zach & abby

i recently had the privilege of designing a wedding invitation for another dear friend! my husband matt's long time BFFAELYLASWTFBBQ, zach, moved to LA a while back. he's been pursuing a career in film and has since fallen in love with an astrophysicist named abby (um, hello?! how badass!). they're both super into their cats and floated a "cats in space" themed wedding invite... YAAAASSS!! the cats are based on zach & abby's cats, and one is showing off a pulsar flag on its space suit. i swear, i wikipedia'd pretty hard and i still don't understand what it means, but i'll try to take comfort in the fact that i'm good at other stuff. the most crappy thing about this is that silence got her first fever/virus the weekend of the wedding and matt had to change his plans to go at literally the very last minute. i wish we all could've been there to celebrate with them.

anyway... i had so much fun designing and painting this! i hope you enjoy it! just thinking back to those sunny april afternoons stealing an hour or so to paint while someone else watched the baby! mmmh! more like that, please! i have this amaaaazing idea that when silence starts sleeping more through the night i'll actually start to be able to get more creative things done again. i hope that's true.

everything hits at once

this past weekend i worked reeeally hard to get every painting finished, scanned, dust and cat fur removed (oh. my. god.), and uploaded to the printer! a marathon painting and scanning day sunday, an entire monday spent in a coffee shop overhearing terrible conversations, a sore wrist from attempting to use the mouse pad instead of an actual mouse for the first dozen cards, and one (ok, three) minor meltdown later... everything has been uploaded! the lady at the print shop said i should be able to review proofs as early as thursday this week! i am so anxious to see the final product you guys. YOUGUYS.

in the meantime, after i get home from long days at my real job (you know, the one that pays me?), i'll be resizing images for a catalog to take to NSS and an online store (launching in june)! here's what that looks like:

#creativeunblock

a couple of years ago i went to philadelphia, PA to attend an artsy fartsy, girly meetup with one of my favourite artists/makers (shauna alterio, one half of something's hiding in here and forage haberdashery) and bloggers (danielle krysa, the jealous curator). i'm SO glad i decided to go... in spite of being shy/awkward as fuck, i ended up meeting my friend sam who has changed my life in lots of extremely great ways. ANYWAY, that was a lot of links... where was i going with this? oh, right! so, since the meetup, danielle has released a couple of books and has decided to share some "creative un-block"-ing exercises on her blog. january project (condensed): photocopy an image you like 50x, then draw on it and see what evolves.

all my creative energy lately has been funneled to painting for my stationery line... and from that work, i actually became very torn about how to properly adorn an alpaca i painted last weekend. naturally, danielle's project came to mind for a good way to explore my options! i'm now realizing after x-referencing her blog that i broke the B&W rule... and i did this with my tablet so i could get some practice with it... but... whatevz. i think this weekend i'll do the assignment for real. stay tuned for that...

read all about the january assignment here and also here and follow her blog if you don't already! and without further ado, here is how i spent my morning before work...

 

 

and for the grand finale......

 

greetings from colorado!

i'm in colorado with my family this week and my heart is already aching knowing that i have to eventually leave this beautiful place. last night, while everyone else went out to check out what's newly legal, i stayed in and began the process of converting some airplane sketches into paintings. you likey? this morning started with a delicious homemade cappuccino (thanks, cousin darrell!) and i convinced my mom and husband to follow me down a black diamond trail! beer & hot tub time, SEE YA!

wedding invitations

well, i received the wedding invitation i designed for my friends in the mail this week so i guess i'm officially done with that project. it was such a huge honour! 

we put a lot of thought and care into this design to make it super unique and fitting.

remi and nu are both ultramarathoners. we're talking running 10+ miles on their lunch break from work and often competing in races and relays of insane (to me) distances. for example, last time they were in town it was so remi could participate in a 100 mile race...which he finished in about 18h.

they both also happen to be optoelectronic engineers (which is how they met, awwww). the equation on the back of the invitation is the equation to graph a heart. and as my fellow engineer (NERD!!) coworker pointed out, the fraction isn't reduced... but that was on purpose, of course... august 24 is remi and nu's wedding date! :)

nu's family is vietnamese and remi's family is french, and i knew that several of these invites were going to be mailed abroad, so i really wanted to do something with the multiple languages. we decided to do a tri-fold card with one panel in each language (vietnamese, english, french).

so those are the details... a couple of super adorable, super active nerds are making it legal this august in san francisco. i'll be lucky enough to witness their joyous union in person!! i really can't wait.

illustration: slowly coming together

it's crunch time! i'm pretty happy with how the illustration is coming together, but certain parts are driving me crazy... i've drawn a face on nu (the bride) like 3 times now, and i keep disliking it and painting over it. eeeeek!! this design is actually going to be a triptych... which i'm super excited to see...someday...if i can ever paint this face... le sigh.

rsvp

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i woke up at 5 this morning for some horrible reason, so i started a rough draft of a possible illustration for remi & nu's rsvp card. incorporating the heart equation into their invites was remi's idea. seems so perfectly fitting for two engineers in love!

shared journals

last year i had this idea to share a sketchbook with my dad (who happens to be an artist and a huge inspiration of mine) as a way of keeping in touch in a more fun & personal way than phone calls, emails, and texts - i'd draw something and mail it to him, he'd draw something and mail it to me, no pressure or theme or deadline - just alternate pages in a journal that we share... it can go on forever! then i thought... this would be a great project to share with my husband (who is a writer) and other creative friends... and so far it's been amazing!! i highly recommend trying it. here are some pages from mine & matthew's shared journal -

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illustration: heythanks!

we're so lucky to have a friend who doesn't mind stopping by our place to check on our cats edwin & albert when we're out of town for one reason or another. yesterday matthew & i spent a couple of hours at our favourite coffee shop and, between a cappuccino and a giant cup of earl grey, i painted this little guy to say thanks to kinsey! looking at this photograph of the painting makes me so anxious to get a nice scanner already! SOON.

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