coffee sign

as part of my new interest, sign painting, I am imposing it on the gallery. also it's pretty good because the coffee here is well good and now you can read about it and choose your beans from the selection now in!

a brand in a day

I needed something for the pop-up shop at the gallery so this is what time pressure helped me come up with. all in a day's work. I made the shop front too might I add

the stuff I made with all that crap I said I'd make stuff out of

I did make these in the one day I said I would, even though I wasn't sure what I was going to make. mostly it involved things with legs that are only just stable. they are stable though. stable enough

1.

1. ok so in this picture this 'shelf' is still drying and it's not for the counter top. it's a custom made shelf to go next to the drinks fridge where it now provides space under AND on top. productivity of that small area DOUBLED. done

2.

2. this is another shelf with the legs. I say 'the' legs because this, in my weird little construction area, has now become a term for four long things, one of which is somehow always about 3mm short even though I measured them all right, stuck to a flat thing, no matter how misshapen or found in a skip it is. phew

3.

3.say hello to my new napkin holder. amazingly I have finally found an actual purpose for that old casio that I pulled apart. well I have used it as a mean lollipop holder for exhibition openings but that time has been and gone. now it is mounted on my kitchen wall with a custom wooden shelf in place of 6 octaves of plastic. it holds my folded napkins all ready to be picked up and used. it's a complete WIN

4.

4. and these bad boys are my little red buckets hanging from the wire hooks I made utilising the spaces where buttons like 'rhumba' and '8 beat rock beat' used to be. at the moment they hold random stuff like cocktail sticks (not even sure why I have those) but soon I hope to grow some cress in them

5.

5. ok I never made this but I did bang it on the wall. thanks ebay for the french filter holder. I have no idea what it says on it. I assume it's some place

6.

6. this is a GREAT shelf. I was needing extra counter space so this beauty gives me that because I've moved my scales and grinder over here. also it had a hole (used to be the end of a desk) so I have a little cup holder. also I made a towel holder. get in

7.

7. ok so this wasn't essential and doesn't really increase my productivity, but it IS an individual coffee bar made out of lollipop sticks. after seeing a coffee bar for my filter system selling for around £300, I decided to subvert the market and make my own one. I made my first one for like 20p worth of scrap wood and it's just as good. maybe those expensive one look nicer. I like mine. I'm going to make one for 4 this week. I made this lollipop one as a kind of show piece I guess and also whilst having a conversation with a friend at the gallery. £300 my arse

8. as a gallery, we've needed to clear this issue up for a while in our toilet

see this pile of crap?

today I am going to make stuff out of it. I am really lucky to have a job (albeit full of challanges) that allows me to do what I've pretty much been doing since I was three. in the ever accurate words of amanda aitken 'yeah that's all sarah does all day, make random things'. well that's not entirely true, but it's just I make time and space to do that on top of the 'important' things about work. seriously, I am going to make a metropolis of storage and productivity solutions for the gallery kitchen, all of which will be verging on a level of precarious only just outwieghed by it's coolness. actually who am I kidding-totally precarious but AWESOME

watch this space

show on just now

here's my show that is on just now. I always thought it was a bit weird to put on my own work in my own gallery, but here it is, my first show in project slogan, 'I AINT HURT NO ONE GUVNA' and it's on until the 15th of october 2010

website misunderstandings/rant

recently after redoing the project slogan website (something that happens about every year), I've had some frustrating enquiries from 'web designers'. comments like these - 'you know you can really have more features on your website' or 'you can have flash banners and members areas and links to other people's websites' etc etc - just for the record, ALL OF WHICH I KNOW. finding it hard not to feel patrionised and also a touch feminist (when a guy contacts you saying he has 'years of design experience' and then HIS site is what I can only describe as a conglomeration of about 16 different fonts, unnecessary moving objects and a rainbow of shit colours). I know how to have all those features but I don't want them. I like simple, concise and to the point in a website that fits with the visual brand identity of the organisation

I would like to say a couple of things:

• the site is MEANT to be simple. in fact it gets simpler every time I redesign it. that's because otherwise you will email me saying 'where is that information on your site' because it isn't completely obvious and concise

• why do (especially men, sorry guys) have to assume I have no design experience myself? the reason I don't have a flash banner, a plethora of sections you couldn't possibly navigate easily within, buttons with every form of shading and graduated colour, links to other people's site's even though it's irrelevant, on screen animations, visitor counters and a page in which you have to scroll sideways like a mile and a half, is because I don't want them and I think they're crap, not because I wouldn't know that they exist or how to make them. I have LOOKED and USED other websites in my life

sorry. rant over. I certainly don't know it all when it comes to websites but I know what a shite one looks like. if you're a 'web designer' with 'years of experience' probably, 'fuck off'

lumberjam poster

so I just couldn't get a title together for this show. turns out all I really wanted for the show was to paint some sort of checkered shirt and a jam jar on the gallery window, hopefully with something to make either of those a less inane gesture than them floating around on their own ambiguously. not sure if this does that but there you go. looking forward to painting this on the gallery window

sarah j stanley illustration department

well ok so it's a desk behind the counter in the gallery but I get a lot of drawing done there! just finished my second kids book (info soon!) and now I'm keeping out of mischief with some other things as usual

my wall picture

Maybe picture is not a good word. no wait, it is. it's like a picture. I made it from cut our paper and pasted it to the book and zine section in the gallery

coffee bar

you can either pay £300 for one of these (seriously) for your filter coffee



or for like, about 20p, you can make your own. welcome to project slogan cafe homemade coffee bar!