Toys



When all the critters have been collected and the idea of drinking hot coffee starts to sound appealing again, I'll be exhibiting at Wake Forest Coffee.

This year I want to incorporate all the arts, not just visual. Along with a healthy collection of foam board moose there will be the illustrated book The Mooseifesto, the music CD, and interactive games and toys.

One of the toy ideas is to create collectible action figures. Here are a few of the pieces I've started work on.



The Pigrate... Here we see the Pigrate sort of stuffed into his plastic casing. I still need to work on the illustrated board that goes behind.



One of the moose from Moosifesto. This one will be on display in Wake Forest.



Moose stuffed into his plastic casing.

Facebook Lost Critter Project Fan Page

No need to be impatience...



The Lost Critter Project is now on Facebook!

Video, media links, and 100's of fan photos...



Become a fan!

500 Critters Released in Apex as Part of the Lost Critter Project



click here for high res version of this image

This August, 500 critters will be lurking around various locations in Downtown Apex, NC. These foam board critters will be left on benches, curbs, on top of newspaper boxes, on brick wall and even tied to poles and street signs. The lost Critter Project is a collaborative public arts effort between the businesses of Downtown Apex, NC and Apex High School Art teacher, Ian Sands.



Participating business are assigned a custom lost and found box that will be displayed inside their establishment. 50 foam board critters have been created for each business. Each critter holds a sign that reads: Help! I'm Lost! Thank goodness you found me! Please take me back to the (name-of-business). I miss my brothers and sisters!



To create the 500 critters, Ian Sands enlisted a team of art students. "We spent two weeks working on this project," Remarked Ian Sands. "The art room looked like a factory assembly line with students painting, others cutting and others gluing."



The Lost Critter Project bolsters Apex, NC’s reputation as a town of cultural arts and exciting happenings. Ten businesses are participating in the Apex Lost Critter Project. 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



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Making of the Lost Critter Project: Part 2

100 critters down... 400 to go.



The crew of the Lost Critter Project.

We met everyday this week and worked on the critters. There were plenty of jobs to go around... sketching, painting, outlining, cutting, gluing, labeling...





there are ten differnt critters. see if you can guess which is which..

The zonkey, yeti, cow, mouse, moose, squid, elephant, frog, cat and the raccoon which started out as a wolf but then we received a change request. However, 10 wolves we created before the raccoon change request was received. I believe this makes them collectors items.









This is a board of feet prior to cutting. The feet are probably the hardest parts to make, especially cutting them out. Also, keeping track of how many critters have been made and how many feet you still need to make can be extra tricky.





Here is a shelf of completed critters. They will sit here till next Friday.. day one of hiding...

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!