Arapahoe Acres, Denver

While in Denver for Thanksgiving vacation, we drove to Arapahoe Acres, a dreamy little neighborhood filled with beautiful 1950s modern homes. The street signage was classic (Jetsons?).

Mathilde Aubier

While collecting imagery and inspiration for a holiday project, I found French illustrator Mathilde Aubier in one of the file cabinets in the art buying department. I love her style and use of real elements/photos! I haven’t seen anything similar to this illustration style. These would make great holiday window displays.

Oh Joy!

Our etsy shop went live on Wednesday and the lovely Joy of Oh Joy! featured our Gocco drawstring bags on her site. Guess how many hits we had on our Design Night site? 525! Amazing. Thanks, Joy!

Surprisingly people are buying only the Dala Horse bags.

Saturday Photoshoot

Got up early this morning at 7:30am to catch the soft morning light...why couldn’t the soft morning light come after 10am?

I shot the photos at my office (large windows). It took 2 hours to get 6 final shots! I forgot how much time it takes to gather everything (leaves, seeds, pods, rice, etc.), to set up the shot, to tweak, tweak, tweak and to cleanup. I’m super happy with the photos, lots to choose from.

Free People

Tomorrow I’m submitting a painting into the Free People Illustration contest. My theme was based on “What’s in my bag?”. Here’s a couple of samples that I painted for one of the components. After this is done, I’ll pick up where I left off with the gocco printing on drawstring bags.

My white Olivetti Valentine

I finally won an Olivetti Valentine typewriter on eBay. I won it while on vacation in Yachats. Since our cabin didn’t have wifi, I had to run to the Yachat’s library and do my bidding...from my car...in the parking lot since the library was closed. To my amazement, it didn’t end in a bloody bidding war. It was the best feeling since I lost a similiar typewriter a few weeks earlier at the last 5 minutes of bidding (damn Auction Sniper).


My favorite part of the typewriter is the cool German letters (like ß) that don’t exist on the standard red Olivetti. It was purchased from a seller in Köln, Germany.

**We stayed at the cozy Shamrock Lodgettes — ‘twas magical.

Doodles

I love Stina Persson’s watercolors. One of her illustrations is in the latest Cookie magazine. Taking inspiration from her work, I took a stab at illustrating a gum drop. It’s a really fun process because you can only do so much before the paper is saturated...then you wait for it to dry. Sometimes, the results are surprisingly better. Other times, the watercolor just looks overworked. I'm still trying to figure out how she gets the subtle gradients where two colors bleed together.

Sneak peek

Here’s a sneak peek on a project that I’ve been tinkering away at. I was inspired by the cool drawstring bags that retailers like Fossil and Anthropologie use with their merchandising. For the holidays, I’d like to sell these Scandinavian-inspired bags on etsy. I used a Gocco machine to print the three different colors—it was a registration disaster. The final design is a simplified version of the one you see here.

Artist of the Week: Kareem Iliya

I came across Kareem Iliya’s beautiful watercolors a few months ago. His work is breathtaking. I love how he layers the watercolors and knocks out lines and shapes to give the subjects dimension. Simply beautiful. I especially like the Chanel perfume bottle, such a perfect depiction of how perfume sticks in the air.