Prototyping Again

New cardboard things are afoot here! If only I had a production line of more than one - then I think these announcements wouldn't be quite so far apart. But still - soon, the frabjous day when the Little Tollbooth will join the ranks of the forty-two roads cardboard toys currently out there being enjoyed.

Behold, the prototype!



I wish I'd had the forethought to take pictures of each of the permutations and incarnations that led to this final tiny thing - four hours of cutting out! It would have made a great stop-motion animation movie. If I knew how to put together that sort of thing, that is.

Oh, and - a Photoshopped architect-y rendering, because I couldn't resist:

Fall Flowers and the Pipeline

Thank you so much for these beautiful asters, Linda! They look perfect in the afternoon sunlight and are making smile as I look at them. (Oh, and everyone feel free to mock me if I just betrayed my deep, and at this point probably irreversible, botanical ignorance. I feel like my reaction to flora has a touch of Frankenstein's monster about it. "Flowers! Good. Smell.")



Also, I'm designing a new cardboard-y thing, something full-scale again, like the kitchen. This is a half-assembled prototype, but I think I'm going to leave it a mystery for now. Oooh, can you stand the suspense?

In Halloween news, I'm now a little torn between the Star Trek uniform (really tempting because really, how many years are left before Lara demands the pink princess getup and thinks her parents owning the DVDs for all seven seasons of Next Generation a fact far too deeply mortifying to ever be exposed to the light of day?), and this really cute sheep costume from Martha Stewart. I'm not sure I'm feeling up to doing that much work with batting....

Prototype

I've been trying very hard not to start new projects while old ones lie unfinished because my attention really does tend to wander from idea to idea without follow-through... but still, when I saw this toy kitchen on Apartment Therapy - Nursery... Sadly, a spare $600 we have not, but I really thought it might be possible to recreate it in corrugated cardboard. I drew up a little plan...



And made a pretty cute prototype, if I do say so myself. The easiest way to make this kind of model is to glue a sheet of graph paper to cardboard - that way the scale/measurements are already set up. The scale here is 1 square = 2".



Then I couldn't help playing with Photoshop. Here is my artist's rendition of what it might look like with a stove and sink.



Even Misha, who really tends to be the voice of reason to my flights of fancy was excited about this, and actually thought it was doable (unlike the vast majority of things that I suggest!). Also, even if building it doesn't work out, this little model would be fun for a dollhouse.