{90} interpretive trees

i may be grasping at this one a little bit. do the tree branches really look like the letters of my name? well, i guess. it's sort of like when i did my post using google earth. i ran into similar problems then too. but, i saw the "u" in one of my trees and i thought "yes! this is a great idea!" and i proceeded to struggle with the remaining five letters. oh, well! better luck next time. i'll find a better set of trees to do this with again at a later date.

{89} crossword

i am addicted to crosswords. especially now that it's summer-ish weather outside. my favourite thing to do is take my big crossword book outside and just sit and do that for hours. much like i did yesterday! (and will again tomorrow) i also had a little other work to do with today's name...incorporating a message for a friend who is celebrating a birthday today. because i knew that would make it a little harder to do, i went with the crossword idea for today. i finally found a page with a puzzle that had the right types of spots to write my message and incorporate my name. i like this hidden message thing. i'll have to do it again. (side note: the word "ass" appears in my puzzle but that is not the secret message. the clue really did ask for a "cart puller"!)

{88} probe

does anyone else remember the popular 70s game "probe"? it was one of our family's favourites and i guess it still is! every once in awhile my mom and i haul out the game and play a few rounds. she kicks my ass each and every time. she always somehow wins with simple words like "cupboard" or "fridge" or "cabinet" whereas i'm playing difficult words like "pneumonic" or "psychiatry" or "unfortunate". ugh. but, we always have a great time no matter what!

{87} rook

yikes. almost every night this week i have found myself at my parents' house playing rook! lol we're just slightly addicted. or maybe it's because i haven't won a game since AUGUST! that's 27 games without a single win for moi!

we love to play rook. see, my dad was a major competitive rook player back in the 60s and before he and my mom were a couple, they even played games together then. but, my dad was a different person. he was so competitive that he couldn't handle losing or he couldn't handle it if his partner didn't play their cards correctly. he's such a different person now. he's so mellow about it. i mean, does he want to win? of course! but, it's NEVER a big deal if he doesn't.

i ended up taking the kitty with this hand and winning a round! yay!

george had so much fun playing outside in the nice fresh air that he totally zonked out. my parents always have this chair in their eating area just for george. that way he feels like he is part of the game too and he is always within stroking distance. :)

my mom helped me lay out the cards to spell my name.

i am always the dealer. fastest dealer in town! my parents always joke that i should work in vegas. :)

{86} graphic cards

i had bought a really large pack of these sassafras cards from peachy cheap about a year (or more) ago. i had never used any of them in any sort of way, so i was packing them up for the upcoming garage sale. but then i spotted one card that said "u is for umbrella" and i was inspired to cut the cards into the letters of my name quickly! a super simple project for today but at least these cards got some use before their sister-cards get sold. :)

(the original cards are below. they are actually pretty cute. i may need to keep the rest after all...)

whilst i was packing stuff up and pricing scrapbook items for the garage sale--i'm selling a TON of stuff--young g laid in his bed beneath the table in my craft room and snoozed. well, except for this one moment right when i took a picture because he heard the rustle of a leaf three blocks away and it frightened him. ;)

{85} playhouse

the playhouse in my backyard once stood pristine. now, it is covered in graphic design (or scribbles. your call.) created by the Es and various friends' kids over the years. i noticed that one name, in particular, was missing from the wall of art...my own! so, i have added it in permanent chalk.

meanwhile, george was outside with me and completely freaking out because of the brick-work being done on the building behind me. he was trying to hide under the lounge chair, under the garden hose, anything--just so he'd be protected! poor boo! but, while i was drawing on the playhouse, he found the perfect spot to hide--inside! he climbed over all my pots (their storage spot o'er winter) and just sat there. love.

{84} sandbox

quick, who can spot my name first? i thought you could easily see my name in the sand until i uploaded the picture. now, it is too late to go back and fix it because george has since buried a bone where the name once was. oh, well. maybe this will count as my camoflauged name inspired by the "make something 365" book!

(geeps. is he the cutest or what? craz-y cute.)

confession

confession: i love "giuliana and bill"! i mean, i love the show and i think they are the awesomest of couples. i totally had a crush on bill when he was on the apprentice nine years ago and i think giuliana is "amaze-balls" on fashion police! so, their show is just super fun and wonderful. of course, i've been following them for a few years and completely shedding tears watching them go through their infertility struggles and, more recently, giuliana's breast cancer. it's been an incredible thing to watch and see how strong they are and an inspiration as a couple. so, i was over the moon when i saw an article on people's website this morning saying they were expecting a baby! yippee! i was totally a few minutes late for work today because i had to watch the video of it on the today show's website. i'm so happy for them. i'm sure that if i lived in chicago (or LA) we'd totally be besties. :)
(watch the video here)

{83} mandala-inspired

lately i have been loving mandala (such as this pin) and i wanted to do a name that was inspired by a piece. so, i found these mandala colouring sheets (i couldn't find my pin but there's a picture below) and was inspired by its design to create my name inside of it. i had no idea just how painstaking creating something like this is! i mean, it took a long time and i suffered a lot of hand cramps drawing all the little lines and cirlces (especially the circles!). but, i totally love it. i wish i'd rotated the "l" a little more so it was less "c" like but, other than that, i really love it.

{82} skeleton

current fave name! i know i should've waited with this one until october but i saw this pin and it seemed so super easy and completely awesome, that i had to do it right this second! and, it was totally super easy and completely awesome. just look at it! look at how my name totally looks like a skeleton and now i know why i have such wide hips--it's because of the "l" in my name. ;) ack, love. you must try this with your own names.

{81} worldly streets

i was so hoping to find a city or town with the name "lauren" but i couldn't find any! maybe i didn't look hard enough...hmmmm. but, after a VERY extensive search on google maps, i discovered "lauren" street names in SIX different countries. score! to you it may seem non-labour-intensive because i'd simply just type in "lauren lane", right? not so, my friends! google only shows the first four or five similar places with the words you typed in but there could be many many more. so, i had to actually search for a "lauren drive in scotland" and then see what happened. of course, i knew my countries were limited to english-speaking locations so that made the search a little narrower but, dude, i still totally searched for a street in tokyo that began with "lauren". :)

{80} postage

seriously. one of the most bestest things about being a grown-up is having your very own mailbox where mail comes labelled for you...and only you! it's the best. remember as a kid how totally stoked you'd be when you'd get your new teen beat in the mail? it's like that, only so much better because ALL the mail is addressed to you! loves.

so, i took the postage stamps off of six envelopes (blech, some were bills) and simply wrote my name on them. an ode to postage and the awesomeness of getting mail.

{79} pipe cleaners

one time at work i found a pipe cleaner. i gave it to karen and asked her to make me something. she totally made the best thing ever...my name! this was long before my name project so it totally means more now. i have tried numerous times to replicate this name she made but to no avail. so, for today's name, i used TWO pipe cleaners to get my name in script.

the name in the dark green pipe cleaner was the one karen originally made and the others are my feeble attempts at replicating her great work.

{78} pig latin

at first i was just going to simply write "auren-lay" but it totally need a pig to accompany it so that it'd make sense. so, after two attempts, i managed to get this pig and then i adjusted the tail so that in its squiggles, it would read "auren-lay". i super love this one. when i post it to facebook (which i do with some of the cooler names), i'm going to ask and see if people know what its meaning is; let's see how many people know their pig latin!

{77} apple carving

thanks to the suggestion made by cathy f. randomly in the lunchroom, i decided to go with that idea for today's name! i found an apple that was on its way to the garbage (because i didn't want to actually eat an apple that had been carved lol), and grabbed a paring knife and got to work. i butchered (pardon the pun) the "e" but the rest turned out okay. keep those suggestions coming! :)

{76} cityscape

i was in the mood to draw (yet again! a lot of that this week...). i picked up my "make something 365" book and i saw that i had sketched the idea of hiding my name in the shapes of buildings. my idea had originally been to hide the letters like in the windows or doors (oo, now i thought of a new idea!) but i instead came up with this. figuring out the letters was more difficult than anticipated. the "l" and "u" are pretty standard but creating an eiffel-tower-esque building for the "a" was complicated and the feasibility of the architecture on the "e" is definitely questionable! lol i'm proud of my drawing today, though. :)

{75} zippers

while i was at crop and create a few weeks ago (see this post), i did a make-and-take to learn how to make a zipper brooch (pictured below). it was a little complicated and i totally burned my fingers numerous times with the hot glue gun but the end result was amaze (new word thanks to @giulianarancic!). so, i ended up buying a whole bunch of zippers to make into brooches and give away to my dear friends. so, i took my black zippers and laid them out on the floor. let me just tell you that trying to coerce zippers into any sort of shape is near impossible so this name is quite abstract!

(the zipper brooch i made)

(of course, g was part of the action...sort of. he laid on his bed and pouted. a second after this picture was taken, though, he jumped up and ran through the zippers so i'm glad i'd already snapped a pic of them!)

{74} heart

i got the inspiration off of pinterest for this one...except i never 'liked' or 'repinned' the pin so i can't give credit! well, they had drawn a heart with the word love inside of the border. i knew i could totally do that. so, after multiple attempts at drawing a decent heart, i finally got one i was happy with! then i left enough space to write my name and then join the sides together. it's simple and pretty. it would make a totally wicked necklace, eh?

{73} invert

i guess this turned out to not look exactly like i thought it would but it's still pretty neat. i only drew and coloured the black areas and so even though it looks like i just dres the letters, i didn't. hmmm. this one was more complex and time-consuming than it actually appears.i was trying to make it into one of those images when you have to squint or invert your eyes so that you can see the word. oh, well. shall try try again another day! :)

{72} fridge magnets

i had searched for these alpha magnets awhile ago but when i couldn't find them, i just figured i'd lost them or sold them. the last time they'd been in use was when i lived in winnipeg so it had been at least five years. but, then this past weekend i'd been cleaning up stuff and going through old boxes and trying to de-clutter my life when i came across these magnets strewn across the bottom of a box. score!

who can spy pyrex, a previous 365-project and george? :)

{71} comic strip

i've been wanting to make a comic strip for awhile now but i could never come up with anything for the content. then i decided to document the moment when i decided to switch back from 'laurie' to 'lauren'. look at me with the drawing and the pencil crayons again! ;)

this was a significant moment for me and it is one that has defined my life. i'll never forget that moment.

{70} team lauren

i was filled with the desire to draw again today! it's so silly because i'm such an awful drawer (<--wha? is that the right word?). but, every time i pick up a pencil i feel like the real talented artist inside of me is going to emerge and i'll be able to draw like the bestest artist. it, unfortunately, never happens. oh, well. so, i decided to feature my best renderings of people--like the moustache, mohawk, smirk and bald head. go team lauren.

{69} pyrex patterns

i've been wondering for awhile how i was going to incorporate pyrex into my 365-project. i'm crazy about pyrex and my collection has grown 22 times its size in the last year!! (yeah, that's because i bought my first piece one year ago and now have a total of 22). i love me some pyrex. so, i knew i couldn't just arrange the pieces so i decided to take pictures of some of my favourite dishes and then cut letters out of the patterns to make my name. i think i'll use pyrex again some time (only 296 to go!) but make something in the dish instead. we'll see.

{68} easters

hoppy easter!

i'm super awful at drawing so why i decided to draw six rabbits, is beyond me! lol but, not so awful, right? some of them look a little uncomfortable but i was rather pleased with myself afterwards. maybe i'll pick up the pencil again. ;)

(ps. oh, phooey. i just realized i forgot the tail on the last two!)

and, a real happy easter!!
(i took this picture when we were in florida 3 years ago at "the holy land experience" and photoshopped it as a better representation of what today means.)

{67} cara-inspired

my friend cara is also doing a 365-project but hers is all about hands, and it is ah-mazing. i'm blown away by her creativity and dedication to the project. it's very inspiring. she allowed me to photograph a few pages that i wanted to use as inspiration that i could interpret differently for my own project. this was one of them. she had drawn an outline of her hand, a dove at its center and then created this seamless flow of lines throughout. i thought it was awesome. so, i tried to do something similar. the version below is photoshopped into black and white because i preferred it to the original colours i used, but i did a close-up of the coloured version just for record's sake.

below is cara's original version (posted here with her permission). it's so seamless and beautiful.

{66} a poem

a poem using only the letters of "lauren". i was hoping for so much more and imagined i would be able to get dozens and dozens of words out of my name but without an "s" it was impossible to create a sentence with proper grammar. so, i was left with this nonsensical, but pretty damn cool, poem. ;)

{65} fabric paint

i bought some fabric paint at michaels for this project. so, i went ahead and drew my name on an old tank top (i photoshopped the stains out! lol). not exactly going to wear this in public, but the tank top is so old and dirty and big (i tied it up in the back), that i wasn't going to wear it in anyway. maybe i'll try to sell it at the garage sale...

{64} pencil crayons

do you remember "laurentian" pencil crayons? they were the pencil crayons of choice before crayola took over the industry. they were the pencil crayons we always had as kids. see, they had these white blocks on them for parents to write their childrens' names on them so they wouldn't get lost or mixed in with others at school. my brother always had his name written on them. but, what did i get? my mom would take a scissor and scratch off the "tian" part of the brand name so all that was left was the "lauren". genius, right? well, it totally embarassed me. so, eventually i started writing "laurie" on the white part because i didn't like all this "lauren" nonsense.

fortunately, since my mother kept our old pencil crayons in a big pail (which i have now inherited), i still found a few of the original "lauren" pencil crayons, still with the scratched pieces on them. love it.

{63} friendly names

after having a wonderful book club discussion, cara and i started talking just a little bit about our projects. she mentioned this fabulous idea that she had (don't want to spoil it!) and it inspired me (yet again!) to try something but with my own twist.

so, i went home and spent the last 45 minutes taking pictures of my name written in cards and notes over the last six years (since i started using the name 'lauren'). i got just enough to force this name out in my friends' handwriting. i love it. i hope that they love it too. and if people wonder why i didn't use their handwriting it's because a) you used the wrong name or b) you didn't use any name! lol maybe next time...

(i won't identify everyone online but i did go ahead and tag them all on facebook in a sneak peek last night!)