Wednesday, January 30, 2008

Paper Cut Valentines

Even though Nate doesn't believe in Valentines Day and thinks it is an evil corporate holiday I decided I needed to make him something. These are papercut valentines made with pinking sheers and an exacto knife.



This one is of our imaginary future cats that are going to be named Peanut Butter and Anjelly.



And this one is of our imaginary future french bulldog named Zidane Cousteau. A combination of Nate's two favorite French people the soccer player Zinedine Zidane and Jaques Cousteau.

Thursday, January 24, 2008

Aprons



I've been making a lot of these aprons lately. I finally worked out a design that is fairly simple and easy to recreate but well made and I think really cute. I like that I can combine my screen printing and sewing and also use up my ridiculous stash of tenugui dish towels from the Marukai 98 cent store. Each apron uses exactly one tenugui for the pocket and the ties.



On the etsy storque page they have had a series of articles lately about improving your etsy shop. I've been trying to think of ways to make it look more visually consistent. I think one thing that would help is to sell the same item with different designs as well as different items with the same design. By this I mean I would sell say just aprons, t-shirts and bags each with either an octopus, blowfish or snails. That probably won't happen though, I'd get bored making the same things over and over.








Thursday, January 3, 2008

Happy 2008

Happy belated New Year. I was pretty sure I lost my camera on New Years Eve, but really just left it at home, so I didn't manage to upload any pictures of Christmas and New Years until today.



I wanted to show off the cute '08 pizza Nate made for the potluck New Years party we went to. It was a big hit and pretty tasty too even though it was a bit burnt on the bottom from being reheated in the oven at the party.

I also wanted to finally post a picture of the Christmas cards I made this year. They were linoleum block prints that I initially started printing in oil based ink. I wanted to be able to paint the berries in watercolor without having them bleed. But after attempting to clean up after the I made the first batch of cards I realized that oil based ink is evil and I will only use it when absolutely necessary. The second batch of cards printed in water based in turned out just fine since the tiny area of the berries didn't really have much space to smear.



Anyway, I think they turned out pretty good. This one is not one of the better ones, just one of the few I had left over when I finally remembered to take pictures of them. I think I see a couple of thumb prints in the corner.