For a long time now, Sheri and I have been planning a few personal touches for the apartment, unique supplements to the IKEA ordinary. We found a good first project a few months ago - an idea for wall art in a book called Readymade - and decided to spend a weekend tackling it, along with buying and assembling some furniture. For those unfamiliar with Readymade magazine, or the aforementioned book, it offers do-it-yourself, often earth-conscious project instructions for everyone from beginner to expert.
Materials included twenty-four CD jewel cases (preferably used, however new packs of ten were easy to find), a digital image of high resolution, and some tape, a pencil, scissors, and a ruler. We found a picture I took this spring of a blossoming tree, uploaded it to a website that will pixelate and blow up an image (www.homokaasu.org/rasterbator/), printed it at a local Kinko's-style shop on sixteen 8 1/2" by 11" sheets, and brought it home. Surprisingly, that was the easy part. What followed were hours of measuring, cutting, and taping - enough to rival even the most tedious grade school art project. In the end, we were pleased, and interchanging shouldn't be difficult if we ever decide to use a new image. Hopefully, this will mark the first of many DIY ventures around the apartment.
