Child Magic

I love to see things that are imbued with what I often refer to as "Child Magic".

Here are some examples of "Child Magic":






Joseph Yoakum



Postcard Set by Fine Little Day



Kouhei Ashino


The blog: Atelier pour enfants



Anouk Ricard

Fill your day with Child Magic!

Patterns, Colors

Above are a few of the images I have been downloading off the internet for inspiration. For the past year I have been thinking a lot about working with textiles. I've been trying to experiment with digital printing on fabric, screen printing on fabric and painting fabric. I am not sure exactly what these fabrics will end up being but at the moment, I just love putting image and color onto it.

Its interesting to see how similar most of these images are when you put them all together. Its hard to tell when you are just dragging images onto your desktop. Most of the time it just seems random. Is this what you call a 'mood board'? I think I just made my first mood board!

*** I totally forget where these images come from or who made the pieces in them. If you know, please let me know. And if you made any of these, just holler and I will be happy give you credit.

Nest

I made this "nest" out of Mei's cat hair.

Is this weird?

YES / NO

Preparations

I am going to be at Renegade Craft Fair in Chicago this year with boothmate Boyfren/Girlfren. This week I started to get my stuff in order, printing posters en masse, trimming prints, rolling things up into tubes, figuring out how to display things. FUN! Hope to see some of you there??

In other news, I've got a short and sweet and fun interview up on Sarah Ervin's blog as part of their Maker's Remarks series. Go read it!

Homework for the weekend:

1. Chat
&
2. Smile

From Beyond

I have seriously been shooting so much lately. I don't think I've shot so many images in such a short amount of time. In the past couple of weeks, I've made three different series (sorry can't show them yet!) + a friend's wedding + a really fun session with my friends' aweseome band Del Mas Alla and bunny! Phew. Above are a few of the many shots we took.

Del Mas Alla is Julio Navaja and Daniel McKee and they make some lovely tunes. Julio also has got a great vintage shop called Solid State Vintage in Pilsen. I definitely have a couple of his shoes and bags on my wish list. And Dan is a talented photographer who I've had the privilege of working with on many occasions.

Listen to their music and like their facebook page here and then go to their show this friday here!

Crystal Poster

Just updated the shop with this new poster. Really excited about this one. A bit of a darker mood -- maybe I have fall/winter on my mind? I am also thinking of providing a smaller version. Thoughts?

Click here to see it in my shop.

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The giveaway for the collage pearl necklace is now closed! Winner announced tomorrow morning US CST Time on my twitter / facebook!

Desk

Blergh.

AHC Giveaway! - Closed!

I love doing giveaways and have done a couple now on other blogs but wanted to do one on my own.
SO! In celebration of the new shop and of this new blog (I guess this blog isn't super new anymore but relatively new), I want to give away one of my favorite necklaces in the store -- the Collage necklace -- to one winner!

Just comment to enter. And if you follow the blog, retweet, reblog or do something else to spread the word on both the shop and this blog, you will get an extra entry. Just enter an additional comment to let me know that you did (Otherwise I might not know!).

Giveaway will end next Wednesday, 9am CST.

Good luck friends!

** Make sure to leave me your email address so I know how to get in contact with you!!

Antler Magazine

I've got an interview up on Antler Magazine's website! It includes some photos of my home and a little tour of my favorite things to do / places to go in Chicago. I had so much fun doing this.

Thank you, Antler!!!


* Andi, the editor/founder of Antler Mag has got a fabulous shop on Etsy, selling leather bags from repurposed jackets. Go take a look!

Field Museum

A couple of shots from my visit to the field museum last week.

Weekend Cat

Mei in weekend mode.

AHC

The new shop is finally open! Go take a look >> > > AHC

Cristal

Just fooling around. Could be something good? Or going in a weird direction? I can't even tell anymore.

Morning Light

View from my desk

Hair

I've been wanting to do something different with my headsuit. I'm growing my hair out so I can get the above george harrison haircut and then maybe a perm on top of that. Thoughts? Concerns?

Almost There

One of the surprising things about opening up a new shop is not so much just making the thing you want to sell but everything that comes with it -- how the shop will look, branding, merchandising, packaging etc. I actually really love this part.

One of the things I really wanted to do was make a stamp with the new shop logo. I shopped around at various stamp-makers' online stores but never really settled on anything or anybody to commission the stamp from. Then a couple of months ago, the nice Margaret of Paper Pastries wrote and asked if I was willing to do a trade with her. I took a look at her store and saw that she sold custom stamps (as well as other super cute pens, pencils and stationary sets) and I thought that this was too perfect. So I sent her a Summer Bounty Poster and she sent me a custom "AHC" stamp.

I've been working on the AHC bags this weekend and I think they are looking great. It has been fun and frustrating figuring out what to sell in the new shop so the sort of mindless busy work of stamping bags has been calming and therapeutic.

And yes that is 24K gold all over my work desk.

Go check out Paper Pastries! And Margaret's blog!