illustrator...

Flora Douville is an illustrator living and working in Nantes France. I originally found her on print & pattern and immediately loved the cut paper illustrations (shown below). I visited Flora's site to see what else she has up her sleeve and was pleasantly surprised to find several fun illustrations and some nice photography as well. You can visit her new web site here.

pattern love

I found some new lovely wrapping papers to drool over today. The folks at elum have expanded their letterpress success to include a line of complimentary wrapping papers. Each sheet is 22 x 34 inches. I found it here. The nice thing about paper mojo is you can buy both 8.5 x 11 and 3 x 5 inch samples! Enjoy and try to keep those keyboards dry ; )

mums in orange

interlock

gerber daisies

dots

busy, busy, busy...

Sorry for my absence and random posting lately. Between working on the new house, finishing up my semester of teaching, freelance work and designing new stationery & wedding invitations, I haven't had any spare time to post! Anyway, I thought I would just pop in to wish everyone a good weekend. I'm going to be working hard today doing some grading and planning some final exams. Hopefully I'll get over to the house for a few hours too and that way I can go watch my little brother play some baseball tomorrow for a nice break from it all.

Hope everyone is having a nice spring so far. I'll leave you with a photo of my beautiful lily of the valley. They didn't bloom last year, so I was so excited to see all of the delicate little white flowers bloom this year!

milton glaser...

I recently assigned a project to some of my students where they were supposed to pick an influential designer of the 20th century and write an essay about their lives and work. One of my students chose Milton Glaser and in his research found this video on youtube, which I found to be rather inspiring. Thought I would share.

illustrator...

Paula Sanz Caballero is one of my favorite illustrators, based in Spain, and I thought I would share her work with all of you. She mainly works in fabric and embroidery and I find her use of materials so interesting and refreshing. The intricacy of her work and stitching takes my breath away... such an inspiration. Be sure to click on the images to see them larger, the detail is beautiful. To see more of her work, visit her website.

rainy day accessories...

It's a gray and rainy day here today, and even those these are gray too, they are super cute. Just the thing to brighten a rainy day.

Alphabet brooches by SleepDreamPlay where you get to choose which letter you want.

And this gray fused glass pendant by moonofglass.


And this cotton scarf from PrettyRaccoon.

etsy eye candy

Today I have a few letterpress goodies to show you that I found on etsy. Happy Friday everyone!

folky flower folded note from dutch door press

congratulations baby (bebe) letterpress greeting card by smock paper

elephants limited edition letterpress print by ink + wit

New House!!!

Wow, a week has past since my last post! Seems like a few hours. But that is just because I have been so busy with the new house!

My husband and I just bought a great new house! The house is a large 4 bedroom, with a gorgeous backyard that overlooks a local metro park! Everything is starting to turn green and bloom and is looking beautiful. While the house is a great shell, there is much work to be done–hence my absence. We have been ripping down wallpaper, scraping glue off the walls, tearing down ceiling tiles, and ripping out paneling. There is still a lot to do. We still have a lot more glue to scrape, can I just say what a life saver a steamer is when taking wallpaper and glue off of walls! Plus we have to patch a ton of holes (all small), paint some of the rooms and I'm sure a ton of other things that I am not thinking about right now.

I think the thing that I am most excited about is the room that I get to claim for my studio/office. It is a large bedroom that overlooks the backyard and the huge tulip tree that is back there. I can't wait for it to bloom! Anyway, I promise to post some pictures when I get a little more time.

Sneak Peek

Thought I would show a little preview of a new wedding invitation suite I am working on. I already did the save the dates (I promise I'll get some photos up soon) and am now working on the invitations. Here is a little graphic that I am working on to integrate into the stationery:

personalized silhouettes of the beautiful bride and groom!

Awards

Not to toot my own horn... but I'm going to for a bit : )

I found out yesterday that I won a Silver ADDY at the district level for a direct mail piece that I designed (is also won gold at the local level)! Very exciting! It is such an honor to be awarded by the design community.

photo downloaded from veer

A touch of green on a snowy day

Well, for some reason winter has decided to come back to us. It's been quite nice for a while, things were starting to grow and bloom, and this morning we woke up to 2 inches of snow! Yuck! Snow is beautiful, but only in December as far as I am concerned. Luckily though, there was a wonderful little treasury on the front page of etsy. I picked out a few bits of green that I thought were charming. I long for everything to be green... I guess these will have to do for now.

moss terrarium No. 100 by madebymavis

echeveria pulidonis in vintage silver plated sugar bowl by monkeysalwayslook


growing together scene glass planter kit by LBrandt

More embroidery hoops!

It must be the week for them. I posted about an over sized cross stitch on Wednesday and today found these great bulletin boards from little pretty studio. They are called hoop.dee.do and are quite fun! I love this idea and think it would be great to have a ton of these in different sizes and fabrics with some stitched letters in the mix. I hear that studio wall calling again...

New items in the shop

I was able to finish putting everything that I made last weekend up in my shop yesterday. You can see on the back of the square gift tags and leaf stationery the fabric that I was talking about the other day. The colors of ink I had mixed reminded me of these fabrics that I had packed away, and when I pulled them out, they were a great match! I had to put the fabric on the back, so cute and fun!

Fun idea!

While perusing some blogs today I discovered this lovely photo on Oh So Beautiful Paper, originally posted on {frolic!}. I am in love with the huge embroidery hoop that the model is holding with the over-sized cross stitch! What a fun idea. Perhaps it's time for some new artwork for the studio wall.
Hope everyone had/is having a nice Wednesday!

Music Saves Lives

I find it amazing how emotional some music can be! Take a look at this video filmed with musicians from around the world.
Stand By Me from David Johnson on Vimeo.

Weekend Printing

After having a not so inspiring Thursday, I took Friday to sort of collect my thoughts and decided some weekend printing would help me feel more accomplished.

I pulled out my new ink and started mixing some colors. I didn't like the red-orange that you can see peeking in from the corner, but I was more than satisfied with the coral color. It reminded me of some fabric I had tucked away and gave me an idea (more on that another day). I've had the intention of printing some tags for a while now and even had the type picked out, so I finally locked it up on the press and got to work. I managed to print quite a few tags and then mixed up some yellow-green and did some simple stationery. Sorry no photos of the green, it got dark and taking photos at night doesn't work very well : ) I pulled out the fabric, had some fun and voila! Feelings of accomplishment. I still have quite a bit to do and need to put a few finishing touches on the tags, but I suspect I will have them in the shop sometime this week.

Here's to a new week!

One of those days...

I seem to be having one of those days... scratch that weeks, where it seems like I work and work and work but never accomplish anything. I have been on spring break from school this week so I haven't had classes to teach and I find myself going a bit stir crazy at home all by myself. I made myself a big to do list for the week and while I have been working and crossing things off, it still seems like I haven't done enough. I suppose that is the downside to working for yourself, there is always more to do! Oh well, probably just a little rut that I need to work through.

Well I'm off to finish some grading to hopefully cross another thing off the list.
Note to self: make better, more detailed to do lists so the projects are broken up in smaller chunks and there is more to cross off. Maybe then I would feel more accomplished : )

Stockton & Co.

Saw the cutest little prints on etsy today. Stockton & Co. created these precious little veggies: and these great mini whale notecards.

Pinecone+Chickadee

Came across some great little cards from pinecone+chickadee this weekend. They are a husband and wife team in Maine and make journals, cards, tote bags and more! I especially like these 2:

love birds card and blue owl card

I love the graphic quality and simplicity! They also do some inspiring graphic design work.

Busy Bee

Today I have been scurrying around the house cleaning and decluttering. Not only do I have the Spring cleaning bug, but we are also trying to sell our house and people are coming to look at it tonight! It's amazing how many little things you let slide when you live in your house.

I'm off to clean out yet another closet. I'll leave you all with a sneak peak of a new card I have been working on.