arnold lobel-ish pattern

Pattern based on plant borders Arnold Lobel drew on some Frog & Toad covers, I think. Or maybe it was Mouse Soup. He was so good!

Some uses for the new pattern: inked and in that millennial pink I keep seeing around, as wallpaper in crumbly goth parlors, in tea colors for backgrounds.

repeating roses

I probably should have learned how to do repeating patterns in photoshop ages ago, this was so fun. 🌹🌿👩🏽‍🎨🌿🌹 Surprisingly easy and satisfying!

80s toy explosion in color

click through for labels.

tumblewords

hooray, tumblewords is available in the itunes store! this means i’m a video game illustrator!

tumblewords is a word game for apple-type devices from minicore studios in austin. i illustrated two of the themes, “mushroom forest” and “painted desert.” it’s actually pretty addictive, i spent several hours on it last weekend and managed, with considerable joy, to wrest 150 points out of it by finding “philistine.”

so, do step into my world and find some juicy words. i painted all that woodgrain for you!!

click here to download tumblewords at the itunes store

all of my tumblewords bits and pieces:

twiggy, buggy wedding invitations

i submitted a couple designs for judgement to the minted wedding design challenge:

TWIGS

a stark, twiggy invitation perfect for an outdoor wedding in a wooded setting, featuring hand-lettered initials and a pair of flirty birds. there’s a john lennon quote at the very bottom from “grow old with me,” a song that makes me straight up bawl.

the rest of the alphabet

…and an rsvp and accommodations card.

DAMASK MEADOW

a springtime meadow-themed storybook wedding invitation featuring your favorite creepy crawly outdoor denizens in a Victorian damask pattern. heh, everything my young man hates about hanging out in nature!

PS:

minted.com

family food: malaysia

mama’s curry is the best curry. recipes here!

picnic

livetrace in illustrator has some great potential! i have to mess with it some more. i used it to make some damasks out of the collateral bits + pieces left over from a commissioned picnic wedding invitation:

gotta figure out where to use that sweet lemonade pitcher and firefly jar:

this was said couple’s invitation, a good opportunity to practice the vector illustration skillz i’m learning at my design job:

sweet gerber daisies, sweet couple!

bike kitchen, birdseye

a couple of my friends are bike kitchen volunteers and they very nicely let me occupy the ladder for a couple hours and spy on the general kerfuffle from my lofty perch.

renegade 2010

my notes on this year’s renegade craft fair in san francisco (a little late due to comatose computer!):

^^^click through for biggerer!

gentleman fox knickknack wall

more fotoshoppe coloring practice. click. click. click. click. hunch. i like painting so much better!

sunset

sometimes i have to remind myself of things. like, skies don’t have to be blue. it’s a hard habit to break! also, people can be green or purple. meg hunt is very good at remembering those things. take a look at her work if you haven’t seen it already! delightful patterns and colors.

i might have to sit on this picture awhile, it’s a bit late in the season to make postcards (fall on the wane!) maybe next summer in time for september-october-november, i’ll print up some promos and a few to sell.

there used to be words on the ribbon, but i decided i liked it without. what do you think?

we went to the fair

my notes on the renegade craft fair, which took place over the weekend:

lauren & alexa woodward at the velo rouge

we have had traveling musicians, their Danes, and their vanagon around the last couple days. our old pal lauren a.k.a. linky (a gentle giant) has come through town on tour with alexa woodward. lauren plays the washboard, and alexa plays the banjo and they sing together. it is beautiful!

why does the virgin have 8 arms?

MAHARIA

esther was telling us about how in 19th century california, men from india were marrying mexican women. there were laws against brown people marrying white people*, but indian-mexican marriage was ok. they had similar material cultures (chilis, rotis, household altars, etc.) so one would think it would work out beautifully. but sometimes it didn’t, and we were picturing a terrible argument starting with “honey, why does the virgin have eight arms?”

*‘These marriages were more than a matter of individual choice, however, for the fact was that miscegenation laws prohibited marriages across racial lines in California until 1948 [<---OMG!! --ed.]. Most California county clerks saw the Punjabi men as colored, or “brown,” the word they used most often on the marriage license to describe the men’s race. Thus the women the Punjabis married also had to be perceived as “brown,” and that generally meant women of Mexican ancestry.’

julia pastrana: singer, dancer, & bearded lady

for my beards series… let’s not forget the ladies, eh?

Julia Pastrana
Charles Darwin described her thusly: “a remarkably fine woman – she had a thick and masculine beard.” a charming person and graceful dancer with a beautiful voice, julia toured the world as a bearded lady in the mid-1800s.

another beard: emperor norton

hmmmm, this may be a mite difficult to turn into a gocco print. simplify, simplify!

Norton I, Emperor of the United States and Protector of Mexico, with canine companions Bummer and Lazarus.

norton was this awesome san franciscan who, during the 1800s, went a little crazy and declared himself emperor of the united states and protector of mexico. people back then were totally into it! he wore a blue suit with gold epaulets and they would salute him in the streets. he printed his own currency, which tourists would buy and use in local restaurants. he declared that calling san francisco “frisco” (“which has no linguistic or other warrant”) was a high misdemeanor punishable by a fine of $25. he also made some prescient decrees which eventually came to be: that there should be a suspension bridge built from oakland to goat island to san francisco, and that there should be a tunnel built under the bay.

world beard champ

we were at the velo rouge the other day when in walked (according to the open mike acoustic guitar players) Jack Passion, World Beard and Moustache Champion 2007. the words streamed out of their mouths on ribbons. jack’s beard was truly lovely and luxuriant, a bright red with auburn undertones. he was wearing a green cardie that made it pop beautifully.