Featured on ACollectiveJournal!

I was recently interviewed by my awesome friend from Etsy, doodlebeacards. Check out the interview! There's pics of my workspace over there too (I always love seeing other peoples' workspaces) She does super adorable greeting cards if you haven't seen her shop yet. Anyway! I'm so happy to be featured on her blog and I'm going to go post about it everywhere now. :)

Chihuahua dress-up print

 New print in the shop! A thoughtful little chihuahua wearing his ladybug costume. Seen at halloween last year :)

New Westlake Theatre Print

 

Painted this with watercolor & pen after a photo I took of this beautiful 1920s building near my work. Just listed on etsy here :) You can see the photo I used here. I drive past it often when I take my alternate route to avoid the freeway traffic, and always admire the open air sign and weathered paint textures on the swap meet text.

My Mom's New Jewelry Shop!

My mom's brand new store just launched a few days ago! She has some serious talent. The best part of helping her with her store is getting to keep some of her jewelry! haha.

I think everyone knows how much I like to work on branding and identity, so I was really happy that she let me run with the banner & product photography. Hope she likes it! I think a couple of them need to be reshot though, I'm still learning. Anyway, check it out & give her some views! <3

Root Beer & Hot Sauce: New Blog!

Check it out if you're interested in trying new root beer and/or hot sauces, and we'll review some other things too if they're related. My boyfriend & I started this blog cause trying new sodas & sauces is something we're constantly doing, in face our hot sauces won't fit in the fridge drawer anymore! I made this logo for it really quick since the idea was already in my head :) Enjoy! (we definitely will)

Some Recent Pics from the Daily Photo Project

Here are some recent pics from my other blog, the Daily Photo. Feel free to follow it if you're interested cause it's somewhat new, and I'm new to taking photos... Having a blast so far :)

Another blog project I'm starting soon: root beer & hot sauce reviews. So look out for that one if you love root beer or hot sauce as much as I do!

Watts Towers Field Trip!

So amazing! One thing I didn't know that I learned on the tour is that they were created to look like a ship... the ship that Simon Rodia took from Italy when emigrating to the US. In person, you can definitely see the similarity, the outer walls are shaped like a ship and the towers form the masts and rigging all in a row in the center. It took him 33 years. I can't believe I'd never seen it in person before, considering it's only about a half hour away from me!

Finally updated my website!

I barely ever get a chance to do update my main site, so here are a couple of the new additions :) Some websites, some logos, and some newspaper stuff.

Almost A Century

My late step-grandpa wrote this book, Almost A Century, and I had the opportunity and the joy of being able to design the cover for it. The book is his personal account of the changes that occurred in America in his lifetime. Here is the back cover description:

"In this book William Massuros recounts the march of history over a lifetime, making observations on what changes and what stays the same. He describes what life in America was like in his early years, and in each of the subsequent decades, and discusses the major events of his lifetime. He documents the changes in American life over most of the last century and how those changes have affected our values as Americans and our place in the world."

It was only published a few days ago so I still don't have my own copy, but I'm looking forward to getting one and reading it soon! It's available on Amazon, which is really exciting for me! Here's a link to the book on Amazon:

New Blog: A Photo A Day!

I've been taking daily photos for about a month now, but I just created a new blog for the project! It's been a fun & interesting challenge.

My little point & shoot camera broke a couple weeks into it, so after a few more weeks of borrowing my boyfriend's camera, we went out and got the canon DSLR we'd been eyeing... the Canon Rebel XS. So far, it's the best.

My old camera used to only be able to take non-blurry pictures in bright, full sunlight. Even trying to get a relatively bright indoor shot I'd be holding my breath to try to get a clear picture, until I'd get a little lightheaded! But with the new camera, it's easy. I'm gonna take it to all those places I was never able to get a good photo of; like the museum of jurassic technology, the darkest museum ever. When you first go in, you stumble around a bit till your eyes adjust.

This post at photojojo has lots of useful tips and information if you're interested in trying the photo-a-day project yourself. I think the best part will be looking back on my year, and remembering the little details.

A thank-you treasury for my readers!

Here's that treasury I promised! I'm getting a little addicted.

I went through my recent commenters (thanks!) and my followers, found everyone's store that I could, found my favorite item in their store (this is always a tough choice) and made them all into a treasury!

If you're not in here it means I either couldn't find a link to your store from your blog, or because I ran out of room before I looked at your store, so if you'd like to be in my next one, just let me know in comments and I would love to make another one because this was fun. You're all super talented and inspiring :) Enjoy!

I made a treasury!

Sooo, little confession to make... I've never actually made an etsy treasury before. I couldn't figure out how to get one, and I'm just too busy to wait around for one to open up to figure it out! So, thanks to the brand new treasury east, I can now make as many as I want. :)

So here is my first ever treasury!

And more to come! This bright and sunny treasury is for the EtsyTwitter team, and next one I make will be for my lovely readers. Yes you!

Also, Just added a brand new "latest treasuries" box to my sidebar.

Edit: oops! forgot to link the picture. ok, now it works.

Meet Boba!

Meet Boba, the adorable mischievous cat. We adopted him from the pound about 3 years ago and he's 4. A few of his favorite hobbies are knocking stuff over, breaking stuff, meowing constantly especially if someone is asleep, fighting hard, and eating stuff. This cat is such a fighter that no other cats wanna play with him, the poor thing.

here he is in a rare quiet and thoughtful moment.

Now he stole my shake. Can't leave him unattended for a second! At least not with food around. One time we made the mistake of leaving out a bag of uncooked rice... the next morning, the cats had torn a hole in it, and had thrown rice all over the room and made a giant rice pile in the carpet. (thank goodness for the wood floors in my new place!)

Fix your ear!!

The tree destruction has begun! Bobutt in action!

He might cuddle sometimes, but only if he decided to cuddle you first. Cute stripey!

New Look!

I redesigned my blog layout recently so let me know what you think! :)

Invitations

Back in January I had the pleasure of throwing my friend a bridal shower... It was so much fun & I wanted to post the invites and some of the decorations I got to design for it. Addresses & names have been changed for privacy. It was so fun to do these orange invites.

Here are some of the decorations I made... I asked my boyfriend to help me find a good branch to use, I think he was a little bit mystified when I asked him to help me paint it orange! But it turned out well, and my mom liked the branch so she got to keep it! :)


Here are the party favors, I finally decided after much deliberation that I should give tea. My favorite was the jasmine tea. Anyway detail-obsessed as I am I wanted to do each teabag tag myself, so I designed these little leaf tags in illustrator and hot glued them all on. There were a couple jars leftover so I have been enjoying the tea often!


And here are the illustrator images of the labels, for fun:


Overall it turned out to be a really fun event! Congratulations you two!! (The wedding was last weekend and the ceremony was so moving. Everyone had a fantastic time!)