Amelia's baby shower invites

I think pretty much everyone has received their invite so it should be safe to share one of my most recent projects! My sweet cousin is having a little girl in January (maybe on my birthday!) and asked me to make the invites for little Amelia's baby shower. I loved this project! It was tedious printing so many cards and envelopes but it was completely worth it. 

The front of the cards have hand-printed ballet slippers and the envelopes have my signature blossom stamps on the front and back. Inside I incorporated some hand-written text and hand-drawn ribbons. I also made a little drawing of Amelia riding a giraffe (her nursery will be a girly jungle theme) for the raffle reminders. Such a fun project! And even better that Amelia's mama loved them too. 

fall shop update

Fall is here, and so is my first seasonal line of cards! I have three hand-printed designs up in my Notional Notions Etsy shop now, and I'm obsessed with all of them! I thought of the sugar skull design last Friday morning, had it carved by lunch and printed before nightfall that day. Yep, obsessed. 

I have some Christmas-y designs in the works too! But because I'm not like Michaels or Hallmark, who apparently believe the Christmas season starts in September (and frankly, I just prefer fall and Halloween over Christmas waaay more), I'll spare you the snowflakes and frivolity until a more appropriate time. 

1. Dia de Los Muertos sugar skull card, also available in white! 

2. Fall Leaves card

3. The full fall trifecta! All three cards, both sugar skulls in black & white and fall leaves, for a discount! Huzzah! 

Edit: I printed up a bunch of little sugar skull and leaflet drawstring pouches and I'd love to share them! For this week, you can get one FREE when you purchase a set of three hand-printed cards! 

a sketchy giveaway with Kitty & Buck!

It's time for a giveaway again! There's a lovely giveaway of a bunch of Notional Notions goodies over at Shell's blog Kitty and Buck today! You can win a pair of Pearl Snap Earrings, a set of hand-printed cards and a sketchy button! Pop on over to her sweet blog and enter for your chance to win! I would so very love to see one of you lovely readers snatch up this sketchy prize package... 

Enter now!

to market!

Saturday was exhausting! I was up til 11 the night before inventorying everything, packing it all up and even fitting in a couple more mini illustrations. Then I couldn't sleep so I was up before 5:45 am...slowly packed up, made some nice photos of the morning fog and hit the road at 6:58! I was the 2nd person to arrive for claiming spots so I managed to snag a nice shady one near the front next to some lovely people! 

Overall, the market did not go very well. There wasn't as much foot traffic as everyone had hoped for the day before Mother's Day. I was really disappointed, I still am a bit. I knew it was a small market but I still hoped it would be a profitable day. But it was a fun day with great weather and I made some new artsy friends. Plus, I got to finally use all the ideas/things I've been making for displaying all my goodies! Including a lazy susan... 

After the show, I zoomed up to the C Gallery where the Cell Phone Photography show was opening! Two of my photos made it in...but I'll share those another time... Also on the very bright side, I have a fully stocked inventory of goods for the Etsy shop! I'll probably make some photos sometime today and spend the rest of the day lazing about, sipping Thai tea and listing all the new stuff. I'm also contemplating a mini SALE in the shop to give me a sales boost after the meager results of the market so stay tuned for that...

There were over 20 vendors at the market, with a good assortment of creations

My little booth! With a hand stamped table cloth and a butcher paper bunting banner

All the long scraps from making business cards were finally put to use as backgrounds in whiteboard frames! I reused some old woven baskets and spruced up some tiny berry baskets too. 

So. Many. Things. Overall the inventory wasn't too necessary with keeping track of sales (unfortunately) but it was very useful in making sure I still had everything with me! I love that big mum in the little green vase towards the top right

This weird looking thing is a lazy susan serving contraption my mum got for Christmas! It worked PERFECTLY to display my Pearl Snap Earrings! Plus it twirled...and had a lovely vase of flowers in the middle. This was probably my favorite part of the whole booth!

Mini mini illustrations...I cranked these two bitties out the night before the market! 

adventures in hand-printing...

I love this little mandala!

I've mentioned it before so pardon me if it's a little repetitive but I really can't say it enough...I love printmaking. It was a daily routine in college, with 4 hour studios 4 days a week with additional hours after school and on weekends. It feels so good to be printing again! Albeit it is on a much smaller scale this time in comparison to the stuff I was printing at school but it is still so much fun. 

There has been a lot of experimenting and trying new ways of printing in a tiny space but so far it is all going really well. I feel like I have a MacGyver printing studio now between all the jerry-rigged materials and methods of printing. 

Since I don't have any inking slabs, I have been using my tin-foil ink slab method I found last summer while teaching my printmaking workshop. It's the best! One piece of tin foil taped down keeps all the mess contained to one spot and makes clean up so quick. Perfect for a tiny art bubble! 

Hand-printing with linoleum is also another new challenge. Before I had only used it for embossing so learning how to print with it is a completely new adventure. What I have found works best with my little tiny carvings is to essentially turn them into stamps! I've been dismantling old stamps I have and up-cycling some little plastic boxes and gluing my little leaves, arrows and feathers to them to make stamps. Much better than blindly aiming with the paper and hoping it lands in the center...

An old stamp base and the lid to a box of sewing pins! My favorite stamps...plus the clear plastic lid helps me aim!

I have also noticed I am not the best at making identical prints without the aid of centering marks that you have in Lithography. My aim is usually just a little off so I was having difficulties making multiples of the same card, which is a problem when I'm trying to make every card/envelope/sheet of paper count. The simple solution to that has been printing on butcher paper. I've been printing multiples of the same design on butcher paper then cutting the designs out and attaching them to the cards when they're dry! They add another layer of color but also guarantee I have a centered design and nearly identical products. YES! And it combines some of my favorite color schemes...

The printing on butcher paper has also turned into it's own project...I printed a TON of leaves the other day and covered some pages in their loveliness... these will become book covers for some mini blank books! 

Most of these new designs, books and cards I'm going to save for the Art Market in Santa Barbara next month but there are still plenty of others in my Etsy shop. I may also keep a couple for the sweet ladies that are participating in my Craft it Forward adventure (there's still one more comment spot left if you'd like to participate!) 

just keep printing...

Just keep printing... that's all I've been wanting to do lately. As a result of this reawakened love with printmaking, I have a plethora of pinatas of hand-printed/made cards! I've posted a couple peeks of them in past posts and if you follow along on Instagram you've probably seen even more. 

And now they're here! I'm selling them in sets of 3 and a couple individually in my Etsy shop...I hope they go over well, I really enjoy making them and I'd love it if they were out there making their way across the widespread postal world.

You can find them here in my shop. I should be adding some more sets to the shop over the next few days but I was too excited about them to wait any longer to post these ones!  

Some other awesome news! I will officially be participating in my first craft/art market!  (another thing I can check off the list!) You can find me at Whole Foods in Santa Barbara on May 11 for the Local Artist Market! I'll post more information about that once it gets closer. Huzzah!

This is my FAVORITE envelope in the whole world! I would love to see some gorgeous cursive inside of it for the address...

Valentine's Day card

It's no secret that I am a procrastinator...so it's no surprise I ended up making my Valentine's Day cards on the actual day. I've been seeing a lot of projects using masking fluid to block out letters and just recently I used white crayons to mask out hearts with my kiddos on their Valentines. But with no masking fluid on hand, the need to make a more grown up Valentine and time of the essence, I had to improvise...

Enter Mod Podge to save the day! It was a little tricky to write with it since I was writing it with a paint brush but it worked pretty well. Then I just had to let it dry all the way, add a wash of watercolor on top and stitch it to the card. I will definitely be experimenting more with writing in Mod Podge! 

I also decided to carve up a pencil eraser for a quick heart stamp. These are everywhere but somehow I had never tried making my own before. I used Esther's tutorial to make mine and they were really easy and gave the card/envelope a nice little graphic pop!

Giant Handmade Card, Round 3

I recently got a commission on Etsy to make another Giant Handmade Card. This one was for a lovely lady out in New York. It was commissioned for her boyfriend's birthday. 


After tossing some ideas back and forth we decided on the theme "night sky," with a bunch of deeps blues and purples swirling around.  I really love how this one turned out, and I hope they're both just as happy with the results. 

I think I used 3-4 different kinds of fabric and 3 different papers, all of which had both a shiny side and a matte side to utilize. It's hard to capture the colors from the fabrics since the iridescent shades catch the light in different ways. 


The inside of the envelope was lined with shiny silver paper and some galaxies and stars are on the front. 

festa della mamma!

Buona Festa della Mamma! Happy Mother's Day!
Which also means, more giant cards! Made this one for my own madre....

I made a couple other cards up for Mother's Day for a few friends...lots of hearts floating around the art bubble...

Also! There are only a couple days left to enter for the giveaway for a pair of Pearl Snap earrings! Get over to Kitty's blog and enter!!! (maybe as a belated Mother's Day gift.....)

one giant of a card

I was comissioned by my friend Kelly to make a card for a wedding she is going to soon. I made a giant collage card for the occasion...it has layers of watercolored paper, graph paper, colored paper and some top layers of sheer tulle.

I really like how it turned out! It was a bit of a challenge making a gigantic envelope but I had a lot of fun making it....sooooooo......I put a commission up on my Etsy shop for a giant card!