Special Edition

My wife and I will be attending her cousin’s wedding in Madison, WI over the third weekend in October. Her husband-to-be is a beer connoisseur, much like myself. Her cousin had mentioned that he would love to sample some of my beer one day. So one of our wedding gifts is two six-packs of Charity & Horn beer. I wanted to customize the bottle art to commemorate this special occasion. This is what I came up with.

I have always avoided designing a neck label for my beers, mainly because of the taper of the neck. I like the body label because it is a relatively flat surface and goes on exactly the way that I want it to. But neck labels are different; there’s math involved. In my attempt to avoid calculating the proper radius that a neck label requires, I chose to go the route of the angle. This way, all I have to do is make sure that the focal point is lined up with the body label and the rest is history.

Newest addition to my beer label collection

Six weeks ago, my dad and I brewed our first batch of Brown Ale. It’s not that we have anything against Brown Ales, as a matter of fact, I rather like them. It’s just that we have been working on perfecting our IPA recipe and haven’t been focusing on much else. I created this label as a tribute to one of Minnesota’s favorite sons; Charles Schultz. The Charlie Brown Ale is born.

Recreating someone else’s art Part 2

So a few weeks ago I said that I was going to try to recreate H.R. Gieger’s Birth Machine sculpture using photoshop. Well, after a few hours I realized that it was quite the daunting task and that I would have better results if I tried to recreate a painting instead. I chose to recreate Marilyn Manson’s Faunadestia.

Labor Day in small town America

This past weekend was my 32nd Labor Day. Usually I’d spend it camping with my wife Jennifer, somewhere on Lake Superior, but this year was different. We decided to venture north on hwy 65 to a small town called, McGregor, MN. My wife’s dad grew up there and she has several family members that still reside there. Her aunt invited us to come up for the 42nd annual Lion’s Club Corn Feed.
Now, I grew up in a fairly small town myself, but I’ve never been to a corn feed. I was excited for the opportunity to share the holiday weekend with my wife and her family, as well as eat my weight in fresh sweet corn.

After spending almost three hours on the road, we arrived in McGregor. We made our usual stop to visit my wife’s grandma in the area retirement home and waited for our Town Ambassador to arrive. Once she got there, we packed in to our Mini Cooper and headed to the party/corn feed.

The price of admission was $10 cash, which includes all the corn that you can eat as well as four beer tickets (4 beers!) and four food tickets. Which is well worth ten bucks. The proceeds help fund the area Cub/Boy/Girl Scout troops, as well as a few other worthy causes.
The turn out was much better than I expected. It’s a pretty small town, (Pop. 404) but it looked like there were a lot of weekenders in attendance showing their support.

I managed to eat six ears of corn, a corn dog and five beers over the course of several hours. All the while listening to the sounds of the local bar band, which the singer sounded like he lost his voice several days prior. All in all it was a good time; the corn was fresh and the beer was cold and the company was family. Before we left the corn feed, I was introduced to the mayor of the town. I had mentioned that I wanted a shirt to commemorate my day at the corn feed, but none were available. I told her that there are creative people all around her that would love to design a t-shirt for next years corn feed and have their design adorned by the townspeople and visitors. She liked the idea and encouraged me to participate (as if I wouldn’t!).

Recreating someone else’s art

Birth Machine

My final project assignment in my Color Theory class is to recreate a famous work of art using Photoshop. We could choose whatever we wanted, and I chose to create The Birth Machine, by HR Gieger. I’m sure that your first thought is, “Hey, that’s a sculpture not a painting!” I know, but it is such a captivating image that I decided that it would be a great challenge for me to overcome. I will post the results when I’m finished.

Beer: The oldest recipe known to man

My latest beer label

Over that last few years I’ve noticed that the hobbies that I had when I was a kid have seemed to disappear. I used to love to go to rock concerts and nightclubs and party like an animal. After I met my wife and got married, I realized that partying at nightclubs was something that was for the young and single. I needed to discover another avenue to express myself that didn’t include me getting wasted and acting like an idiot.

My brother introduced me to a growing trend that he thought I might like: home brewing.

That was almost three years ago and my love for creating beer has only grown stronger. They say that if you can make soup, then you can make beer, which is true…mostly. There are many different ways a person can ruin a perfectly good batch of beer, bacteria is usually the number one culprit, although getting too buzzed while cooking has been known to cause problems too.

Category Cloud: For the birds?

I’ve been spending some time trying to understand how the categories work, and I believe that I’ve got it. Whenever you create a new post, you must label it in the categories menu. Otherwise it will remain as uncategorized and no one wants that.