Making of the Lost Critter Project: Part 1

Completing 500 critters in one week... No time to idle!



Today, the first 100 critters for the Lost Critter Project were started. That is to say, sketched, drawn and painted. They still need to be cut, glued and labeled but that is for tomorrow.



This is the beginning of the wolf design. Besides creating a few warm up sketches, I measured the foam board and divided it into rectangles... trying to maximize my foam board usage ;)



Nest step was to place one critter into each box. This way I would have at least one sample critter for each of the ten. After, I drew the critters again in rows... creating about ten of each of the ten critters...



Then I got started on the painting... stay tuned....

Getting Ready for the Lost Critter Project



To date we have eight businesses participating in the Apex Lost Critter Project with another three expressing interest. The participants are:

The Blue Tiger
The Red Canvas
All Booked Up
Studio 123
Green Pea Nursery
The Apex Chamber
Peak City Film Festival
Realty World on Salem Street
New Hope Valley Railway
Apex Yogic Living

Schedule:

August 1, 2009: Delivery of lost and found boxes
August 7, 2009: First day of the hidden critters
August 7, 14, 21 and 28, 2009: scheduled hiding dates
September 4, 2009: Last day of project, collection of lost and found boxes.

The Lost Critter Project Homepage

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Name the Zonkey: Winners Announced!



We left this little hollow zonkey sitting inside the Looking Glass Cafe & Boutique in Carrboro, NC with the following message:

Please take a minute to enter a name for this Zonkey.

We provided a marker, post-it notes, and a slot to stick em in.



4 weeks later we collected the Zonkey and retrieved the results. Here are a few:

Herman
McDoodle
Alfred
Althea
Muneab
Peewee
Mortimer
Romulous
Remus
Grumly
And there was one blank entry which I guess is sort of like the zonkey know as...



And the winning names:

1st place: Debra the Zonkey (get it? :)
Runner up: Hannah

Stop by Zonkey Street to read more about zonkey adventures!
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The shop is now open at http://iansands.etsy.com!

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Ice Egg Nests Part 3



The largest of our Ice Egg nesting sites was set up at Lake Pine in Apex, NC yesterday. A total of nine nests and over 30 ice eggs.



A lesson learned: don't try to freeze too many ice eggs at the same time. They need space between them to freeze correctly. Otherwise they just end up breaking. Cleaning food coloring out of a freezer isn't as much fun as it sounds.



The nests are constructed out of pine straw. To make the nesting site more realistic :) we varied the size of the nests and the amount of eggs each nest held.



It's always fun to catch people's reactions to the nests. You'd be surprised how many people just walk right by like the nests aren't even there. But the people who do stop and look spend most of their time trying to figure out what the eggs are made of.



For more Ice Eggcitment, check out the Emerald Island Beach Nesting Site.



The shop is now open at http://iansands.etsy.com!

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Shaky Sketches for Lost Critter Project!



We have a final Lost Critter meeting Wednesday. So far 10 businesses have agreed to a lost critter box. That'll be 50 lost critters per box hidden in Apex this August. A total of 500!

If you are not familiar with the Lost Critter Street Art Project click there to see how we did it with one business.


In the meantime, I'm working on designs for each of the critters. Above, we have the classic critter design.



The Zonkey Lost Critter design.



the Squid Lost Critter design. Now only 7 more to go!

The shop is now open at http://iansands.etsy.com!