little BIG pants

business card design

i love great design. i love business cards. so i was so excited to see the link to almost 600 business cards on crap detector blog via poppy talk. this is a personal collection of kariann's from dailypoetics blog. it was fun to see a friend of mine's design make her collection too! the above image was in a design magazine a few months ago but small as a thumbnail, so i was tickled to see an actual textural image (the type is gold and embossed) just love it!

hammerpress does such beautiful work and you can score a inexpensive print or two, too!

i'm a sucker for die cuts. takes the design to another level.

i'm also a sucker for classic type and classic flourishes. great collection, check 'er out!

fabric flags

hubby's 40th has come and gone. i made these fabric flags to set a festive mood!

whatever happened to the days when planning a party was last minute, over 20+ people came and prep time was like an hour? oh, i know why? because all the prep was getting the beer on ice.

the guests were half the # and my wonderful mom and sisters were here to help and we were still in the kitchen all day making food! there is something to be said about "getting it catered!" it was good to see all of our friends again though. now that we all have kids its harder and harder to get together.

super h

busy busy busy- i've been. the above is my husband's 40th b-day gift. what do you get for a man who has everything???? well, a bottle of 14 yr old laphroiag scotch and a super hero outfit for his 2 yr old son. i plan on taking pics of little h. in this and framing it for hubby. i just hope he cooperates, so far he only likes to wear the mask if we are standing in front of the mirror and the cape's ties kind of bother him.
 
this is a pic of a great old camper in a neighbors yard. i love the pink (like little big pants pink) and the brand is called "teepee" - funny, eh?

must be pregnant, can't stop eating oreos and sleeping like crap lately. still stitchin', hoping for a framed image soon!

rubber stamp cool

rubber stamp artist tomoko kataoka of hassak rubber stamps found on pingmag via camilla engman. stamps can be so cool- like a cheap version of letterpress but without the indentation. they can also be overly cutsie which give stampers a bad name, me thinks! which these ain't!

still stitching away on my "smokin" project...

tilt shift photography

i've been seeing a few photos like this lately and at first i was like "my gosh, those models must have taken forever to build" but then through some sort of random search i came across a few groups of tilt shift photography. these are real pics manipulated by photoshop or MS paint to look like dioramas! brilliant!
this one can be found in a group called "top 20 fake tilt-shifts" on flickr. a good quick tutorial can be found here.

embroidery inspiration

caroline hwang. i love her fabric/illustrations/embroidery collages. they all have this abandoning aspect that i find well sad and appealing. i found her a few years ago and couldn't remember her name so i was googling "embroidery artists" and god knows i got some lame links on that one. but remembered she did a cover for a cookbook published by chronicle books and viola found her. i love going on hunts via the web like that!

embroidered heart by amanda slater via poppytalk.

smokin' embroidery continues

here are the added panels. unfortunately these photos don't translate well to the web. this piece along with the below will be part of my own show (curated by, well me, of course!) that i plan to launch right here on this blog. i'm super excited about this and am loving the planning and the finished pieces so far. it will take me a while to stitch all my ideas up but please keep checking back. i got a chance to do the below piece as poor little h. was super sick this past weekend. there i was, bedside vigilante stitcher in case of upchuck during sleep. poor kid.

smokin' embroidery

smokin' 1950's style. you know...when it was glamorous and cancer-free! how i love thee (just the embroidery, not smoking). i am going to turn this into a 2 or 3 panel small wall hanging. i am perplexed as to the other two panels of fabric to choose. initially, i had chosen an amy butler (green coriander) and a hot pink flannel panel but i feel by using such a popular fabric by such a well-known designer it will somehow take away from the piece?

here is a wee bit of insight on how i came to create this little bit of stitched goodness...first came this picture from csa images for french paper
 
I love her penciled in eyebrows, her gaudy rings, her outlined lips- my guess is, her name is madge. i love the pistachio green background too! so i wanted to recreate the hand in stitches and feature a green and pink panel (1950ish palet). next a number of sketches (below, upper right is the winner) and viola, not quite finished but wanted to give a sneak peak on this work in progress. i would like to turn these into huge panels but not sure if the embroidery stitches would be bold enough to show up on such a grand scale?
 

bench cushion & doggies

first and foremost, my heart goes out to all those who are directly dealing with the bridge disaster in the twin cities. having many friends there, a sister who lives there and having once lived there, it is so tragic and scary. i finished the bench cushion while listening to all the eye witness accounts of this tragedy.

getting those buttons to pinch down wasn't easy- but i'm happy with the results, it will not be permanently installed in front of our (very-much-in-need-of-a-renovation-itself) fireplace. but will find its home upstairs once we are done painting.

i picked these little doggie watercolors at my local crazy days last week for h.'s room. i hesitated (as i always do when it comes to antique stuff) $10 for both - what do i want? them to be marked at $1 and then i would suffer no hesitation? blame it on the genes or my quirkiness but i'm so glad i purchased them! can't wait to clean them up and hang them in the new space!