Oh Hi 2013... Please Don't Hurt Me

Hey there! Happy new year! True confession: I'm honestly really torn between being super optimistic and goal-setter-y and being the New Year's Scrooge. Bah Humbug! Perhaps its because 2012 turned out so differently than I expected... which was good but really busy. However, I feel like the internet is all like, "rah rah sis-boom-bah!" when it comes to making resolutions which is great.

So here are some things that I miiiight do but in no way commit, to you internet, to doing pending any other major, life changing surprises. Here's to (maybe) drawing, sewing, running, pattern-ing (that's a thing right?), blogging and IT ALL BEING AWESOME. Yeah! Boom! *Deep breathe* yeah...

Tiny Emerald Trees... or Something

If you follow any kind of design news, you know that today Pantone decided the the Color of 2013 will be emerald green. I'm not sure why they get to pick but ok. I like green. I like it better than last year's color... tangerine. Bleh.

In honor, I decided to get back to some pattern designing since I've been taking things back to some basics... like spending hours coloring with crayons.

I'm working on a frighteningly long list of sewing projects including a dog coat, a bag and a quilt using up some of the leftover fabric from the wedding and some fabric of my own design that Kevin had printed for me as a surprise. Wish me luck!

Leaf It to Me

Sorry, I'm all about the corny-ness today. It's been quite a day though. It started with an effing HUGE spider on my side mirror on my way to my client meeting. It was huge. I was afraid for my life... really. Here's a pattern that's very relaxing and not scary like spiders at all.

This was a bonus design as I was working on my top secret block print I mentioned yesterday. Clearly one of the design elements is a leaf and it's kind of that color green (but I photoshopped this color). I'm really digging these block prints turned patterns. The texture is just so fun. I know I always ask, but thoughts? Love it, hate it?

Illustration Friday: Stay Up All Night

So it's been a while since I did Illustration Friday. The theme this week is "stay," which made me think of staying home so I started drawing a house... but then it got a little lumpy (what can I say... drawing things that actually look like things is not really my forte' but this is all for practice so I'm laying it all out there, yeah, Internet, so there) so it turned into a tree house.

I always wanted a tree house. I used to draw plans for tree houses and try and convince my dad to build one. We had this great (somewhat dead, but great) dogwood tree in the backyard. It would have made an epic tree house tree but it was hollow soooo maybe not the most structurally sound tree.

Exacto!

For Christmas I got an Exacto knife (I know... who asks for an Exacto knife from Santa?) which has led to a flurry of paper cuttings, trimmings, pieces, scraps... basically a huge mess in my living room. I'm experimenting with the technique of cutting out designs and then using them as stencils. This had resulted in, uh, varied results...

This was the first attempt. These slivers are basically the easiest shape to make with the knife I discovered. However, the card stock I used didn't hold up really well which led to a lot of smudging.

This is a tree. A what? A tree. A what? A tree. Oh, a tree! Less smudging.

Last one is on canvas. In addition to the paint, I also ended up pasting some on the scraps on. Anyways, that's what I did over Christmas break.