Eastern Eggs. Artist (& Robot) Decorated Wooden Eggs Whose Proceeds Aid Japan.

A few weeks ago, I introduced you to the Egg-Bot, a robotic kit that, with the addition of a fine point Sharpie or similarly sized pen, will decorate Easter eggs (or anything round, cylindrical and small) with art, design, words or logos for you.



Now, that very concept is being put to good and beneficial use by TBWA London who has created Eastern Eggs, an online site/ store selling wooden eggs decorated with the Egg-bot by various artists, with a portion of the proceeds going to Red Cross - Japan Tsunami Appeal.

Eastern Eggs features your choice of 14 different eggs, each illustrated by one of the following artists: Danke Schoen, Damien Weighill, Paul Pateman, Jan Kallwejt, Kristyna Litten, Matt Lyon, Nick Purser, Shin Tanaka, Tony Riff, Yehrin Tong or Ewen Stenhouse.





The suggested donation price is £10 for the eggs, £8 of which will go to the British Red Cross to aid Japan.
Buy them here.

Kubrick Remasters, Graphic Art Posters Inspired By Stanley Kubrick

It's a Stanley Kubrick day today on the blog. If you didn't read the post prior to this one on the amazing retrospective of the legendary director's work, please do. It's what inspired this post of the fabulous graphic artwork of Nick McLellan.

A companion to the exhibition at La Cinémathèque, Kubrick et le Web is a site which showcases the best of web creation on Kubrick, a contest in partnership with Dailymotion.

There are so many talented artists, designers, photographers and filmmakers out there that it is almost hard to believe. But one look at the numerous pieces of work inspired by Kubrick and his movies, you will have no doubt. One of the standouts on the site is the work of artist and designer Nick McLellan. His Kubrick Remasters Series is beautifully conceived of and executed.

Take a look:







See more of Nick's work here on Deviant Art

5 Artists Design Helmets For Pirates Design

Thanks to Dalzin.com via freshbump, I discovered this new wonderful line of artist designed helmets named Pirates Design. Olivier Maucorps, a motorcycle enthusiast, decided to start a new line of creative helmets with illustrator FAKIR, who designed one of the helmets as well as the company's logo. They then enlisted four other artists to design the following helmets:

FAKIR
Graphic artist, toy designer and illustrator FAKIR designed the logo as well the FAKIR Helmet:



NANAN
French sculptor and toy designer Gaël Brienne (aka NANAN1) designed the following helmet:



GRAPHEART
French graphic design, illustration and toy design studio Grapheart, designed the following helmet:




KATRE
French Graffiti and street artist Katre, designed the following helmet:



LADY SHOVE
Freelance graphic designer Lady Shove (aka Julie Chauville)



The helmets are being exhibited at Star Motors in Paris from March 25- April 30th and can actually be purchased online.



Shop for the Pirates Design helmets here.

Pantone Color Chip Cookies! Kim Neill Bakes Up Deliciously Divine Design.

Freelance designer and illustrator Kim Neill was inspired to turn Pantone color chips into edible cookies after finding the Pantone color tins by Seletti at a nearby art supply store.


above: Kim Neill with her fabulous Pantone Chip cookies in the Pantone Tins, above right

As a holiday gift for her clients, she filled the tins with rectangular sugar cookies topped with colored icing and used an edible marker to indicate the PMS colors.




Kim even made METALLIC pantone chips. Using bottles of silver and gold edible luster dust to rush atop the icing, she created cookies in PMS Metallic Silver 877, Gold 871 and Pink 8062.



The cookies in the tins were a huge hit with her clients. The faves? Seems that the PMS 485, PMS 183 and Silver 877 were the most popular.

How to make Kim's brilliant PANTONE CHIP COOKIES:

FOR THE DOUGH:
She used Mary’s Sugar Cookie recipe from the Betty Crocker cookbook. Super tasty. Recipe here.

Roll dough out between 1/4” and 1/8“ thickness. Thinner cookies keep their shape better. Cut 2” x 2.5” rectangles out of dough (using a stencil from cardboard may make it easier). Cook until lightly golden brown, keeping an eye on them as they cook because they cook quickly.

Note: If you are filling a Pantone Tin, three batches of cookies will only fill up the tin halfway. They are big tins, so to resolve this, Kim ended up lining the bottom of the tin with folded over bubble wrap to make the tin appear full.

An alternative to the tin would be to fill with Pantone mugs with the cookies, which make for a nice individual gift. Purchase the Pantone Storage Tins or the Pantone Mugs for your cookies.

FOR THE ROYAL ICING:
This is a great recipe to use because it keeps color vibrant, doesn’t fade and dries nice without being too hard. Flavor with white vanilla here if you can. Regular vanilla tends to darken the icing a bit. You might want to add a bit more milk then the recipe calls for to get the perfect spreading consistency. Recipe found here.

DECORATING THE COOKIES:
Make a big bowl of white royal icing. Start by spreading a strip of white icing across the all the cookie bottoms and let dry. Now use what’s left of your white icing to make colors.

Scoop 3-4 heaping tablespoons of icing in a tiny bowl and then color with solid food coloring. This will color 3-5 cookies. Once you are done with one color, rinse your bowl out and start again. Doing colors this way keeps the mess down and you don’t have to worry about what you just mixed drying out. Using a food dye pen, write the matching [or closest] PMS number down on the cookies.

Kim used Gourmet Food Writers, available for purchase here. To make the Metallic Chips, use a soft brush or cotton ball to burnish icing surface with gold or silver luster dust, available for purchase here.

all images and recipes courtesy of Kim Neill.