Angie B. is at again with a beauty of a new font, speaking of beauty she made the font for the graphic I did of ‘beautiful’.  Angie seems to be developing some very true to life hand-lettered fonts that are always an affordable price for the quality. I just spotted this beauty of a brush font today and at $14 it’s a steal, go get it here!

What an incredible week we have had, seriously I feel like I am floating on cloud nine!  Michelle and I are pretty pragmatic and not prone to any metaphysical type leanings (I know hard to believe me being a native Californian and all), but we did ‘put it out into the universe’ what we wanted at our weekly meeting, okay it was more like, ‘wouldn’t it be great if…’ and the next morning I kid you not, two of the things we had ‘put out there’ came into fruition, just like that. We are very excited about both prospects and can’t wait to share them with you (hopefully very soon!). We also have been having great, great fun with Foto Rx, we have been getting some amazing feedback from clients, feedback as a maker/designer you only wish you would receive one day, we are so very grateful. The photo above is an Iphone 4 shot by graphic designer Elaine D.| Studio 1850, she sent in (wow!) she also sent us this amazing note:

“Many thanks for saving me hours of my life! I honestly don’t know how you’ve created such incredible actions that work such wonder.”

I happen to be a little obsessed with the before & after medium (if you will),  I love them in general, but seeing others use our product and produce results like this on a mobile phone no less is just really thrilling. We put this product ‘out there’ with high hopes and fingers crossed people would love it and find it beneficial, but you never really know what people will think and that my friends is terrifying, so to get positive feedback like this is so fulfilling.

Special thank you’s to two of our fave blogs Fleurishing and Going Home to Roost! we were honored to be featured this week (you have to check out Bonnie’s before + after’s!)

P.S. Speaking of Going Home to Roost, for those of you like me that took Bonnie’s first class-Surface Pattern Design, she just launched Surface Pattern Design 2.0. I loved the first one, such a great teacher, so I can’t wait to get started on this one. For anyone wanting to learn Illustrator but you feel super intimidated by it this is your class, she really goes over the basics so well that you’ll feel very ‘at home’ in the program almost immediately! AND Bonnie is giving the first 50 readers the class for free via this link!

I loved spotting this super creative (and very Anthro-esque) design by photographer Meghan Bradley the other day.  Meghan used our free wreath download and one of my all time fave Magpie Paper works fonts for her daughter’s first birthday invite. I love how simple it is yet there’s that hint of wonky charm that I love (the perfect in the imperfect), the slight texture on the cardstock is a perfect finishing touch, I wish I would have thought of something as lovely for E’s first birthday (I went for a Mr. Boddington design). I think this wreath with that initial would make a great custom stamp, I happen to know of a fine company that makes those sorts of things…

//RESOURCES//

Free hand drawn wreath

Perfectly charming font

Photoshop

Great cardstock

Custom rubber stamp

P.S. I am going to keep you busy on Instagram because Meg’s another one to visit.

We wanted to introduce you to the uber talented photographer Val Spring. Michelle, myself and Sanae were lucky enough to attend her recent gallery exhibit at Dry Goods in Pioneer Square (I call it the Soho of the PNW). Val’s work which I was introduced to at a pop-up shop last holiday season had a profound effect on me. I can tell you up until that point I was feeling a little disenchanted with my own photography, not really inspired in the way that I was hoping would happen after E. arrived. Then I saw Val’s work and if my brain could have exploded with happiness it did, I felt re-invigorated, like I had new eyes, so many ideas began to percolate and even though I am usually more on the reserved side I found myself seeking her out and effusing wildly about how she has re-inspired me.  I feel like it was one of those change your life moments, ever have one? Val didn’t shirk away from my effusion either, in fact she embraced it and encouraged me and I am grateful that she is as kind as she is talented, because seriously I would have been crushed if she thought I was a weirdo. Val’s current work which I couldn’t find on-line is focused on exploring movement, it has the look and feel of film, a dreamy quality without resorting to affected techniques. All of her images to me have a very cinematic feel and to be honest all I want is to be able to shoot like her, but I am hoping to find my own creative voice within her magical imagery. The images of her muses (her daughters) are absolutely frameable works of art, they perfectly capture the essence of being a little girl, the light, oh the light, just everything about her photos makes my heart go pitter patter. There’s something completely relatable within each frame, I wish I could articulate it better, but I am hoping that you go and explore her work a little further for yourself and hopefully she will be adding her new work to her soon to launch fine art photography site soon!

P.S. Here’s a nice little interview with Val!

P.P.S. The last photo is of the equally lovely and talented Aran G. If you want to see more photos like this follow Val on Instagram here. And a huge thank you to the ever stylish Susan of Fleurishing for the kindest mention today, she’s another instagram you should follow especially if you have little’s, I love this shot, dying over this wallpaper and this dress for baby girl passport photo.

I had an impossible time thinking about what to post this morning, not that I was absent of ideas, contraire, the problem was that the ideas were flooding in and which to choose?  So much going on in my little head right now and feeling butterflies of excitement for the future (business wise), it’s a feeling I was afraid might have left once I gave birth as I have felt pretty inept these past 15 months. I will discuss more on that at a later date, but for today I want to talk about happy things! One of those happy things is we have made a huge dent (I hope) in out lettering Photoshop action set. I worked on it every spare 5 minutes here and there that I had this weekend. I get more done now in 30 minutes than I ever did when I worked my usual 10-12 hour day (amazing what you can accomplish if you are forced to get efficient + organized). The lettering set is going to help automate the process of cleaning up your lettering and line art (so difficult for a newbie to Photoshop!) making it a snap to get it web ready so you can show it off!  I used both the Shopkeeper’s Helper set on this Iphone photo (to get the background a bit whiter of course) and the prototype Lettering set to clean up the lettering I did for a client, then I made it into a Photoshop brush to place over the photograph. The great thing about brushes are you can easily size the lettering and ‘stamp’ it in any color, you can even control how opaque you’d like it. I purposely made this very transparent since I wanted it to be just a hint of lettering and not really legible, but the option to make it lighter and darker will be at your fingertips.  I honestly don’t know how fast we can get this new set out, these launches are a lot of work!  We are going to be testing the set with some of your fave lettering artists such as Maybelle Imasa-Stukuls (a self proclaimed Photoshop Luddite) and trying to work out all the kinks before we release it to market. Speaking of market, we are going to be getting in depth in how to market a product on-line, what we know from experience with a successful brand, what we are learning with our new brand and some mistakes to avoid along the way. We believe there’s room for everyone to be a huge success and we truly want to see you succeed–you deserve it!

P.S. Of course this photo was inspired by Michelle’s always amazing Instagram feed, check it out!

P.P.S. To be the first to know of the Lettering set launch you can sign-up to be notified here.