behind the scenes at the Martha Stewart Show....

All hail the Queen of Craft !

Yesterday I was lucky enough to attend a live taping of the MS show AND it was a Vegan episode. I didn't plan it and I was so excited about the happy coincidence. I'm really proud to be a level 3 vegan and it brought tears to my eyes (I'm a crybaby) to have my crafty icon explore veganism with such care and thoughtfulness. The guest's were all vegan  Biz Stone, the creator or twitter, Kathy Freston, author of Veganist, and my favoritest of all, Gene Baur, salt and pepper cutie and cofounder of Farm Sanctuary. Farm Sanctuary is an amazing"cruelty-free refuge for mistreated farm animals." I've been there- pet a big ol' pigs belly, got booty bumped by a goat when I stopped petting him and looked into the soulful eyes of a rhino sized cow. It was heaven in upstate NY!

OK, now the show! Joey Kola pumped up the audience real good. This guy is so fun and totally gets the audience silly, yelling, and clapping...

Then you are led into the studio where everyone is arranged into the seating area. They wanted the brightest colors in the audience and arranged seating according to this. Luckily my neighbor & yoga teacher (!) was wearing bright red, and Kelly was in teal. Virginia was given a green scarf to brighten her up!

























I snuck a quick pic of the making of the picture above. Do you see the guy with the giant black box in his hand? His camera was huge!...

Thank you Martha Stewart Show!!

drop your jaw embroidery....

These Penguin book covers by Jillian Tamaki are stunning, so full of detail - just beautiful. There are so many different types of stitches and complex details! Even the little Penguin logo seems to be embroidered- ahh-maz-zing! I gush, I gush, but just look....

Right, see? amazing! My favorite has to be the Emma cover - that braided hair - or the Black Beauty back cover. Seeing the finished pieces you can tell so much time and work went into the pieces, and the above work-in-progress image give you an appreciation for the many, many hours of hand embroidery involved one stitch at a time - sore hands, sore neck, back aches and all.

find Jillian Tamaki here: website, (images via) Jillian Tamaki Sketchblog, etc.
found via: my love for you.

past weeks stitches...

Hope you had a great weekend!! I've been slowly conquering my stitch queue and these are the latest trees, hearts and stars to leave my hands....
and more on my flickr page...
Some of my favorite finished pieces are the ones with unique names, like this latest Custom Heart above, moonie + hokey. It's fun to stitch and share these ones. There was Mr. + Lady, tatter + tottie (made for cats!), Bumble with bee, and this one has been making the rounds on tumblr lately...

what would you put in your own custom heart!?

"A photograph is a secret about a secret. The more it tells you the less you know." - Diane Arbus
 

via planetbarberella

A castle in Disneyland, Cal. 1962        via Moon River

Identical twins, Roselle, N.J. 1967

 

Happy Birthday, Diane Arbus. She would have been 88 years old today...

Read more about her work & see more photographs here...

MR + Red Cross

I hope you all are having a great weekend so far!

The news of the earthquake + tsunami in Japan got me thinking of ways that I can help. I often feel helpless in these kinds of situations, in awe of natures power. For all sales in my shop now through the 19th I'll donate 15% of every purchase to the Red Cross for the disaster relief in Japan.Please feel free to spread the word!

Here are some other ways to help too!

p.s. awesome power! (when I read this post to my boyfriend this is immediately what he thought of when I said I was in awe of natures power...)

stitch by stitch

I get so excited to send out finished pieces. I love the process of finishing and documenting them all together. Thinking about the package being received and the new life the piece will have makes happy & thankful to be able to share my work.

There are a few custom requests here - some with color schemes and design variations. I love the way the gray and soft colors for the Owen piece came out, the orange + green color combo, and the star piece for made for sisters. You guys have great ideas....

I'd love to hear what you guys are working on!?? Any great projects in progress or ideas floating around in your head? They say if you say it it helps you to actually do it....

art, art armory....

Some images from the weekend - exploring nyc, Banjo in a box, and lots of pictures from the Armory show. I love documenting with my phone camera. Call me a lazy photographer, but I find I make more images of things I'd usually ignore with my SLR. I edit less and share more with these quick snaps.

The Armory show was madness - so much to see, so many people. Great people watching! It's visual overload, but I left still thinking about a few pieces...

+ Pieter Hugo's amazing photographs of hyenas and other animals from the series the Hyena and Other Men

copyright Pieter Hugo

+ Denise Grünstein's work from the series "Figure Out"

copyright Denise Grünstein

+ Sebastiann Bremer's photographs with painted dots

copyright Sebastiaan Bremer

happy weekend...

My favorite, most inspiring finds from this week:
+ inspiring to read about peoples passions in the comments of this Blood Milk post

+ so happy for my friend Katrina who I just learned is one of PDN's 30 of 2011! woot woot!

+ Liz Kuball's post about doing what you love, Regardless, made me feel inspired about making.

+ this Modish post helps with my struggle dealing with distractions

+ I requested tickets to go to a Martha Stewart show taping with a few friends. so excited to see the Queen of Craft do her thing in person!

+ fell in love with Jónsi & Alex. You must watch the videos!! Can you imagine your own outdoor garden to cook in complete with a little bunny?

+ always inspired, & maybe a bit smitten with, Mr. Sagmeister. His Ted video got my wheels turning. I've really been needing some space from my work in order to have a fresh start and new ideas.

Happy Weekend Everyone!!! Any great finds from your week or awesome weekend plans?
I hope I get to see the Armory show and finish up a bunch of embroidery projects...

Schedule that.

One of the hardest parts of my everyday routine is scheduling my days. When you are accountable to no one but yourself how do you organize and structure your time? How do you work when the dishes and laundry are begging for attention? How do you manage all the online work that needs to get done without the watchful eye of your coworkers keeping you in check and off all those blogs, FB & twitter? It's easy to just say a schedule, but life is not conveniently chunked into easy digestible periods of time. Making hand embroidery is a labor of love and each piece just to stitch can take 2 hours (not including creating the pattern, customer care, cutting fabrics, staining hoops and backing the piece). Schedule that.

So then I heard April of Blacksburg Belle talk at the Etsy Success Symposium about creating lists with actionable tasks(<-- that link is to a post about learning Japanese, but hey you get the idea), tasks that give me the most out of my time and the most reward. This is not the monster list that is impossible to accomplish in a day, but simply 6 things to accomplish everyday.  This simple act of writing down what I should do in a day keeps my mind focused on the priorities and more than any schedule I've created keeps me (more) on track than I've ever been before.  I know exactly what I need to do everyday and can prioritize my time accordingly. My days are not limited to these things and I often add tasks just to cross them off, because that just feels good to do (personal gold stars). There's always more things to add to my list to grow my little business, but my days are slowly feeling more manageable. You have to hustle as a creative entrepreneur, so finding ways to better yourself and your work are a must. WHAT DO YOU DO THAT HELPS YOU ORGANIZE YOUR TIME & FOCUS YOUR CREATIVE ENERGY?
Also here is April's talk....

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