This beer cap initial letter was laser cut from 1/4″ birch plywood. It’s mounted on the wall with standoffs, which allows for just enough space for caps can be pressed into it from the back.  This thing is pretty massive – maybe 3′ tall? I believe there are over 250 slots (woo!).

See process photos after the jump.

I created the art file in Adobe Illustrator & we laser cut a few test holes from the birch plywood to figure out the optimal size for some of the beer caps we had handy. I believe the final diameter was around 27mm, with 4 mini notches.

The vast majority of our caps were able to be crammed into this size, with the exception of a few hard root beer bottle tops –  those were all too small & fell out.

Side Note: The Cranberry ginger shandy (bottle cap pictured above) was without a doubt my favorite new beer that I tried this winter. Very light, but delicious.

After finding optimal dimensions & laser settings, I applied a layer of masking to our sheet of plywood (to prevent burn marks on the face of the piece) & we let the laser cutter do it’s thing.

We have a pretty large piece of equipment in our studio. It’s a dual head, 120watt beast of a machine. This project took somewhere in the ballpark of an hour to cut.

A few more shots from the bed of the laser cutter. We had a few stubborn holes that needed to be pressed out with a finger after the fact.

Ginger, our very unimpressed looking Labrador, included for scale.

The photo on the right shows the masking tape being pulled off, revealing a nice, smooth finish – no burn or smoke damage on the face of the board.

   The board was sealed with a clear satin polycrylic finish and then hung on our kitchen wall after curing.

Standoffs are the perfect hardware solution for a hanging a project like this. The letter stands about an inch off the wall & throws an interesting shadow depending on what angle the light hits. You can find standoff hardware here.

Best Season // Best Weather // Best Color

A few snaps from the Deerfield Fair:

Believe it or not, there’s an exceptional amount of interesting design going on in the world of concessions

Wild looking vendor booths and trailers hitched up to look like mini restaurants. I am a huge fan of what I perceive to be down home signage and indie biz branding. Slapstick logos mixed with handpainted letters & interesting substrates formed into unique props.  Case and point:

Love this! What is it – foam piping? hoses? Looks like epic french fries.

This spuds for you!

The muffin man cafe – and excellent example of a well thought out vendor booth – nice looking color scheme, cohesive signage and a the perfect amount of inviting fall decor accents.

It has been slightly more than 2 years since my last blog update. I’ve decided a revival is in order.  During this intermission, I was lucky enough to marry the dude of my dreams (we eloped!). We also started a small creative studio together that created a whirlwind of epic busyness and excitement. Growth, love, opportunity. These are truly amazing times.

I stumbled upon this interesting website a bit ago & thought I’d share: WeFeelFine.org. Self Described as an exploration in human emotion on a global scale, this web app essentially crawls the social web searching for emotion based statements. They are all pulled out & compiled in a nifty little interactive interface. I’ve taken screenshots of a few statements that I loved, but there were zillions more to look through. You should check it out.

This insanely brilliant sunset was snapped on the way to the White Mountains for a last minute camping trip.

A colorful beach umbrella.

You can swim here, but absolutely no shark fishing. This unsettling piece of signage was snapped on Tybee Island, while on a June trip to Savannah, Georgia.

Some small details noticed while traipsing through the woods.

And of course, fireworks set off in Dover, NH. Fireworks are the hardest phenomenon to capture on camera.

First step, pencil sketch (chicken scratch?)

Laying down watercolor paint. I purchased a new set of watercolors recently that I’ve been beyond happy with. Highly pigmented, affordable & in pans! I have a fairly strong dislike for watercolor paint in tubes.

More layers of paint.

A close up. I used a bit of colored pencil, the paper lends an interesting texture.

The final piece, approx 8.5″x11″