On Our Walks

Gino, Ponzo, and I adore walking through our neighborhood in Land Park. Our home was built in 1930 and a lot of the homes around us are so unique and fun to look at. When we are out on our walks we find some of the most random, vintage, cute things. Here are a few of our favorites.

'Tis The Season....For Minted

Many of you know that I worked at Minted last December (in addition to my full-time job) as a design associate doing design and layout of their immensely popular holiday greeting cards. Minted challenges their community of designers each year to come up with fresh, modern, and creative designs for each new season. It might seem a bit early to start thinking about the holidays and holiday greeting cards but in order to gear up for their busiest time of year, they just finished the 2010 Holiday Challenge. The stakes are high and the prizes are even higher so of course I had to submit something! This was the first time I submitted designs in an official challenge and there are many prizes up for grabs, including submission from a "Best New Entrant" so maybe I have a chance!

Right now all the 1370 designs are in a first round voting period. They will be narrowed down to a second round after that for more voting and then the awards will be announced. If a design is selected, then the designer gets a 5% commission on all net sales, which is huge when you consider the amount of orders they went through last year and I can imagine they will only be more popular this year.

Check out some of the designs I have submitted, and vote for them if you like them along with other beautiful cards you like. There are some really, really beautiful and creative cards in the running so the competition is stiff but I enjoy the exposure to such talented designers that inspire me to keep improving my design skills. Feel free to share this with friends or anyone else who would be interested in voting. Thanks for your help and support!

Family Silhouette

I have been inspired lately by a recent trend of beautiful silhouette designs. Silhouettes have become a popular design technique that you might find popping up in vintage wedding themes or a classic twist on home decor. Here are a few images I've seen featuring silhouettes.


I found the gorgeous vintage silhouette wedding theme above featured on Style Me Pretty. I also found a great post from Country Living that shows how to get the classic silhouette look in your home with a fresh twist. There is blog I stumbled upon called Simply Silhouettes which features all things silhouettes and they have a shop with adorable silhouette products.

All of these beautiful pieces of art inspired me to create a silhouette display of my own family.

1. First I used Photoshop to turn images of my husband and myself from our wedding, our cat, and our dog into silhouettes.


2. Next I added the silhouette images to a frame and used a yellow background to match the sunny yellow color of my basement/soon to be studio.


3. I printed out the three silhouette images if Gino and I, Sam, and Ponzo on linen cardstock to give it a nice texture.

4. I had previously purchased three 12 x 12 art canvases to use for another project that I never got around to so they came in hand for this project. I could have also framed the 8.5 x 11 pieces of paper.

5. My studio will feature yellows, greys, black, white, and maybe some soft greens. I decided to use black fabric over my canvas squares to make the silhouettes pop on the yellow wall.


6. I found out the strangest thing today, I don't have a stapler at my house! So I used zip dry to attach the fabric to the canvas and to glue the silhouettes to the fabric. I think a stapler would have been much easier. Note to self: my office needs a new stapler.



7. Finally I attached three equal size black satin ribbons to the back of the canvas squares and they were ready to hang.


Here is the finished product, proudly displayed in my studio!