I am a slowpoke. But it's a new giveaway!

What's been goin' on? I'm a slacker. Well, a busy slacker. Whatwith the Etsy feature and all, it's been a lit-tle crazy around here. Plus I am heading home to Cincinnasti this weekend, so I'm trying to speed-clean and freak out my cat.

I have a new giveaway for you this weekend! But there's a catch. I'm registered for the National Race to End Women's Cancer in honor of my lovely ma, Teri, who passed away from reproductive cancer last year. You must make a donation. Yep! Sorries. BUT - in return, you have a chance to win one of these amazingly fabulous items, AND get a one-time 40% off coupon code to my shop.

I've never offered a 40% discount code so this is a big one! You can order as many cards as you'd like! Oh, and did I mention free shipping? All you have to do is donate $5. Really not that bad, eh? And let's face it, you've got 5 bucks to spare, and you know I'll reward you more in return. Plus you'll get that tingly feel-good vibe because you've donated to a good cause.


Click here to learn about my fundraiser. And to put in some CASH MONEYS! :)

 GIVEAWAY ITEM #1: ($29.95)

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The first item up for grabs is this super book by Lotta Jansdotter. Lotta is one of my fave designers. Stalk her on Facebook - she's phun.

Ain't she just adorbs?

A little about the book:

Beloved designer Lotta Jansdotter's smart, organic design has earned her international acclaim. Now she shares her recipe for a stylish home: take a whole lot of Scandinavian influence, mix in a dash of flea-market finds, and then top it all off with expressive handmade touches. The result? An entirely fresh approach to home dcor and contemporary living. In this lavishly illustrated book, Lotta shares her decorating secrets, design resources, entertaining tips, and family traditions. Tucked away at the back shes included stencil pages and perforated recipe cards featuring classic Swedish dishes. Equal parts inspiration and how-to, this charming book shows readers how to create a warm home with elements of simple Scandinavian-influenced style. Lotta is a self-taught designer who sells her products and designs across the globe. She lives in Brooklyn, New York.

Photographer Jenny Hallengren lives and works as a freelance photographer in Stockholm, Sweden.

LOVE these pages...

Yeah, the recipes are included on handy dandy perforated cards! WHAT!

 GIVEAWAY ITEM #2: ($8.95)

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Sea Flowers Mix + Match Stationery by Jill Bliss! 

Flowers? Sea flowers? Stop talking dirty to me!

Here's Miss Jill's Facebook page. Y'all already know how much I love her!

6 x 7-3/4 in; 16 writing sheets and 16 envelopes (4 color designs repeating 4 times), sticker sheet. 

Featuring the exquisite underwater illustrations of artist Jill Bliss, this stationery collection celebrates the beauty and magic of the sea.

Jill Bliss crafts beautiful and useful items inspired by nature. She has been operating her art and design studio in various iterations since 2001. She lives in Portland, Oregon.

Seriously beautiful stationery.

STICKERS!

 

 Perty.

 
 GIVEAWAY ITEM #3: ($14.95)

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Chez Panisse Fruits & Vegetables Eco-Notecards

By Patricia Curtan
4-3/4 x 6 x 1-3/4 in; box with hinged lid, 16 cards (8 designs repeating 2 times), 16 envelopes, 100% recycled paper, soy-based inks, color illustrations

Celebrating the legendary restaurant's 40th anniversary, these notecards showcase sumptuous reproductions of Chez Panisse illustrator Patricia Curtan's famous linoleum block prints. Printed on 100% recycled paper with soy-based inks, this best-of assortment collects the most beautiful images from Chronicle's Chez Panisse Fruits and Chez Panisse Vegetables notecard sets.

I am completely in-love with these cards. I wasn't so sure about them when I first saw them, but they won me over. Intricate details, subtle organic textures and beautiful envelopes to match. These are truly stunning cards! And they make me want to eat avocados and delicious fresh berries, which can't be a bad thing. Now I want to visit this famous restaurant and have some snax!

 Wasn't that fun?

WHAT YOU HAVE TO DO TO WIN:

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It ain't that bad, trust!

• Donate some buckage: Click here to make a $5 or more donation in honor of my mama.
• Post a comment here with your name + e-mail address. That's it, y0!
• Be sure to include which item you'd like. Since all 3 of these items are specific and unique, I hope to give them all a good home in which they will be lovingly used. If you'd like to give one as a gift to someone, that's okay too. We spread the love.
• I'll e-mail you with your 40% off coupon code! This giveaway ends Sunday, October 2. Sheeit, it's October already?!

Damn straight,

It's birthday week!

Well tomorrow I turn a whopping 29 (thank God I have another year before the big one.)  29 years ago mi madre was carrying me around and ready to pop. Thanks mom!

Here we are on our Alaskan Cruise!

This week has been simply amazing so far. Yesterday my main squeeze brought me Chinese takeout and we watched Curb Your Enthusiasm (hilare.) Today, I am featured on the front page of Etsy in the "Quit Your Day Job" blog series - jigga what? My 15 minutes of fame are here! Thanks to marymary for publishing my story.

Tomorrow, I have a fun birthday lunch with some good pals, and Thursday I receive my brand new MacBook Pro! Now, this is a long overdue purchase. I've been working with my tiny MacBook designing zillions of cards for years now. So, I took the plunge. Happy birthday to me! On Friday it's dinner with Geno & Joni (fave boyfriend's parental units!) Then on Saturday I have a super fun birthday extravaganza at moto-i, a very cool sake brewery/restaurant in uptown! FUN. Next weekend it's family time and I get to see a bunch of old pals!

This week I am focusing on what I have in life and how perfect it truly is. I work for myself, have an amazing dude in my life, and am lucky enough to have this wonderful exposure from Etsy. 

Thanks to everyone for their simply inspiring comments on the blog!

UPCOMING SHOWS:
North by Midwest Craft Spectacular
Grand Forks, ND - 11/19/11

Art vs. Craft
Milwaukee, WI - 11/26/11

Renegade Holiday Show
Chicago, IL - 12/3/11-12/4/11

Stop by and see me!

McSweeney's Planner, Jill Bliss Drawing Book, Typography Iron-Ons GIVEAWAY

This week's giveaway is totally awesome for all my artsy followers. 

It ends this coming Sunday 9/18 at midnight CST.

Here we go!

 GIVEAWAY ITEM #1: ($12.00)

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The first item up for grabs is this awesome organizer from McSweeney's. If you haven't heard of McSweeney's, you're missing out. But you've probably seen some of their delicious books out there. This organizer is called the "Keep Your House in Order" and here's a little bit about it:

Designed by Heidi Meredith

"Do you find yourself awash in a sea of things to do for work, while the things you need to do for your personal life nip at your heels like hungry piranhas? Do you perpetually and repeatedly draw up to-do lists in order to keep yourself afloat, but—confound it!—keep losing them?

Well, this elegant and functional planner will help you keep track of all the things you need to do for work and for pleasure. You'll never miss a conference call again, or forget the name of the Chilean albariño that your mom told you to try.

The Keep Your House In Order planner has the capacity for fourteen months of organized living. You can start the planner whenever you want; it's not tied to any specific dates. It's full-color throughout and has plenty of space for whatever lists you can conceive, as well as prompts for things like "names I like," "good costume ideas," "museums to see in my town," and "favorite band in high school."'

Metallic coating on the cover, what a beaut!

The die-cut on this book is seriously incredible.

 GIVEAWAY ITEM #2: ($14.95)

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This one's for the craftier folks out there, Hot Type iron-on transfers book, published by Chronicle Books and designed by San Franciscans Brett MacFadden and Scott Thorpe.

 A little about Hot Type:

"Hot Type + cloth + an iron = DIY clothing design. It's instantly gratifying to customize T-shirts, bags, or any other piece of fabric with these bold type-driven designs and custom created alphabets. Simple instructions explain how to quickly iron on more than 20 vivid designs to clothes and accessories."

Mmmm, delicious, delicious type.

Yes, these bad boys are mirror image (duh.) This "Lover" iron-on is for fancypants guys and gals.

Lovin' all the alphabets involved here - you can basically make anything you want!

 GIVEAWAY ITEM #3: ($17.00)

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Jill Bliss is back, and I'm lovin' it. I snatched up this Chronicle Books drawing journal by Jill and couldn't resist it.

"check it out: want to learn to draw natural objects, or improve your looking and drawing skills? need a new nature drawing journal? or do you just want be inspired by pages and pages of inspirational words and artwork of dots, lines, and shapes in colorful interplays? then this is the journal for you!
part instructive-manual, part diy journal, part inspirational tome, part art monograph, this baby has been a total labor of love!

the result: a hard-cover take-along journal infused with art and tips throughout, offering basic techniques for drawing natural objects. within these pages, i've distilled everything i've learned teaching artists of all skill levels in my yearly "summer sunday nature drawing workshop" series at home in portland, oregon. so now those of you who can't make the summer trek to portland, can still learn from me via this journal!

fundamental, easy-to-follow exercises explore ways of seeing the natural world and translating it into simple marks on a page. with plenty of space for sketching, this journal will also encourage you to appreciate your natural environment no matter where you are!"

This book is, well, amazing. I mean, there's really nothing out there like it. It's a journal, but also a drawing space, but also a tutorial, but also a total inspiration. Check out some photos of this beauty.

This page alone inspires me to do some drawin'. I want a print of this for my studio space... Help me out, Jill? :)

Beautiful full illustrations fill the pages of this to inspire to create.

Jill's beautiful illustrative style is truly unique and keeps things fun.

Your turn to draw!

Draw Every Day - sounds like a tall order, but I think you can if you have this book to keep you goin'.

WHAT YOU HAVE TO DO TO WIN:

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It's really pretty easy (per usual.)

• Post a comment here and tell me what inspires you to create and organize. Is it disorganization or a fun planner or creative "starting point"? Do you become intimidated by organization and/or art projects that never seem to happen? We're working on organizers and inspirational calendars now for 2012 and would love your feedback.
• Bonus Additional Entry: Share this blog entry to your Facebook friends or Twitter account and post a link to it in a separate comment.
• Be sure to include which item you'd like. Since all 3 of these items are specific and unique, I hope to give them all a good home in which they will be lovingly used. If you'd like to give one as a gift to someone, that's okay too. We spread the love.
• Include your e-mail address and follow this blog to see if you've won!

Coming soon... more from Chronicle + more from us. Surprise, surprise.

Enjoy your day!

Fun at Renegade in Chicago

I'm still in recovery mode from the 9th annual September Renegade Fair in Chicago (holy crap.) I had an army of about 8 people that contributed to helping me make it happen! Having a booth buddy, a place to stay, a kitty-sitter and many many helpers with the ever-monotonous card cutting, folding, enveloping, packaging, sealing and stickering was a massive help. Plus I had a buncha orders going out. So yeah, this girl didn't get much sleep until it was all over. And it was another endorsement that I have basically the most awesome crew of friends ever possible.

These shows are serious business because they have an amazing turnout every time. Saturday and Sunday were sunny and beautiful all day, so everyone came out for the good time. Chicago has a great arts + crafts scene and I was happy to be in the thick of it again.

For a full Flickr album of Renegade-official photos, check out this link to see all the interesting wares! I never seem to make the cut in their photos, oh well. I caught my own.

Here we have some shots of people smiling and laughing at the cards with their friends. These were really fun to capture, I love making people giggle it up. Over 1,000 cards were passed out into the Chicago world! I was a total creeper with my camera, but it was so wonderful to see so many people lovin' up the cards, I couldn't help myself.

You also get to really chat with these cool peeps, which is awesome because they are all seriously sweet people and give me great ideas for cards and I really learn what they respond to and really love. The cards that require a bit of thought to truly get the wit seem to be the best ones for people.

So happy to catch this sweet girl's laugh!

Choosing cards is a careful process!

This one's my favorite. :)

It's also an amazing time to people-watch and to see what's going on in the closets of Chicagoans. Although I resisted just taking photos of people all day (which you could totally do and be perfectly content) I did enjoy a bunch of people that stopped by my booth. I took a few photos of some favorite cool peeps...

This is begging to go on a card. Loved it!

I am lovin' this gal's pin! Bonus points if you can find it for me. I want it!

Oh, Helvetica. I do love typography-related t-shirts.

I need it!

Probably my favorite part of the fair. This guy had a banjo, so (being my usual self) I said, "will you play us a song?" His friend says, "He only plays Lady Gaga." Well, I said, "I'll give you a free card if you play me some Gaga." So he did. Poker Face. Free card earned. He did a wonderful little acoustic version of it. Put Gaga to shame!

Ruthie Kott at RedEye wrote up some fun stories and included my Lady Gaga Solo here. Fun!

Also, we were lucky enough to have neogranny as a boothmate. Molly has these amazing laser woodcut keychains, pins & necklaces made out of birchwood. Her swag looked awesome with mine, don't you think?

I'm lovin' these lunch trays as display pieces.

I was lucky enough to wear the orange flower :)

Some delicious globes

That about wraps it up my whirlwind weekend. I will soon mosey my way back to Minneapolis and get ready for the Quit Your Day Job feature on Etsy on the 20th! Gotta choose some amazing photos of m'self.

Have a great week peeps,