DorkMatter.net

A couple of days ago I decided to make a decal for my MacBook.
I decided static cling vinyl (the stuff window stickers are made from) would be a good idea. Unfortunately there seems to be a lack of it around here – at least where I looked – but after much hunting I found a place on the webernet that sells clear static cling film and what’s even better than that is that it will go through an inkjet.

I was thinking I might do some kind of leafy pattern that would look good in monochrome if I could get the single colour vinyl. The plan was to cut it out with a craft knife and the white of my MacBook could fill in the blanks. Once I realised I could print it there were a lot more options available.

I sketched out this octopus last night and scanned it earlier. I had to do a lot of cleaning up because I’d also sketched where the design was going to sit on my laptop. The paper was kind of crumbled so it scanned in with a lot of noise as you can see. That triangle at the bottom right is the dead area since the octopus is going to wrap around the top left corner of my laptop so that the tentacles are coming towards the screen.

After a basic clean up in gimp using the rubber stamp tool to get rid of the pen marks I added some transparent layers and traced out the parts that came in too light. I used the dodge tool to lighten it a bit so it blended in better with the sketch since I wanted to keep the pencil drawing look.
The white was removed from the original picture using the select by colour tool. I left a lot of the noise in for effect. The colouring was pretty easy and I used the spray tool and smudge to blend the colours. I didn’t work within the lines too much – who cares?
Finally I added a transparent layer and traced around the octopus in white to cut out a lot of the gubbins around the sides. I should have really used a mask for this but having messed about with them for half an hour I gave up and took the less easy way out.

Now I just need to wait for my film to arrive. Will post a picture when it’s all printed up and stuck on.

Chillis mmmm… here’s the current state of my 4 “Bolivian Rainbow” plants. Sounds illegal but I can assure you they’re just chillis.

They were planted back in April and took quite a while to germinate, probably 3 or 4 weeks. At the time time I planted some seeds that I got out of a standard Tesco chilli. Wonder if they’re engineered to crap out on home growers. Well needless to say they haven’t done so well. Perhaps it’s my bacteria and fungus infested environment.

I had 4 of the Bolivian Rainbow variety germinate and being too lazy they’re still all in the same pot. You can see from the picture that they’re not that big, probably because they have cramped conditions. You can also see that they’re probably getting too much sunlight since the leaves are burning at the edges. More sun=hotter chillis woo!
Can’t wait to stuff my face with spicy burritos!