Category: Blog

Confessions of a Reformed Participant Observer

trevor

The sweet selfishness of living life, not farming #content and inspiration It has been a long time since I’ve written anything for Love Make Share, and that started out as an accident. I had all this content planned, a schedule, and then things slipped. Work got busy, our baby got a little older and needed more intensive attention, and new diagnoses in the family meant a nonstop carousel of appointments, research, and work. (We’re all fine and figuring things out.) I made a couple of videos, I posted a handful…

Failure Isn’t Failure

trevor

Why do we even talk about failure in maker circles, anyway? I love it when an idea comes together. You picture something in your head, hunker down with your tools, put time and effort into the project, and create exactly the thing that you imagined.   And sometimes, exactly the thing you imagined just does not work at all.   It’s long past time to address how we talk about this kind of thing in the maker community. I had a project go sideways recently that I think showcases how silly it is to…

The Crash

trevor
Wrecked car on tow truck

In January, I was in a car crash. I crashed my car. It was a good crash in the way you want it to be. I was the only one in my car. The other driver was the only one in the giant truck I rear-ended. Traffic was moving slowly. It was a freak accident that, if I had hit any other vehicle, I think we both would have driven away from it. We would have bounced around, and then squinted at each others’ bumpers and decided it wasn’t even…

We’re Clever and We Work Hard: On Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert

trevor
big magic by elizabeth gilbert

I can’t think of the last time I felt my enthusiasm drain away so quickly while reading a book. Recently, Lin-Manuel Miranda gave a full-throated endorsement of Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear by Elizabeth Gilbert. First of all, enjoy the research, write down the details that resonate with you. Not anyone else, YOU. @GilbertLiz writes beautifully about research and writing in her book Big Magic, read that. What resonates with you is everything. It’s why you picked this journey. G’luck! https://t.co/DzZnDo4eN5 — Lin-Manuel Miranda (@Lin_Manuel) January 2, 2019 Since…

Graphite powder: experimenting with metallic finishes

trevor
graphite powder metallic finish

What’s the best way to achieve a shiny metallic finish? Airbrush? Spray paints? Lacquers? What about graphite powder and a bit of elbow grease? Whistler joins me in the shop to see what different substrates mean for graphite powder finishes. We try applying different amounts of graphite powder to white, grey, and black surfaces and get very different results! Watch the full video above to see our process, or check out a quick table of our results below: Graphite Powder Experiment Results White Grey Black Matte N/A N/A N/A Satin…

Maker Resolutions for 2019

trevor
Maker Resolutions 2019

Happy New Year! It’s the beginning of 2019! And that means it’s a great time to talk about what we’re going to get up to in the year ahead. It’s a good time to think about what worked and what didn’t from last year and what I want to do going forward. With that in mind, I’ve come up with 10 maker resolutions for 2019 that I think will help me be more productive, do more of the things I like, get away from some of the stuff that hasn’t…

Thank You, Marshmallow Snowman: How a Christmas Ornament Saved Christmas

trevor
Marshmallow snowman Christmas ornament

Love Make Share is the story of the connections we make as we create together. One of the things we create every year is a festive mood in the house. This goes back to our first Christmas we first trimmed a tree together, nearly seven years ago, with the girls barely 3 and 4 years old at that time. The tree, whether artificial, bought from a local lot, cut down at the family farm up in the valley, has always been the jumping-off point for our festivities. Every year we’ve trimmed…

Did I Fail NaNoWriMo?

trevor
Did I fail NaNoWriMo 2018?

National Novel Writing Month is over. I’m sure you’re wondering if I made my 50 000 words this year. Spoiler: no. I super didn’t. Sigh. I thought I had a streak going. I did two NaNos successfully in a row. I did a couple of Camps in there too. Each time, I was very successful. But… it turns out that this was not that year. For 14 000 words I did great. I was in that beautiful, dizzying place where you know exactly where you’re going and you get in…

Have I taken Halloween too far?

trevor

November is over. Halloween gave way to National Novel Writing Month, and I completely forgot I had written this post. So here it is now. The rest of this post is written by Past Trevor of October 31-November 1, with a quick edit by Present Trevor. Future Trevor was unavailable at press time..  * Peak Halloween looks like this post I made on Facebook: I love Halloween. I love making costumes. But boy, am I feeling Halloweened out this year. It’s become something of a tradition that I take the…

Wheels Up

trevor

I don’t often – but do sometimes – get to travel with work. It’s never for long and is always for brief, dense professional engagements. To date, I haven’t had the chance to take the girls on an airplane. My wife and I have flown together. She’s an incredible traveling companion. I bet the kids would be too. But we haven’t had the opportunity yet. It’s expensive and we’ve spent our money in other ways. But I want to take them on a flight. I want to really badly. See,…

Texts from my Daughters

trevor
texts

We’ve been slowly inching towards the day where the kids start staying home alone from time to time. There are a lot of reasons why they should. They’re old enough and responsible enough. That’s the primary thing. But eventually saving a mortgage payment’s worth of cash on daycare every month – that’s another. Watching them grow and self-actualize. Knowing that they’re in their own space, able to do their homework and tend to the pets and take ownership of the home in a cool new way. But I’ll tell you…

Productivity Guilt

trevor
productivity guilt

Two holidays in a row, I’ve gone back to work more tired than I left. No matter how productive I’ve been, I can’t shake the feeling that my level of productivity was just way too low. It’s not like I haven’t enjoyed myself. March Break with the kids was excellent. We had some decent weather, one last snow, we got outside and did activities and made art and crafts and watched movies and played games and generally just had a great time. But this break, in spite of the fact…