I have kept it no secret that I am head over heels for the foundry Magpie Paper Works. The genius behind the brand Jess is one of my favorite lettering artists.  I love how she has been so prolific and always spot on with the trends on what a designer may be needing but can’t find. Her Vermandois and Saissant are some of the most realistic of the casual/modern hands and she was one of the first to launch with such radically different calligraphy fonts that I feel she opened the gateway for other artists to follow.  Not content to sit back on her previous successes she has launched a gorgeous new font Ahra that will be perfect for both invites and envelopes. It has some truly beautiful contextual alternates & swashes and from the description it reads that she has made it ‘simple & automatic to add end-of-word swashes’. I know Ahra will be as big a success (or bigger) than the ones she has created previously. If you enjoyed my recommendation of the Jacques & Gilles font, I think this has the same feel, but more femme + sophisticated, a great one to add to your collection!

Some others that I think you might like are the newly released Kailey by Molly Jacques, it feels a lot like her own hand that you may have seen pinned everywhere. A bargain font ($5) is the newly released Paris, it has the feel of Strangelove (a hipster staple) but again it is a little more femme.

I have been avoiding writing this for some time now as I always want this spot to be a positive break from all the chaos we seem to collect in our worlds.  One of the most important caveats for writing a blog for me though is to remain authentic and I feel that I have been successful at keeping true to that. I try to paint a very realistic picture of my life, its ups & downs and how I have gotten through it; I do this so others don’t have to take as much time getting to their end goal as it has taken me. I believe in you and I also believe that everyone has the opportunity to be creative even if they don’t think they are, it’s what I hope you take from this blog (oh, and a few great beauty secrets to boot).  You may have noticed that I have gotten a little sporadic around here, it is not my intention to leave my beloved blog high & dry, but I have been very sick for what is going on 4 months. We know what the condition is and we have been treating it but it is kicking my a*!, every day has been a struggle and life has been anything but normal. My normal right now does not include me leaving my sofa, which has made it hard to run my business, but thankfully my husband has been a big help with that. I have small spurts of feeling like I am not going to drop and that’s when I have been able to take pics of the dogs, but I am struggling. Strangely by some devious twist of fate I have had a windfall of opportunity come my way in the last few months, opportunities I could have only dreamed of prior and I have had to pass on almost all of them, which makes me even more heart broken. I am just trying to take this one day at a time and focus as usual on all the great things in my life, I do think staying positive has prevented me from falling into a abyss of self pity.  I just wanted to give you an update, so you know that I am not myself  lately, the posts may not come as frequently, be as creative (or witty) as I would like them to be, but I have high hopes for when I get through this, I do hope you will stick it out with me. Wishing you all a very happy (and healthy) day!

My mother is obsessed with the Kardashian’s, after the show premiered she called me and gave me a play-by-play of what happened as if she was describing an evening with friends. I had never seen the show and to be honest I don’t pay much attention to the tabloids because I don’t know know who 99% of the people they are writing about are and it all seems a little depressing to me. I watched about 15 minutes of the show to see what the hype was about and felt my brain deteriorate with each passing minute. If I heard the word ‘like’ drop out of the mouth of a 30 year old married woman one more time….Yes, they are indeed pretty, but beyond that they seem rather droll and uninteresting. The thing that panicked me the most was that there are legions upon legions of young girls that want to emulate these numb skulls. It makes me scared for the future of like humanity. That is why when I came across this very sweet children’s book called ‘Just being Audrey’ by Margaret Cardillo that I felt there was still a glimmer of hope in the world. The story is about Audrey Hepburn as a little girl, her perseverance over adversity and the kindness she showed to others. I think Audrey is a fine example of a celebrity worthy of emulation if ever there was one. The illustrations by Julia Denos make this book even more charming.

Admittedly,  I am a teensy bit envious by how clever the concept is, this is yet another story of someone doing what they love and having success and I am grateful for the inspiration (and the challenge to try harder). I hope today is a day that you are able to do something closer to achieving your dreams and that you remember to show kindness to others. I’m going to start by apologizing to the Kardashian’s for not being nice, but in my defense I did say they were pretty.

P.S. I think this would make a great gift for any little girl!

Now that I have some time away from the country, albeit a mere few weeks, I think it’s time to answer many questions that have come my way and also discuss what I would have done differently. I had been dreaming about a country move for many moons; I imagined I’d be clipping wild flowers daily, growing my own vegetables, raising chickens and maybe have some goats or a mini cow to tend to. Originally we had discussed Napa, California and I still stand by that it would have been a more successful venture than North Carolina and I shall explain my thought on this for any other urbanite considering taking the plunge into a rural life.

So let me discuss some things that went awry with my adventure.  My husband and I had drove out to North Carolina and started looking for a place that we could call home. After seeing nearly 50+ properties we found a beautiful house on 3 acres of land in a very rural area. It was less expensive then our former 1 bedroom apartment in Los Angeles and I was beyond thrilled.  I started mentally planning my little farm in my head.  My husband had a job lined up before we got there so he went to work and I went to sign the lease. While I was signing the lease the owner of the property dropped the bombshell on me that we could not have any other animals on our property other than our dogs, ‘but my chickens’, I thought and my mini cow and goats? Poof, dream one killed.  I swallowed and tried not to cry when the second bombshell came out that our 3 acres of land was zoned as National forest or park or something, we could not plant anything on our 3 acres we could only keep plants on our small deck.  I knew that my husband was expecting keys so I couldn’t run out screaming, we were tired, wanted a place to live and so I signed the lease, regretfully. I had signed a lease to live in the middle of nowhere for a year and the most I could do was grow herbs on our small deck something I could have done at our tiny apartment in L.A.

So here’s my advice to urbanites wanting to go country. I had 12 months to ponder this whilst I looked outside at the same expanse of green every.day. for nearly 365 long days. If you want to move to a rural area and you are from the city, consider moving to a place where a major city is accessible by car within an hour or two. The Hudson Valley in New York is ideal as there is a train that runs 14 times a day to take you from your farm to the most bustling city in the world. Napa is  a good choice as it’s a little over an hour drive to beautiful San Francisco. My best friend from highschool moved to a small farm in Maryland which is an hour drive to Washington D.C. which she frequents regularly. Parts of Virginia are also easily accessible to D.C. and you can find beautiful homes to have a mini farm. This advice is strictly for those that have grown up in a city environment as you may think you are tired of it, but you will find that an infusion of city life will be welcome and in my case needed.

One of the things my husband and I missed the most was being able to walk to places, even if we drove we weren’t in an area that had a lot of charming places to say have breakfast (I Hop was our only choice for breakfast, no thank you). Not all of North Carolina is like this of course, Asheville which is an adorable little city would be a great choice if you are considering NC, you can find rural and be able to drive into Asheville and have a ton of great places to eat and lot’s of window shopping abound.

Before moving to the country consider urban homesteading. Lot’s of places in the city allow chickens now (you don’t don’t need a rooster to have chickens that lay eggs so forgo the rooster, your neighbors will be very grateful). See if you can join a community garden, they are tough to get into but if you can you will learn a ton. Even on the smallest windowsill, fire escape and balcony you can start an edible garden. You Grow Girl is an addictive site for novice gardeners. There are tons of great books about growing edible gardens in limited spaces these are some to look into-Small Space Container Gardens, The Edible Balcony.

I have more to add, but this is a lot for a Monday so I shall leave you with the above nuggets of experience. Feel free to ask me any specific questions in the comments. I love your emails, but it’s hard to answer the same questions over and over again so I figured I would write these thoughts out for you here and if you had more questions lay them on me.

Have any of you tried urban homesteading?  Small container gardening? Raising chickens in the city? I’d love to know!

P.S. I got the cool vintage seed artwork from this fun resource. I think they would make great prints.

It’s Thursday already?  I wanted to hold off on my other AMAZING lettering artist interview (it should blow your socks off or actually since it’s warming up here, it will blow your sandals off) and decided I would do a screen cast tutorial on how I clean up my lettering work in Photoshop. The problem?  I hate the sound of my voice, gosh if that’s what I sound like I can’t believe I have made it this far in life–just grating.  Be happy you just read this blog and don’t have to hear me read it, yikes. I will be working on my enunciating this weekend and trying not to sound like a bored teenager and will try to re-record the tutorial for you because I know that it is very requested.

In the interim, I hope you will be happy with my latest find the launch of The Gilded Lobster site. I have been following this brand from its branding inception at Stitch Design Co. and just knew that it was one to watch.  I am still not exactly sure what TGL does (besides be awesome) but I what I do know is the mastermind behind the brand Deanna Amorello has impeccable taste, truly. They have launched the site with a shoppe called get this-‘The Captain’s Catch’, clever right?  The blog,–‘Around the Pound’ it’s all so darn cheeky I am head over heels. If you haven’t been following Deanna’s pet project I hope you do now, I just know the future of The Gilded Lobster is golden and I will be happy to say I knew them when…