Home is where the 27-inch monitor is

Wow has it been that long since I last posted here? It has been tough settling into a new creative routine…moving can be very disruptive, especially when you're as easily distracted as I am! So what's happened since March? Well in short, our temporary move to San Francisco became permanent (when Mike's job did). We found an apartment over the summer and moved our stuff from Texas, and I've spent the last few months settling us in and looking for work. 

How about, for my first post from our new San Francisco residence, a little housewarming party where I show off my new workspace? It won't take long—moving from Texas to SF requires some downsizing! But I love my new little nook beside the stairs: 

Everything I need is within reach. And it's impossible to feel cramped anyway when a look to your left brings you this incredible view…

But the two best things about my new creative space are: one, my new 27-inch Apple Cinema Display (I can't believe how long I spent working within the confines of my laptop screen!); and two, the awesome desk I scored at the Alameda Flea Market.

The vendor told me it came from an old post office, which was verified by a stamp on the underside. I love the "standard issue" gray paint color of the wooden base, the utilitarian brass drawer pulls and screwed-on metal trim, and most of all, the incredible patina of the worn greenish vinyl that covers the top surface. (Not least because it means I don't have to worry if I make a mark on it!)

So now you have a picture in your mind of where I'm writing from, or when I don't post for another six months, where I'm not writing from! :-)

More of my day job: Artwork for Camille Cortinas' latest album, Taken Apart

I'm so excited to share this latest project of mine! Some background: In the last few years, I reconnected with an old high school friend who had turned out to be a talented and successful singer/songwriter, Camille Cortinas. And, since I had turned out to be a designer, we started working on projects together. She was kind enough to hire me to do her band's album art a few years ago, then t-shirts to help launch her solo career, and now, her first solo album. It's called Taken Apart, and it's available for download at CD Baby as of yesterday. (It will be distributed next month in physical form and other digital outlets.)

So I don't have a printed disc yet, but I can share the artwork. Camille didn't want to create a bunch of excess packaging, which I was totally on board with, so we decided on a simple 2-sided cardboard sleeve:

front of sleeve

back of sleeve

disc label

When we started the project, the album didn't have a title yet, but Camille told me the theme was evolution, change, growth, that type of thing. The image of the nesting dolls just sort of came to me, as good ideas sometimes do when you're lucky! We explored a few other concepts, but decided we liked the dolls idea best. Originally we considered doing blank dolls, which they sell for crafters to paint their own designs onto. I liked the graphic simplicity, and also was having trouble finding a painted set that I liked. They all had a kind of fake-folksy feel too them, hard to explain, but just cheesy-looking. But then I found this random Russian shop with literally thousands of these dolls (called Matryoshka dolls), and the guy had this one set of vintage dolls I just fell in love with. They weren't quite like all his really old antique ones – they were probably from the 60s or 70s. And they also weren't like the contemporary fake-folksy-cheesy ones I was finding everywhere. They had much more authenticity, with kind of a retro feel, and fantastic, bright, almost neon colors. We snatched them up and staged a photo shoot in Camille's dining room. Camille looked beautiful, our photographer was her talented sister Megan Cortinas, and I stood by lining up the dolls, fidgeting with the lighting, and generally getting in Megan's way as art directors do :-) The images came out great, I finished up the artwork, and all that was left was to fill in the title. When Camille emailed me and said they had come up with the name Taken Apart, I couldn't think of anything more perfect to complete the concept.

I can't wait to see it on the shelves! I got to hear early versions of some of the tracks, and they sound wonderful. If you like beautiful female vocals with pleasant folk arrangements, you should really check it out. You can preview and buy the songs at CD Baby, and fan Camille on Facebook for the details of the big release next month.

Reinventing an old book

So here's a fun project I've been meaning to post. Last fall was the birthday of one of my besties, a gal who has a thing for kitties. Well way back in the summer, I had run across an old library book at an antique store – a children's book from the seventies called I Like Cats. This two-dollar treasure featured hilariously cheesy photos of kids and kittens, paired with profundities like “Cats are fun. I like them.” I knew that in some form or another, it was going to become a gift for my kitten-loving friend, so I bought it without much of a plan.

I'm sure at some point this book had a dust jacket, but by now it was long gone, leaving a blank surface of that plasticky linen texture that certain old books have, like enamel-painted cloth. That shiny mustard-colored canvas was begging for embellishment, preferably something in an equally jarring color. A hot-pink kitten, of course!

Now the ideal method for an application like this would be screen printing, but the elaborate screen-preparation process only really pays off if you're doing a whole run of a design, and I didn't have any immediate plans for plastering kitten silhouettes on things. (Though now that I say that, I'm not sure why not... :-) ) So, I opted to make a stencil out of contact paper, and use it to paint the design on in acrylic. I ran into a bit of a glitch along the way, but I think it still came out well.

First, I found pictures of cute kittens on the internet. Just about the easiest thing there is to do, really! Though, I did have to limit myself to ones that would produce an easily read silhouette shape. I selected the one with the best outside contours, printed it out to size, and used my lightbox to trace the outline onto the contact paper.

I can't remember why, but I decided to stick the contact paper to my clear cutting mat, and put the picture underneath. I think it was because with the backing attached, the contact paper wasn't laying out flat enough – it was a scrap that had been stored rolled up for a while. I then cut the shape out with an Xacto, peeled up the stencil, and pressed it down again on the book.

I applied a few layers of acrylic paint until I had a nice even coat. And then I found my glitch: the stencil hadn't really adhered very well, and I had major bleeding under. I'm not sure if this would have happened or not if I hadn't stuck and un-stuck the contact paper. It may just be a function of the bumpy texture of the surface of the book. Next time I will just go ahead and get proper stenciling supplies. Anyway, the kitten was suddenly much, much fluffier than I had intended, and in a very messy-looking way.

All I could do was go with it, and paint all the edges over by hand, so that it at least looked neat. This rather negated the benefit of using a stencil, because in the end I had to form the edges of the shape by hand. But at least the center part was a nice flat coat, which would have been hard to achieve without the stencil which allowed me to use broad, unidirectional brush strokes. And, since kittens come in varying degrees of fluffiness, the resulting shape was still entirely believable. But it's a good thing I didn't start out with a Persian!

Colonial Homestead vintage dinnerware

I should begin with a confession: I have a dishes fetish. My former roommate can attest, if I run across a cute set of cups or some novel plates at a garage sale or thrift shop, my impulse is to hoard. (Me, returning from an estate sale: “Look, I found some fondue plates!” Kim: “Neat...how often is it, exactly, that you make fondue?” Me: “See, they're divided into little sections!” Kim: “Do we even have a fondue pot?” Me: “It's a whole matching set, of ten!”...)

Having said that, I really think this set of dinnerware I found at an alley-way antique sale in the Castro is a great find:

Each dish displays a deliciously kitschy illustration of a scene from an Early American home. The dinner plates and serving platters show an entire room, and each smaller dish features a vignette. The details and illustration style are just adorable.

The set I got is incomplete, but that just gives me more to find! Here's what I got:

Serving platter with handles

Bowl

Saucers and dessert plates

Cups and milk pitcher

The stamp on the bottom of some of the pieces identifies the pattern as “Colonial Homestead” by Royal China, and a little searching told me that they were sold in the 1950s. Further research revealed that some of the unstamped pieces in the set I found are actually from a similar Royal pattern called “Old Curiosity Shop,” which is often mistaken for “Colonial Homestead” – but they go so well together I plan to collect both and use them as one set. (You can see the differences in the borders: the saucer on the right pictured above, and the dessert plate on the left, with the illustrated hinges and pulls instead of wooden planks, are “Old Curiosity Shop.”)

Dana Tanamachi's chalk installations

A friend of mine from design school sent me a link to the work of Dana Tanamachi, who also graduated from our same program, Communication Design at The University of North Texas. She does these beautiful chalk installations, for businesses, events, or even inside your house for you!

I just love the delicious lettering and the intricate details. It looks so perfect, and still totally hand-made.

Apparently she's gotten lots of blog coverage over the past week or so – it's so awesome to see a fellow alumna out in the world, creating amazing typography, and getting some nice attention for it too!

I also enjoyed this time-lapse video of her doing that last piece from start to finish:

Thanks for the link, Megan!