Picnics, petals and planes

Happy Friday, lovelies. This is just a quick little shout out before I pack up the car and head out today for the Indieana Handicraft Exchange in Indianapolis tomorrow. It was a wee bit late in the day so you might have missed it, but I posted a new Eye Candy over on the Blue House blog yesterday.  The theme was picnic and that is something I am looking forward to many of this summer!

Last week, I had the pleasure of doing an interview with Brianne from Petal + Handmade = Love. She has a feature called "Who Is Art" and asks really thoughtful questions. It was fun to reflect on things a bit. You can read it here.

You may think I haven't been thinking of you with these long lapses between posts, but I have — really.  I took this photo for you on my way home from work yesterday. See? It was just such a funny thing to see lying by the side of the road — I thought you would enjoy it. I will get back to posting more regularly soon… there is light at the end of my overscheduled schedule and I am determined to slow down a bit and enjoy this summer. I hope you'll be here with me! And now, I'm off to the kitchen for a little quick baking. I'll have a recipe for you next week!

Our Fair City: Ann Arbor on Design*Sponge

Back in mid-September, I showed you a little sneak peek of a project I was working on. I was very excited about it, but didn't know for sure if it would come to fruition. Well, it has! On Monday, the Ann Arbor City Guide went live on the Design*Sponge web site and features my illustration representing our fair city. If you are not familiar with Design*Sponge, it is a website dedicated to home and product design run by Grace Bonney out of Brooklyn. Since 2004, Grace has been sharing her great taste in everything from crafty DIY projects to glossy new interior design projects in a fun and fresh way.

I have to say that my favorite feature on the site is the city guides section. When my parents moved to Wilmington, NC from New York, I immediately sent them over to the D*S Wilmington guide and some of their favorite places — and mine — were found in that guide. And then, when I moved to Michigan, I lamented that there wasn't one for Ann Arbor but took great pleasure in Sweet Juniper's exhaustive guide to Detroit. (Though it appears to be missing from the site right now.)  I'm still working my way through his list! And now, I actually got to participate in the Ann Arbor one. What fun! Jaimi Gadaix put together a wonderful taste of our town focusing on the five senses. I definitely recommend a read through — and don't miss the comments section, it is chock full of fun extras! In case you are interested, I now have the illustration I did available as a print in my Etsy shop: 8"x10" here or 11"x14" here. The Ann Arbor name part is slightly redesigned to be more appropriate to a print (as shown above).

In good company

Coco doll by Beeb

I was thrilled to find out that one of the prints I have posted in the exhibition over at Paper-N-Stitch is included in the "Friends Favs" section put together by this month's guest curator: Irene of Bloesem and Bloesem Kids. I have been following the Bloesem blogs for some time now and think that Irene has the most wonderful design sensibilities, so I am especially excited about this curator! There are quite a few gems in her selection, including the Coco doll above that I am in love with, designed by Beeb, so take a peek…

Also, a big thank you to Amy over at Aqua Velvet who wrote up this nice post about some Paper-N-Stitch folk — cheers, Amy!