerged in Etsy. I found all these beautiful wood grain items that are just wonderful. I love wood grain. The what seems to be boring lines make up this intricate design and yet never repeats. It is both beautiful and rustic. I think the organic-ness of it is what fascinates me. Maybe someday I will live in a tree house made out of beautiful wood or at least Jake and I will build one for our children and climb up in it to have tea time and put puzzles together. Doesn’t that sound fun? I think so.

I only went out for a walk and finally concluded to stay out till sundown, for going out, I found, was really going in. – John Muir

6 down 4 more to go

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Right before summer began, I made a list (yes I’m one of those people) of all the things Jake and I wanted to do this summer and posted it on my other blog (I am now just posting on this one) I thought I should take a look at the list and see how I am doing so far. This is the list:

  • go to the beach (too cold)
  • ride my bike to the Farmer’s Market (don’t have my bike yet)
  • find some beautiful place and go for a hike
  • go camping and roast s’mores (I’d say my bachelorette party counts, check)
  • paint a picture for our new apartment (two paintings actually, check)
  • picnics, lots of picnics (one so far)
  • upcycle something for our apartment (one old door=one new bed, check)
  • make whole wheat blueberry scones and drink tea (check)
  • Get lost in a good book
  • become a photographer (just bought an amazing camera so i’m well on my way)

well that’s 6 out of 10 things. I would say that is pretty good and it is only the beginning of July!

For the Love of Letterpress.

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Today I applied for job #4. So far I haven’t heard anything from any of them. Honestly, I’m not surprised. I’m sure each one of these jobs gets a ton of applications. The waiting though has made me a little antsy at times. Most days I hang out in our apartment and I quickly run out of things to do. Lately though, I have been really considering selling stuff on Etsy. It would be mostly printmaking products such as: posters, stationary, calenders, basically anything artsy. It’s kind of my dream. I would really love to print our designs on a letterpress. Jake and I have absolutely fallen in love with this process. I think its the hand-done, texture and vintage-ness of it all that gets under your skin. So today, after searching for jobs and actually working with Jake on a freelance logo gig he got, I began my search for anything and everything letterpress. I wanted to learn the ins and outs, what was required and if it would even be possible in our apartment. I found that there are table top presses that are way more affordable and don’t take up too much space. There are some that print up to an 8×10 which I think will be just fine for now. Thankfully Jake and I have devoted a little corner of our apartment to make art. So I guess you can say we are making it in to our little studio. I think we are going to start saving for a press. Until then, we might just do linoleum cuts and print those. So be watching for our store to open on Etsy called A Pair of Pears. I think it fits.

Door Headboard

Jamie Bartlett Tutorial DIY 2218 Views


Last weekend Jake and I started our first DIY project (we have many more ideas in mind). We decided that we were going to make a headboard for our bed. We had been looking at beds, but we couldn’t find anything that we really liked. When all else fails, we just make it ourselves. We came up with the idea to use an old wooden door. Well we thought we came up with it, but it turns out many people have done it before. So we found directions online and started searching for the perfect door. We ended up finding one for just $8. It was a little rough on the outside, but nothing a little TLC couldn’t take care of. From there we went to work. We cleaned it up, sanded it down, filled in many holes with wood filler, sanded some more and finally painted it. We also had to do some cutting, so we used a electric saw to cut the ends of the door in our apartment! It was so loud. I’m pretty positive that’s not allowed, but we closed all the windows and blinds so I hope we didn’t bother anyone. Then we had to screw boards to the bottom like legs for support and attach wire to the back for hanging. After a few more final touches, we hung it up and voilà! We have a headboard.
We had a lot of fun doing this project together. For the most part, we made it up as we went along, but I think it turned out great. It was just what we wanted and we were able to upcycle an old lonely door in the process.
bonus points: Can you tell who the two silhouettes are of? Yep that’s us! We painted them ourselves.

What to do…

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In between applying for jobs, I usually am busy (well not really busy) talking to friends, fixing up our house or searching through craigslist. Today I decided to make Whole Wheat Peanut Butter Cookie. From the past blog entries you might think I bake a lot. Well, don’t be fooled. This is the first time we have our own kitchen so I guess you can say I have been taking advantage of it. Anyway, the cookies turned out quite good.

The little things in life.

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I was going through my old blog post and saw that I had done one on things that I like. It was a fun one to do so I thought I would do another one about things Jake and I like.

Coffee.
Our new favorite is Sumatra- smooth-bodied with a smoky aroma and sweet earthy flavor.

Tandem bikes: a bicycle built for two.
They are fun and romantic.

DIY (do it yourself) projects.
I think it is the crafty and artsyness in us. Be on the look out for what we have been up to in one of our upcoming blogs.

Photography.
Say cheeseeee.

Bamboo.
Go Green. Bamboo can be used to make just about anything. So far we have placemats, coasters, bowls, a cutting board, salad servers, and even our matress is made completely out of bamboo.

Typography.
It’s a beautiful thing

Yogurt Land.
Words can’t describe it.

Craigslist.
We have bought most of our furniture from Craigslist. You can find some really good prices on unique stuff. hint: search for shabby chic.

I think that’s good for one day.

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