We visited the Art Shanty Projects at Medicine Lake this afternoon with Hailey. Despite the rain and perhaps because today is the WARMEST DAY OF THE YEAR at thirty-six degrees, we enjoyed our first visit to the shanties. Having come prepared (thanks to Mel) with art to share, all three of us exchanged art at the Ice Art Swap Shanty. Tom took home an antler-themed picture frame, I found a set of notecards, and Hailey traded for a piece of pottery.

Our favorite was Tiny Shanty, the smallest three story mansion on the ice where visitors can create tiny art and enjoy tiny tea time courtesy of the tiny wood stove’s tiny log fire.

Thanks to Scott and Caly for welcoming us to their tiny home. Check out Tiny Shanty’s gallery for more pictures or the Projects’ flickr page.

Get ‘em while they’re cheeeeeeeeeep. I’m working from 10–7pm on Friday so I’ll probably miss this, but I thought I’d share. Note that the sale is NOT available at Aesthetic Apparatus’ online store, only on Snelling.

Image: theapparatus

About 10 minutes ago I was going to write about my first adventure in laying out a gallery wall (I suppose this handful of sentences somewhat counts). I bought a number of Ribba frames from IKEA to go with one I already had and used the papers inside to test possible layouts on our bedroom wall. This seemed like a novel idea. It’s not. West Elm apparently had it before, so I learned from Abbey while poking around (to echo Abbey, “God bless IKEA.” West Elm’s gallery frames are waaaaaaay too expen$ive). The important bit is, I had fun putting our wall together and learned something in the process. Great minds think alike, right? Once the print I ordered from bigcartel.com arrives I’ll be sure to share pictures. Check out this post for more on how to make your own picture/frame/gallery wall.

Update: Check out this article on the New York Times for more details on how to hang artwork.

If you haven’t heard of PosterHänger before, you’ve almost certainly seen them. They’re used a lot in retail shop windows to hang posters or advertisements. Look around the next time you’re at the mall if you’d like to check out a PosterHänger in person. There’s also a nice breakdown of the parts of a PosterHänger on their site. Just “Clip, Slide, Häng” and you’re done.

I placed my most recent order directly from posterhanger.com, but in the past I’ve found them for less at Fulcrum Gallery’s website where there is a more limited selection. FG’s prices are actually higher; they have an ongoing 15% off promotion that can sometimes make up the difference. Thanks to Julia ordering one as well, however, we are both enjoying the “buy two, get free shipping” offer from posterhanger.com. Assuming I can get a decent photo, I’ll be sure to share the results of the map hanging when it’s all finished.