Tag: arts ink

Personalize Your Holiday Gift Giving

Jordan Brown Leave a comment

When people hear the word “art” they think of paintings, photographs, sculptures, music, or maybe movies.  But not paper.  People commonly think of paper as a mode to transport art, or a medium that art is displayed through, but they don’t think of the paper itself as art.  Cards a common form of a present to loved ones, whether they are store bought or handmade.  This holiday season make cards extra special by creating the whole thing by hand,  even the paper.

The kerrytown bookfest in Ann Arbor teaches people that paper itself is creative and can be a form of art.  There were stands that were dedicated to making paper.  The paper that these stands were selling looked vintage, like the paper you would see a medieval letter written on.  Each piece was different and they all varied in colors, size, and even texture.  The texture, thickness, and color of the paper depends on what it is made out of.  Paper can be made out of different materials; the easiest material to make paper out of is other paper.  But it can also be made out of leaves, grass, flowers, or even a wasps nest.  Keep this in mind while making a card, and use the materials and colors that the recipient will love.  This uniqueness will translate well into a nice holiday card for a loved one, because they will see all of the effort and love put into it and appreciate it even more.

The people who worked at the Kerrytown bookfest were so passionate about there craft of making paper, they wanted to show and teach every person that worked by how to do what they did so that they could share in their happiness with this overlooked artform.  These people were more enthusiastic about their craft than most other professionals are about there job, and that is because they make paper because they loved it, and it is something they are truly passionate about.  It is no longer a necessity to make paper from scratch, it is much easier and less time consuming to go to the store and buy whatever size and color paper you want than to make it yourself.  But the paper we all buy at the store lacks the uniqueness of the paper that the people at the kerrytown bookfest put into their paper.  This passion and compassion will come through a handmade Christmas card, the loved one it’s made for will love the gift made with love.

Link to learn how to make paper:   https://www.wikihow.com/Make-Paper

FreeForm 25 Days of Christmas

Jordan Brown Leave a comment

Thanksgiving is now over, meaning that it is officially the holiday season.  Stores are decorated, the radio is playing festive music, people are now buying gifts for the upcoming festivities, and TV channels are playing their holiday movies and TV episodes.  A staple TV holiday movie schedule is ABC Family, now FreeForm, 25 Days of Christmas movie schedule.  This is a month long event that people look forward to starting in October.  FreeForm posts the movie schedule in November for their viewers to get excited and mark their calendars and DVRs for when their favorite movies are playing.

The 2017 schedule is out and it is starting in 3 days, so it’s time to look at it now and prepare for a month of nonstop holiday movies and entertainment.  Starting on December 1st everyday from 7:00am to 1:00am there will be nonstop holiday movies.  There are hundreds of holiday movies to choose from for FreeForm to put on the schedule, but they mainly stick to the same 50 or so movi

Buddy the elf showing his holiday spirit

es each year.  The classics like Home Alone, Polar Express, and A Christmas Carol are always played several times throughout the month so that everyone can get a chance to watch the show.  The most popular holiday movie in recent years is Elf.  Elf is playing 20 out of the 25 days, so don’t worry about missing it because there are plenty of opportunities.

With FreeForm being owned by Disney, there are also a lot of Mickey Mouse appearances throughout the month.  Disney takes classic stories like A Christmas Carol and replace the characters with the familiar faces of Mickey and his friends.  Movies like these will be played several times throughout the month along with non-Disney versions as well so people can watch it both ways or just pick their favorite version and watch that.

The movies throughout FreeForms 25 Days of Christmas range from animated to live action, child to adult movies, and old to new.  Claymation movies are sprinkled in throughout the new animation remakes.  The classic Rudolph The Rednose Reindeer claymation is generally played at least once during the month.  This year The Little Drummer Boy will be played 5 times throughout the month for all those who enjoy classic claymation movies.  These claymation movies are generally more for adults who grew up watching them, children now enjoy the animation in the Polar Express and A Christmas Carol more than the claymation animation style.

FreeForms 25 Days of Christmas is a nonstop holiday party for the entire month of December.  Whenever people are feeling festive they can put it on and know that it will deliver.  It shows movies for every age to enjoy and for families to watch together.  Check the schedule now to make sure that you don’t miss your must watch holiday movie.

https://freeform.go.com/25-days-of-christmas/news/25-days-of-christmas-2017-schedule-full-list-of-movies

DIY Thanksgiving

Jordan Brown Leave a comment

Thanksgiving is the middle holiday between Halloween and Christmas, that most people choose to skip celebrating besides take the day off and eat food.  As soon as Halloween is over people start decorating for christmas and wishing for snow.  Most don’t go all out on decorating the house for Thanksgiving, but they do put a lot of effort into making the food.  This year, instead of having no decorations when family comes over for Thanksgiving, decorate the house with fun last minute Thanksgiving decor.

An easy way to decorate for Thanksgiving is to just re-use your Halloween decorations.  The best way to do this is to repurpose pumpkins.  You can just keep mini pumpkins and gourds around the house and kitchen area as decor.  The only pumpkins that won’t work for Thanksgiving is jack-o-lanterns.  You can also take a pumpkin and gut it, then put flowers and other other decorations in the top of the pumpkins to create a centerpiece for your dinner table(pictured up top).  You could also paint the pumpkins or paint some festive words on the pumpkin to create a more festive Thanksgiving environment.

A good craft that most people know about and children do in school is a

turkey made from a hand.  Either by putting paint on your hand or by tracing it on a piece of paper and cutting it out, which makes the turkey’s body.  Then, you cut out feathers from construction paper and staple or glue them to the hand/turkey body.  There are other turkey crafts as well.  You can make a turkey windsocks out of a can, paint, googly eyes, and streamers.  You paint the can brown, and glue the eyes on.  Then the last step is to glue long strings of confetti that hang downfrom the can.  This also a nice decoration because you can put it outside so that others see your Thanksgiving decorations and get inspired.  Another turkey craft that is fun and easy is a rock turkey.  All you need is rock, feathers, and construction paper.  There is two easy steps to make this: first you choose which side of the rock to be the front, and second you just glue the feathers on the back to stick up and the eyes and nose construction paper pieces on the front.

An easy way to decorate for Thanksgiving is to just decorate the house for the fall season.  This is much easier because there are many options to decorate for fall, and many of the crafts only require leaves, which are very easy to require.  One easy craft is to modge podge some leaves to a mason jar and put some candles in it to put on the table or throughout the kitchen and living room.  Another easy leaf craft is to glue some leaves to a wreath made from twigs that you can put on any door throughout your house.

You can now take your Halloween decorations down and put up these new, fun, and easy decorations for Thanksgiving.  Happy Thanksgiving!

American Idol vs. The Voice

Jordan Brown Leave a comment

The fall season is about the weather, Halloween, Thanksgiving, and TV shows.  All of the good shows worth watching come back on in the fall: the dramas, comedies, game shows, reality, or a combination of several.  A popular mix between reality and game shows are talent shows; these include things from American Idol to Cake Wars.  It’s a staple genre all throughout the world, not only in the US.  A big chunk of the talent shows have to do with singing.  There is the X-Factor, American Idol, The Voice, about half of the contestants on America’s Got Talent, and Boy Band.  With so many shows for people to choose from the question is: How do you decide which show(s) to watch?

 

 

How do all of these shows have an audience?  Is it the same audience watching all of these shows?  Or do different people watch?  If that’s the case then how do people choose which show to watch because they are all virtually the same show (except AGT because you can do more than sing)?  

Do they decide what show to watch based on the judges?  This is likely, because once Paula and then more notably, Simon, left American Idol the show lost viewers and ultimately ended until it will be rebooted next year.  Then The Voice has Adam Levine and Blake Shelton to get viewers who like pop a

nd/or country so they could potentially be reaching more people.  Then The Voice added Miley Cyrus for younger viewers and for people who wanted to see what she is doing now after her wrecking ball phase and they watch to see if she will actually be a good judge.  So Miley brings in more viewers.  The Voice is good at getting people to watch more based on the judges then based on the talent and the a

ctual show.  The X-Factor had Simon as the main judge after American Idol (because he created the show) and the show ended within 5 seasons because it wasn’t producing stars like American Idol had and the judges weren’t good enough to watch on there own compared to the entertainment on The Voice of watching Blake and Adam talk and argue back and forth.

People don’t watch the show because they like the way its set up better than other singing shows.  Each show is essentially set up the same way: auditions, cut offs, then live shows where people can vote from the top 24 contestants.  So there is really no difference in the big picture, each show just changes a little bit in each stage to make it unique.

People could possibly watch for the stars that arise from the show.  If that’

s the case then American Idol should not have stopped because they were the only show that brought any big stars like Kelly Clarkson, Carrie Underwood, and Daughtry (and Daughtry didn’t even win!).  No other show has created a star on any level like the ones that American Idol produced.

Based on these factors and more people decide which talent singing show they want to watch.  For some, they can also be interchangeable based on the judges and contestants each season.

What’s Your Study Playlist?

Jordan Brown Leave a comment

There are many components to the perfect study environment. How many people are there?  What is the temperature?  Are you wearing comfortable clothes?  Can you fall asleep in your study position?  Will you be hungry and need to move soon?  And lastly, what type of music do you want?  The answers to all of these questions will differ per person.  Some people like to study in groups and others alone.  It also depends on what a person is studying for on what type of environment they want.  

Most college students listen to something when they study; Whether that’s music, tv or something else.  The music that people listen to differs based on the subject and type of homework that they are doing.  The one thing that most people have in common is that they don’t want to have to sing along to the songs as they are studying because that easily distracts them.  This means that you need a different playlist for studying than for driving, where the whole goal is to perform a concert in your car.  People try to achieve this goal in different ways.  It’s hard to find a balance between music to listen to for fun and music to listen to for studying.  

This is because you don’t want to listen to music that you know and like to dance to when you should be concentrating on calculus.  Some people listen to music in another language so that they are not tempted to sing along and they just listen to it in the background.  Others listen to a different genre of music that they don’t know well so that they can’t be too distracted by it.  Another option is listening to instrumental music.

Once you figure out what type of words you want in your study music, you then have to decide how slow or fast you want the music to be.  Perhaps you want it fast to keep you awake when you are reading a particularly boring textbook, or you want it slow when you are trying to concentrate on a long specific problem.  You also need to choose if the music is relaxing or intense, or upbeat, slow, or somewhere in between.   All of these decisions depend on the type of work you are doing at the time and can also vary depending on your mood.  The seemingly simple task of choosing a playlist to study is actually much more complicated than you initially think.

Celebrate the (corn)Maze and Blue this Halloween

Jordan Brown Leave a comment

Happy Halloween!  There are many ways to celebrate on the holiday, the most common throughout the US being trick-or-treating or Halloween parties.  There are many ways to celebrate the halloween spirit before and after the 31st.  A popular option in the midwest is by going through a corn maze. Corn mazes are a fun afternoon activity and each one is unique based on the shape and size of each maze.

2016 Corn maze from Gull Meadows farm in Richland, MI.

The process of making a corn maize is more complex than most people expect.  The farmers have to plan what pattern or picture they would like the maze to be in as they plant the corn.  The farmers plant the seeds and then very quickly before the corn grows too high they pick up all of the corn on the path of the maze so that it never grows there and the path is clearly defined.  Most farmers like to have a new picture each year for the maze, and once they pick what they want the maze to look like they have to execute it.  They do this by using gps technology to help them map out the pattern based 

on their land size and then the gps helps them to know what corn to pick up when they are using their tractors to create the path.  At some corn mazes the owners ask guests to guess what shape the maze once they have gone through it.  This is always fun because the guests think about how many turns they made and in what direction to determine what shape it could possibly be.  It also makes guests think about how complicated the maze is, which helps them to fully appreciate the effort, work, and creativity that they owners put into making the maze.

Big farms and orchards typically create a full day of activities for the whole family to enjoy.  They offer apple picking from their apple orchard, pumpkin picking from their pumpkin patch, apple cider and donuts to 

eat, a small country store selling homemade Halloween decorations, a hay ride, and a corn maze.  Some even offer pony rides and face painting as a bonus.  All of these activities draw more people to the maze which makes it worthwhile for the farmers to continue to put in the hard work and effort to make the mazes each year.  It also creates a great day for a family to enjoy the fall weather and get into the Halloween spirit.

A corn maize is a great attraction because it’s fun for every age.  Everyone likes to see how long it takes them to get through it, and competitive families like to split into groups and race to see who can finish first.  To make sure that people don’t cheat by walking in between the paths, corn mazes generally have 

several posts with different shaped hole punches throughout the maze to make sure that each group hole punches a card with every hole punch before they can get out.  To make it even more interesting some mazes have Halloween trivia on their on their posts and your answer tells you what direction to turn at the next fork in the path.  This way it’s more than just luck, but only if you answer the questions correctly.  Corn mazes create an atmosphere where everyone can have fun, enjoy the fall weather, and get into the spirit of Halloween.