Amy & Daveen nicknamed us ‘elves’ because we’d randomly escape to our rooms and come out with new goodies we made.

Our portfolio >>

1. ‘Good Company’ in four languages

An idea copied straight from IKEA display

Italian, German, English, Spanish

Reflects the general idea behind how we designed the apartment

2. Framed grid of various empty gift cards

Over the years, we just kind of took gift cards we liked from stores (mostly Target, IKEA, Walmart, Macy*s)

We don’t consider it stealing because they have no value…you can’t steal something that’s free, can you?

3. Refrigerator magnets

Made from a Delia*s catalog and a study abroad catalog

4. ‘little brown bag’ Clock

Simply took apart an old clock, poked it through our favorite paper bag (from Bloomingdale’s), and dropped some tissue paper in (from Papyrus)

5. Simple modern framed clock

Painted a frame, took apart an old clock, and used a large sheet of butcher paper

6. Green CLOCK

An old clock and cardboard letters

Not original, we saw this idea in a catalog somewhere

7. Chinaman Hat Lamps

Bought these two Chinaman hats from Chicago’s Chinatown Fair this summer, used a ballpoint pen to poke a hole through the top, and threaded the light bulb/wire through

Used a power surge adapter to act as the light switch

8. TV stand

Yup, we just nailed together a few planks of wood and painted it black and added the red cardboard as the backing

In actuality, we were not strong enough to hammer the nails through the dense particle wood, so many thanks to Joe, Robin, and Henry

9. Horizontal shelf/bench

Again, painted wood and nails

Credit to Bo Wang, Jason Gu, (and Melanie)

Each of the three boxes are lit by small lights that are adhered to the top horizontal panel

10. Lyric wall

Segments of beautiful lyrics from beautiful songs that remind us of the beautiful collision between God’s greatness and our depravity

The red words say ‘COME BREAK FREE’

11. Photo door

Favorite photos from Summer ‘07

• Jr. Camp ‘Heroes’
• SMDEP Houston
• JSP chaperoning

12. Collage

Four meaningless pictures put together in a meaningful way

See if you catch the message

Formed the images using http://homokaasu.org/rasterbator/

13. Linguistic Christmas trees

We didn’t have the time or money to buy ourselves a real tree, so we made do

An idea inspired from Starbucks and our love for languages

14. Characteristic frames

Each frame represents the four of us who live here

• The violin is for Daveen
• The ballerina is for Amy
• The middle third frame will be black and is for the two of us to share

We still can’t think of something to represent us; if you have any ideas, please do share

Designs cut from a sheet of red cardboard and glued to a sheet of plexiglass

Each frame has a backlight

15. Wall shelf

One painted plank of wood and two L-shaped supports

Sitting on top are candles, icicle lights, and a sepia photo of each of our families

16. Paper towel holder

Made using two pieces of Styrofoam from some packaging and two pipettes from the lab I work at

17. Food pantry

Turned a hallway closet into a food pantry by going around to each of the campus computer labs and collecting cardboard boxes that used to hold reams of printer paper, then stacked and nailed them to the wall

18. Magazine rack

Our TV tables came with a stand that’s utterly useless since we actually use the tables, so I turned it into a magazine rack with some wood glue and white wire hangers.

———————————————————-

What we’ll tackle next >>

Any ideas?