I love fonts too!!

I came across this font game while reading How About Orange's blog (which I will now add to my daily reads... such awesome ideas, things to do and design inspiration). It's funny how much I love fonts and I didn't realize how dorky I am when it comes to fonts. (Jeremy will say, obviously I am a font dork, because I LOVE to point out fonts in the beginnings of movies... I bet it's one of his pet peeves and he won't admit it). Anyhow, this game is fun if you're into fonts too! I played it twice (it changes each time) and got 22 out of 34 the first time, then 27 the second time. Not TOO shabby :)

Tea for Two (and more)

Having a little boy and buying him all things construction, sports and plane related, I thought I would have trouble coming up with some good designs for little girls, but one of the first things I worked on and was really excited about was this teapot line. I guess deep down, I'm still a girly girl. (But not a super girly girl because I don't like pink and sparkly things... well, diamonds are an exception, what girl doesn't love diamonds? Anyway, I'm digressing...)

First I created these teapots and then felt like they were missing something. So what better thing to add than my favorite design subject... fat birds! Well, some aren't that fat, but they look cute perched on these teapots. I've used these designs to create folded cards and flat cards, but I think they'd look super cute on an invitation. Especially for a tea party of course! I kind of want to throw a tea party just so I can send these out. Anybody up for a tea party?

An Olfactory Throwback

This morning I walked into the hallway toward my office and was hit with this smell of artificial fruitiness. A smell so familiar, yet I couldn't put my finger on it. I walked back that way again just a little while ago and realized what it reminded me of. Mr. Sketch scented markers!!! What a throwback to grade school. Do you all remember those smelly markers that came in the styrofoam box, with the sliding cover? I always find it so interesting how certain smells can remind me of distinct times in my life. The smell of Mr. Sketch markers definitely bring me back to the third grade... I gotta pick up a pack now! Anybody else have a smell that reminds them specifically of a time or place?

Hooray for Friday

Who knew a 4 day week could feel so long? But thank goodness the weekend's almost here. And for some reason May 31st has been sticking out in my mind, but I can't for the life of me, figure out why. It's not a holiday and it's not my anniversary or my hubby's or parents' birthdays... I guess I'll just have to wait and see if something significant happens tomorrow.

Plans for the weekend include riding my bike at some point. I got this awesome chocolate brown city cruiser for Mother's Day and so far I've only gotten to ride it twice. I love it, especially the leather embossed, hand stitched handle bars. Super cute. And comfy!

We've been all about the bikes in our household. We finally put together Liam's tricycle that he got for his birthday from Grandma and he loves it so much. He climbs on it every time he sees it. So for the past 3 nights we've taken him out on it after dinner. Last night, we went out with Caroline and Pete and their son Dominic (who you'll probably hear about a lot, because they live next door and live in a bizarro world so similar to ours... I'll have to go into all the similarities and coincidences another time, but Liam and Dominic are born 11 days apart and are totally BFFs now). Anyway, the boys have the same trike, so it's like a mini trike gang. It was so darn cute. And they were riding side by side and laughing and throwing back their heads hilariously over nothing. It was the cutest thing ever.

Besides getting in some quality biking/triking time, I'll be working on some more prototypes this weekend. Liam's going to have quite an extensive line of stationery by the time I'm done with all of my samples! Maybe I should do a line with bikes and tricycles. That might be cute. I'll have to play around with that sometime...

A first prototype

As Jeremy and Liam both slept on the floor of the basement last night, I was up until 11, which is wayyy late for me, trying to get my darn yard sale printer to work. The printer is an Epson R1800 which I know a lot of folks use and love, but I've just been battling it. Maybe it's user error, I don't know. I got it for a steal and am determined to make it work for me. Anyhow, after fiddling with it for awhile and realizing the problem was that the R1800 and Adobe Illustrator don't play nicely together, I was able to print a beautiful borderless page. Yay! I was starting to feel a little defeated by this machine. But it paid off and look at my first prototype...

I love how it turned out. I need to work on my photography skills though because it definitely looks better in person. What do you think? Anyone want to pre-order? Just kidding! :)

Hypochondriac Grandma...

It's not chicken pox... Yay!!! My mom, who "diagnosed" him with chicken pox, was just being an over-paranoid grandma. Liam will be fine! He's got a little rash or dry skin or something along those lines. But definitely not chicken pox... I don't think...

Dots, dots everywhere

So all the designs I've been working on have been based around these cute dotted washi envelopes I found. So it's been dots here, there and everywhere. (Oh, if you haven't figured it out yet, I love to start sentences with "so". I'll try to keep that to a minimum, since I'm sure it'll get annoying since I pointed it out and you'll REALLY start noticing now.)

Well, the dots seemed to have jumped off the screen and off the pages and onto Liam. Poor kid has developed the dotted washi swatch in red. He's got chicken pox!!! It might not be chicken pox, but whatever it is, it's all over hs tummy and back. I rushed off of work to see how he's doing and of course, he's crashed and fallen asleep after hours of crankiness and I can't check to see if it is chicken pox or not. If it is, he has to be quarantined for a whole week.