Heavy Duty Incorporated

Congratulations to Sarah in Athens, GA. She’s the lucky winner of the first Jackpot Pillow set giveaway.

Everyone else, you still have three more chances. Winners are chosen by generating a random number at Random.org.

Enter to win a free set of these cool modern pillows!

The next giveway ends…
in 7 days, 2 hours, 22 minutes, 12 seconds

The letters have been broughten, peoples. Yeah, I said “broughten.” I was originally going for an Art Deco flavor but these ended up more like op art, which I also like. The plan was to use these panels to make Letter Pillows, and that is still going to happen. But why wait on us? We’re adding these to our Etsy store and folks can use them to make anything they want. In addition to pillows I can imagine piecing these panels together to make quilts, duvet covers, tote bags, chair cushions, wall hangings, table runners, what else? I’d love to hear your ideas.

Each panel is 17″ square with a half inch seam allowance for a finished piece of 16″ square. The fabric is a 7 ounce organic cotton poplin. As green as we can get!

In addition to all 26 letters we printed yardage of a matching concentric square pattern, terminating with our anvil logo in the middle. The plan is to use these for the letter pillow backs, but they look pretty cool just hanging on the wall. Curtains? I don’t know. We may offer this for sale as yardage.

This pic of the anvil is reasonably close to actual size, maybe a little larger.

Later tonight I’ll post a graphic showing all of the letters. UPDATE: And here they are. Click for bigness.

Do not delay. Sign up today. For the giveaway-zuh.

We’re giving away four sets of three Jackpot Pillows (with the super cool vintage slot machine icon art) over the next four weeks.

You can sign up here: WeAreHeavyDuty.com/JackpotPillows

We have been thinking about ways to be more involved in the crafter market. One idea we’re working is providing kits and patterns for some simple projects from pillows to apparel. To start in that direction we decided to offer the fabric panels from our Jackpot Pillows to folks that would like to make their own. Of course, you can make whatever you want with these. And for pillows on the cheap, buy just one panel for each and use some plain fabric for the backs.

Some details:

• 100% organic cotton, 7 oz. poplin
• Panels are 13″ x 17″, with a 1/2 inch seam allowance for 12″ x 16″ pillows

Get them at our Etsy store where you can see all six vintage slot machine icons that are available.

This one ain’t holding water. To be honest, I was pretty disappointed when I finished making it. But the people have spoken! It got a lot of compliments this Halloween from the large number of visitors we had. Halloween is big deal in our neighborhood. People come from all over to trick-or-treat here. I’m not sure why. The streets are jammed with drivers parking their cars anywhere they can. There are police patrolling on Segways! There was even a police car going up and down the street with its lighting flashing and blasting “Monster Mash.” One of our neighbors had a sign on his door by 8 PM that read:

Too Late!
We had 424 treat bags and now they’re gone.
See you next year. Maybe.

I used a drill to make this jack-o-lantern. I started with a big hole saw (hard to get the core out after each hole), a forstner bit (fast clean cut, but throws pumpkin chips everywhere), a spade bit, and a couple smaller drill bits (they can leave a ragged edge on the surface). There was no plan. I just freestyled around the pumpkin until it looked done. I put the opening on the bottom so I could work around the top.

Check out this crazy jack-o-latern made by Lumenlab. They used one of their robot kits and some free graphics tools to make it happen. You too could be carving pumpkins the modern way! Lumenlab is bringing digital making to the masses. See the post at Lumenlab.com, complete with video.

So, Mary and I went to High Point Market today. (Promo video) High Point, NC is the furniture capital of the world. The Market is a semi-annual event with thousands of exhibitors and zillions of visitors. I’ve been wanting to go forever. Lumenlab got invites a long while back and I keep registering, but not going. This time we did it. I’m not sure what to think about it. There were a lot of fashionistas in black and a very international crowd. I heard more languages than I could keep track of. I kept thinking that we should be here some day but now I’m not so sure. We spent what little time we had in the main buildings. I have to believe that the most interesting stuff is at the smaller locations spread around downtown. We picked up some interesting trade mags and a handful of cards. “Please wear your badges at all times.”

Photography inside is totally verboten. I got a couple lame pics of the main building. It has it’s own bus terminal because there are so many people being shuttled in from the various park and ride lots.

One of the more interesting things I saw was the Natuzzi building. I’m not saying I like it, just that it’s interesting. I think you can see from this pic that the building looks like ship on one side, complete with a single large porthole, and a bridge or gangway over some water. It seems that just about every major furniture manufacturer has some sort of permanent presence in High Point. We’ll have to go back in the spring and spend more time. (Click for a larger image.)

I’ve been stressing about this year’s card since before we even mailed last year’s. The Human Candy Cane from last year was our best so far. If anyone out there has any ideas for a card this year, and you’re not going to use them for your own card, please let me have them.

Now, when I say “stressing” that doesn’t mean we don’t enjoy the process, we do. But we’ve had creator’s block for a good while and time is getting tight. All that said, we have one concept that I’m excited about. But it will certainly be the most logistically challenging card to produce yet. I’m going to start running some tests in the next week or so. Fingers crossed.

Peruse the previous cards

Cut out one for yourself. For my latest exercise in vanity I made these “business” cards. To me they’re an homage to the great artist Ed Kienholz. Kienlholz was part of the “Cool School” art scene in 1950s Los Angeles. Some “experts” say Kienholz was doing the more-famous Rauschenberg’s “combines” before Rauschenberg himself. Ed was a renaissance handy man who made a living early in his career doing all sorts jobs from plumbing to carpentry. He had a pickup truck with “Ed Kienholz - Expert” painted on the doors. If he never made a piece of “art” in his life I would still consider this a masterpiece. I’ve displayed similar verbiage in a similar way on these cards. With my steelworker roots I can’t help feeling a kinship with the man.

I had them made at Zazzle, and I’ve always been happy with their service. That said, I’ve found that it can be tough to get the color to match on their “indestructible” card stock. Despite my choice of material I wanted the cards to appear worn and roughed up, like an old work truck. I found some brushes for Photoshop that made this effect pretty easy to achieve at Ubersuper. For darker colored areas I inverted the effect to make the wear areas lighter. Seemed to make sense. I like how the crease turned out, but I think some of scuffs and dirt are maybe a too little subtle.

Take a look at the late great Ed Kienholz doing who knows what atop the “expert” pickup. Genius.

For more experiments in vanity there’s this self-portrait I made for an avatar to use on Flickr, etc.

And by “hard way” I mean this: This tree house is supported only by the tree. Sure, there’s a ladder there in the middle, but that’s not structural. I had read in a book about tree houses that a proper tree house did not have any posts in the ground supporting it. All tree, all the time. I built this at our last house, for my kids. Even though we didn’t have many tree options, and that it wouldn’t be that high, I was determined to build the real deal, not some simple elevated “tree fort” that only used the tree as another post in the ground. Here’s to the hard way!

I would go into the details (you know I would) if I could remember much about it. There are some great resources online. You’ll surely find them once you start looking. Keepin’ it real in Asheville.

T