191. Candle Carving

Thursday, 2012-03-15:

Just a little carving in the side of a candle which I got for my birthday:

190. Filing Fastener Star

Another star made of office supplies:

189. Paper-Clip-Chain Star

As I was sitting in our little office on Tuesday, I discovered the box full of paper clips and made this star:

188. Palm Leaf Star

Monday's star was late again. But the huge leaf I used to make it I found on Monday:

It's just a tiny piece of one of these huge leaves:

187. Birthday Stars

While I'm in exile, my wonderful friends back home sent me a parcel with lots of beautiful presents. Among those a Jar of Cake, including seven candles as seven stars - one for each of them:

These count as "made" since I stuck the candles into the cake an lit them (which proved to be rather a challenge^^).

Here are some more starry things I got for my birthday:

 soap, biscuits, a card, and a children's book :)

 daffodils from my wonderful flatmate and fellow intern at the clinic

an e-card from my dad

... plus a lot of starlight wishes from many people which made me feel so wonderful! :)

186. Another Star Puzzle

To get my mind off work, I resumed solving some "Professor Layton" puzzles. This time there was one where I actually had to make a star, so that became yesterday's star. This is the puzzle:

And here follows the solution = the star:

185. Solar Storm

Yesterday's star - finished today: A tribute to my home star

Quite by chance I discovered that our sun is rather active these days. This is my own version of a solar storm:

184. Various Drinks Star

Thursday's star

Another night out with friends and drinks of different kinds:

183. "Bergfest" Star

Today was my project's half-time! I can't really believe it, especially since it is very much just a sideline at the moment and I keep forgetting about my stars. Still, I wanted to make something significant, connected to having made it through half a year.

There's an expression in German for the day which marks the middle of a certain period of time: "Bergfest" which roughly translates to "mountain celebration". So, I made a star out of a mountain today:

It's a picture of the very summit of the Zugspitze - Germany's highest mountain which is not very far from where I'm currently staying - repeated eight times over and arranged in a circle. Unfortunately, the quality of the original picture wasn't too good, so it's a little pixelated, but it serves the purpose. :)

182. Chocolate Wrapper Star

Very simple, very silver, very skew:

181. Candle-and-Tissue Star

Okay, here's the first time I actually worked ahead. I made this star yesterday already when we were out eating pizza, and I made nothing today:

Just a candle in a bottle with some tissue wrapped around it.

Lots of tissues and paper napkins lately...

180. Paper Napkin Star

Here's today's star, made out of paper napkins during our Sunday brunch at the clinic where I'm working:

I'm up to date again with those stars - let's see for how long... ;)

179. Basket-and-Tissue Star

Another late star: I finished the physalis yesterday which left me with an empty little plastic basket. Today, I stuck some ripped tissue pieces into it to make this:

 

Sadly, I don't have any good colours with me. I would have liked to paint the tissue.

178. Muffin Paper Star

A little something to make me feel better: I bought some pastry and used the paper to make this little star:

177. Tea Wrapper Star

The essence of Thursday:

Tons of tea - drunk in the faint hope of fighting off this nasty cold...

Leap Day: Unposted Star

'Leap' in this case does not refer to another 'Limited Edition Art Piece' but to the fact that today is the 29th of February - the day which makes my year 366 days long.

The blog says "365 Days of Stargazing" and that's what it's going to be, so no star post today. However, this gave me a chance to insert the one star into this project I didn't want to put here: a song including stars which I wrote months ago - and my songs are not ment for the wild, uncontrollable open of the WWW.

So, that song will be star number 366 while the blog will remain at the original 365. (I like that solution a lot.^^)

176. LEAP #6: Staple Star

Another little star made with supplies from our little room at work:

175. Fake Stars

At first, I was a little disappointed when it seemed that today's star would be 'just a photo'... But then I realised that what I basically did was take a picture of things that really aren't stars but look like they are here:

The moon, Venus, and Jupiter - all together and extraordinarily bright - when I got back from work tonight. :)

174. Phone Charger Star

Right... I've come to the point where I need to compromise... I really want to make it through the next five weeks with continuous stars but there is so much going on right now that I find it not only challenging but almost impossible. So I have decided that it's okay to work ahead should I get an opportunity for more than one star a day; it's also okay to not 'make' much but rather just take an interesting photo; it's also okay to make a star very similar to another one I've made befor (talk about snow...); and - most importantly - SIMPLICTY!

So, here's a star I made today which has to count for yesterday:

Its significance:

1. I took a lot of time for phone calls yesterday. (This is my phone charger.)

2. ACCEPT IMPERFECTION! ;)

173. Physalis Star

This time I'm late with the actual star - I was quite exhausted yesterday. So here's a physalis from the ones I bought yesterday (to have at least a small connection) with the leaves squashed and bent to keep them in shape:

I'll hopefully make another one for today...

172. Fir-Needles-in-Snow Star

Yesterday afternoon I took some time to go for a walk in the snow and lie on a bench outside in the warmest sun I've felt for weeks with a panoramic view of the Alps. As the snow had begun to melt away, all the little branches, cones and tons of fir needles resurfaced - which is what inspired me to make this star:

171. Empty-Loo-Roll Star

Well, the title baisically says it all:

170. Wine Star

After a long (and very interesting) day of work, my new friends and I went to a wine bar to spend the evening together and cool our heads a little. That's how I got to make this star:

In the upper left corner of the picture one can spot the planet "Tiny Table Tree" in orbit around the star.

169. LEAP #5: Fifteen of My Colours

Another "Limited Edition Art Piece".

I'm so glad I hadn't worked on this page before...! Those pieces are great for times of little energy - I know I'm repeating myself.^^

168. Snow Star

There's a lot of snow around here - by my standards, that is. ;) So I took the opportunity to make another (simple) snow star:

Also, here's a guest star contribution by one of my fellow interns I met today:

Those people are great fun to have around.^^

167. Shoe Star

Okay, now it's going to get irregular... 6 weeks of internship and I have no idea how much time and energy I will find for star-making and star-posting. But I shall try my best!

Here's yesterday's star, titled "On the Road Again" or "Boots for Walking" or something along these lines...

166. LEAP #4: Carnival Star

It's somewhat sad I don't get to go to a carnival party this year. I was so hoping for an occasion to make a star costume. But for this weekend it would have been too much effort and too little time as I'm busy packing and preparing everything for a six weeks internship a good way away.

Since I didn't feel like painting my own face just for fun (there are times I might actually feel like it^^), I simply painted a star with theatre make-up on the next Limited Edition Art Piece:

165. Woodworm Star

Well, I'm late with the post again - which is because I didn't finish this star yesterday. Lacking energy... But anyway, here it is now:

 

I took a photo of the table at the bar where I went last night with a friend. Then I added some more marks to the wood using photoshop to make this star.

164. Mochi Star

Some more Japanese food: When we went shopping for sushi ingredients yesterday, I found something I had been searching for for years - daifuku mochi! Little rice dumplings of different flavours. They've got a consistency like nothing else I've ever tasted, totally weird! But somehow I really like them. However, trying to cut one into star shape turned out to be quite a challenge:

(I know, it does look slightly disgusting... but I just had to do this!^^)

163. Sushi Star

Tonight, I had some friends over and we made sushi - a first for most of us. To be honest, the results were amazing! I tried to turn one roll into a star, which almost worked. At least everyone recognised it.^^

It was fairly easy to form the inside-out rolls into triangles, so I made an additional star out of them:

Those were delicious! I'm looking forward to our next sushi-making session. (Fortunately, there's still a lot of rice left.^^)

162. Exams-Done-Celebration Star

Today, towards the end of my ninth semester, I took my very last exam at university. Now there's only the master's thesis left. This is just a little doodle for the occasion:

Nine points for nine semesters. Blue colours for feeling just a little blue. And no massively impressive star because there is still so much going on and to be organised that I don't feel very impressed at the moment. But things went well and if I take just a moment to really think about it all I'm truly glad this part of university is over. :)

161. Music Monday #6

Actually, this is not a real Music Monday... I had very little time yesterday but those ideas I have left for star-songs need rather a lot of time. Still, this star is generally quite musical since it is made out of the wrapper of a "Mozartkugel":

Also, there is a piece of music by Mozart of which one might say that it is losely related to stars... one of the more famous ones... most famous ones... ;)

160. Limited Edition Art Piece #3

So the post is a little late but the star was not. (I was just too tired last night.)

Those "Limited Edition Art Pieces" are a wonderful solution for times like these when I feel utterly unmotivated. So here is a star made of my initial "L" on a background of ink pad smudges:

159. Limited Edition Art Piece #2

Right, here is the next one.

It's very green.

Not much else to say about it. :)

P.S.: I just realised that abbreviating "Limited Edition Art Piece" would get me "LEAP".

I think that's an interesting connection.

I'm just not sure what to do with it, yet.

158. Limited Edition Art Piece #1

The fun with "This is not a Book" continues. There's a page with 10 empty squares to be filled with ideas/art of any kind. This is my first: a star made of silvery-white string in a watercolour night sky.

157. Reproduction Star

I picked up a book which I haven't been working on for rather a long time.
This is a Reproduction...

... from Keri Smith's "This is not a Book".

I might still use this seal somehow... :)

156. Milkshake-Candle Star

Here's a quick one from tonight: Candle shining through glass with milkshake remnants.

155. Tape & Highlighters

I'm dead tired. University is wearing me down and sadly all those stars are more of an obligation at the moment and no real fun at all. However, I can still remember that feeling, so maybe I can get it back. Here's a short one for tonight made out of what I'm using a lot at the moment: highlighters, tape, and discarded paper (that's where the lines and letters come from).

P.S.: Highlighters are definitely no good for photographing or scanning. The colours will just disappear and I have to dig through a lot of photoshop funcions to bring them back.

154. Music Monday #5

Okay, since this one is definitely too difficult to figure out, I'll just reveal it:

Mike Oldfield - Dark Star

What was really interesting about the process of drawing this was how the star changed from radiating darkness to radiating light and finally to radiating both. I had thought about doing this with watercolours or acrylic paint, but it turned out that charcoal was an excellent choice: There's a lot of power in this music, it's very forceful, and it requires rather a lot of force to apply that much charcoal to a white paper to make it look this dark.

I love listening to a piece of music over and over again, and transforming the sounds into an image. This is a rather unusual one, though, because colours are normally important in that process...

For those who are interested in the music: Here's the version I was listening to.

153. Glow-in-the-Dark Stars

Not much 'making' to this one either - I was just too busy with my master's thesis today. So I finished putting some glow-in-the-dark stars up to the ceiling above my bed. (Yes, it does make me feel like a little child every now and then to look at them before I fall asleep - which is basically the reason I put them there.^^) Then I went through a lot of trouble trying to get a clear picture of them glowing. This is the best I could manage:

152. Star Flakes

Right, I remember how I decided that simply taking a photo of a star would not be enough - I'd have to contribute something to the star for it to become one. Today's project is a bit controversial when it comes to that resolution because what I did was basically take some photos.

But: It wasn't as easy as that. I had to play around with my camera's functions in order to get a sharply focused picture of those tiny tiny tiny snowflakes that came down this morning. The advantage with really tiny snowflakes is that they are actually seperate snowflakes that look like crystal stars.

(The fabric of my jacket which they fell on actually looks like the smoothest fabric you can imagine, so that might give you an idea of how closely this is zoomed in...)

The other thing I did to 'make' these stars was to reduce the contrast of the background a little on the computer so that the snowflakes would be visible more clearly.

I simply love the look of real snowflakes so these just have to count.

Right, I convinced myself. :)

151. Star Bread

I got a present today - totally random, no reason at all, except that my lovely friend Tina thought of me when she discovered some star-shaped baking moulds and biscuit cutters. :) I had planned on baking some bread today, so I used those moulds to make two buns (if you can call them that... nothing like a real German Brötchen! :D):

Yummy!

150. Phoning a Star

What number would I have to dial to reach a star?
Well, obviously 1525356595857545.

Unfortunately, earthly telephones seem unable to establish a connection. Perhaps I can discover an enhanced device capable of dual-tone multi-frequency signaling (never knew 'tone dialing' had such a long name) and can establish a connection accross several thousand lightyears... I'll let you know. :)

149. Highlighter-Photoshop Collaboration Star

Well, not much to say about this one, actually. Lots of studying today, and lots of highlighters in use. So I drew a star with them and then had five minutes of fun with several photoshop functions to create a little colour explosion:

I like the result better than I thought I would.