Portfolio Pizazz

Have I posted about my portfolio site here? I honestly don’t think I have which is silly beans.

I’d been wanting to create a little space on the internet for awhile with all of my most favorite design work. Something that wasn’t from some online portfolio site where you simply upload images, rather more personal and something I designed fully.

My dear friend sat with me for countless hours and helped me painstakingly code it via CSS and PHP. Jesus help me but I may never understand computer languages…I’m just not wired that way it seems.

Alas, we were victorious and I’ve had my portfolio site up and running since early summer. NOW, I’ve slacked a lot since the initial launch and haven’t made any changes. It still needs help, like smaller images for loading, a favicon, and the like.

But for now, it’s still a nice little place where I can send friends and clients to see what I do for a living.

Enjoy, oh and hit me up if you ever need design work done!

Anybody in need of any Art Direction?

Well you’re in luck because as of last week I became the Art Director at my company. Kind of a huge deal in my books and I’m really stoked about the promotion!

This means busier than ever days at work, to do lists that I never actually get all the way through, and tons more responsibility. All in all, it’s a good change!

Anywho, you can send congratulatory fruit baskets to Eryn Chandler, 12 Art Director Way. So enough about me and onto more about me…

I was talking with a fellow graphic designer just the other day about our favorite letter forms. Since college mine has been the lower case ‘g.’ Mainly because there are oh so many opportunities for rad design with this letter form. So many things to do…neon signs just being one of them:

I’ll take that sign, Eames rocker, and pillow thankyouverymuch.

And remember when I said how much I needed a Moroccan pouffe? Well I found another delightful one via the 184935839 design blogs I follow. Behold…

I spy a cute lil pouffe in the lower right hand corner.

Hope you all have a splendiful weekend. Ciao!

I have an artist crush

Ever since finding her site and her etsy shop I’m totally smitten. Geninne Zlatkis is incredibly talented with pencil and paint brush in hand. She’s known for her very detailed bird and animal watercolor prints. The colors and compositions just sing.

Upon visiting her etsy shop on an every other day basis these days I have trouble not buying them all. Recently I purchased two…one for me and one for my mom (who is equally obsessed). As she lives in Mexico the packaged took about 3 weeks to get to my doorstep. But oh man, when it arrived I was over the moon. They’re just as beautiful in person as they are on her site.

The “Love Wins” one is for our home while the blue bird with yellow flowers adorns my parent’s casa. Ours is the perfect addition to our little window seat art nook and I’m already thinking about which ones I’m buying next. I think I need at least one more, I mean it only makes sense…

AND if I didn’t need reason to love Geninne even more, she’s a dog lover. Check out her dog Turbo’s blog!

Clawfoot Denial

I’ve longed for the perfect clawfoot tub for awhile now. Reading multiple design blogs on a daily basis doesn’t help as THEY’RE ALL OVER THE PLACE when I scroll down the pages of eye candy perfection.

I would like two (one for each bathroom), but would of course settle for just one.

I spoke to the contractor my parent’s habitually use this past Friday and everything he said about them was negative. They’re expensive, the claws oftentimes fall off of the vintage ones, you’d have to tile underneath them and all around them on all three walls, the plumbing would have to be rerouted to come from underneath rather from the side like we have it now, and our space may not even be big enough for one to fit correctly.

Shattered were my hopes and dreams.

The possibility of one isn’t COMPLETELY out of the picture…but the dream of having a clawfoot is becoming a little more distant. I think I can accept that we may not have one in our current home…a dream to look forward to in years to come perhaps.

We can still put down beautiful flooring and a rad back splash to pull the room together. I’m accepting the reality…BUT then I saw the below picture. Basically the same tub and tile I was dreaming of…damn you internet! Why won’t you let me grieve?

Full Circle

I’ve come full circle in a sense. As close to coming full circle gets in the situation I’m going to describe to you.

When I was 18 I was in the midst of putting together an art portfolio for getting into art school. You see, I only took ONE art class my entire high school career but then once I was a senior I announced that that I wanted to go to art school. And then I freaked out because I had no work to show for my artistic ability.

Soooo my lovely parentals signed me up for a handful of art classes through the Austin Museum of Art (AMOA) so I could accumulate some work. The first one I took was a life drawing class. Ok great, I thought…a still life class. um no.

What it turned out to be was a class where there were four of us that sat and drew the artist’s husband Dave, a man in his late 70s.

At the time I wasn’t well versed in drawing old, naked men. NOW I’M A PRO. I just remember having really sweaty palms and thinking, “Yes, this is about to happen.” But also thinking about how hilarious my friends would think it was…I was going to have the BEST stories to bring to study hall the following Monday.

So yes, I drew Dave and it didn’t turn out too crappy either. I remember his wife telling me I was making him look too fat with some of my lines, but besides that it was good. Oh and I didn’t draw his area either…rather pretended there was some awkward drapery there instead.

Fast forward 8 years a few months ago when I was having lunch with a friend and telling her the above story.

Her response, “Was his name Dave?”

Why yes, yes it was!

Apparently he’s somewhat of an Austin icon and is the most drawn, painted, and sculpted man in Austin. Odds are, if you’ve taken a life drawing class here in the past two decades…you’ve seen Dave’s wee wee.

My friend told me that they were having a “Dave” show that next week and that I should submit my work. So submit my work I did.

(mine is the black and white charcoal one on top)

I was able to find the small, charcoal drawing in a closet at my parent’s house, quickly got it framed, and submitted it to the show within the next 36 hours. It was featured in a small gallery opening at the Dougherty Arts Center in downtown office for the entire month of August.

Seeeeee Full Circle! right?

Plaid Masterpiece

Had to re-post this adorable little ottoman I came across on Design*Sponge.

There has been so much inspiration from the 50s and 60s lately. I blame Mad Men, the fabulous AMC tv show that I can’t get enough of. Even if the premise of the show was boring I’d still probably tune in every now and then to get a quick fix of the mid-century aesthetic that oozes in every frame. However, the show rocks and I’m completely absorbed each and every episode. Peggy is my fav, you?

I got a little something inspired by the 60s last week. It arrived from overstock.com within four days (not bad for only having to pay $1 in shipping) and is currently being tailored. You’ll have to standby to see it…I get to pick it up this coming Saturday!

Delightful Dishware

I’ve never expressed on this blog how much I adore our dishware.

I fell in love with the set we registered for about 6 months before we got married. We of course registered for it and it was the number one item I looked forward to receiving. Of course, it was also the most expensive item we registered for…

Luckily we have some awesome friends and family members who bought the entire set for us and we’ll be eternally grateful! It matches the decor of our home so well and each time I use it, even if it’s just for my morning bowl of cereal, I still appreciate it!

It’s the set above of course…from Crate & Barrel. I recently came across this article on Apartment Therapy of a fellow fan of the set who had her heart broken when the set was discontinued…after she had finally saved up enough money for it. OH THE HEARTBREAK.

I too had the exact same fear, 6 months before we got married when we registered for it. I told Alex one day, “That’s it…I’m just going to buy it myself because I KNOW it’s going to be discontinued.” Thankfully it was not…until we received each last piece. Phew!

To the woman out there who lost her dream dishware, don’t fret, I’m sure a lovely set will come along soon that will be just as gorgeous. Meanwhile, I’m going home…to spoon with my plates, bowls, mugs, and platters.

I need a Pouffe!

If you asked me yesterday what a Moroccan leather Pouffe was I’d probably give you a twisted look.

However, if you showed me one, I’d be all, “Oh yeah, I’ve been seeing those all over my favorite design blogs and I kind of want one.”

Fast forward to today…I kind of NEED one. Only, they’re pretty expensive…a little more than I’d care to pay for any type of pouffe really.

In any case, it’s now on the list of “Things I want.” I will budget accordingly…

Frame Frenzy

Friday was a good shopping day for me. Well really it was more like FANTASTIC!

I purposefully hit up Aaron Brothers because they were having their biannual penny sale, buy one frame get the second for a penny. um Amazing!

I walked away with 8 frames of varying sizes (three of them being 18 x 24″) for only $100. I felt a like I had won a mini lottery…a mini frame lottery because I’m a dork.

We have countless art pieces that were just sitting in a closet at home and NOW we can frame the majority of them. Yesterday, with Alex’s help we hung them. It’s so great having my favorite pieces adorn my favorite walls. Some areas of our home even feel like an art gallery because of it…mainly the hallway with its white walls.

I have a few more pieces in mind that must be framed but for now…I’m a happy and content girl!

I’m totally doing this.

Or should I say, “we’re” totally doing this?

Because I don’t touch power tools, and this project would involve one…in a minute way. But still I DON’T TOUCH POWER TOOLS.

My fear of power tools arose freshman year of college when I took my required 3D Foundations art class where you guessed it, we made 3D objects. The class involved a lot of art installations as well as one huge board game that the entire school came together to make. It was really cool. BUT all of this 3D-ness involved utilizing the wood shop. A place I associated with saw dust and blood after our first project in said class was to make our own wooden tool box. I made one successfully and we still use it in our home. huzzah. But the process of getting there kind of sucked.

I was made aware of how powerful and real those saws were when Haans, the wood shop purveyor held out his right hand before grabbing hold of one of the saws. HE HAD FOUR FINGERS. AHHHH. I of course, wanted to keep all mine. And if a person that was trained and skilled using this type of machinery could do that type of damage, god knows what I’d be able to pull off. Or should I say, “cut off.” Ack.

Anyway, wow, so yes…Alex will be helping me with this project. I saw it yesterday on one of my favorite blogs and I love this artful solution for their office. It’s the perfect place to display all of the smaller art we own without having to frame it all. AND when you grow tired of a certain piece being displayed you can simply swap it out for another. Perfection.

Our guest bedroom is in a bit of a transition stage right now. Last Friday we had a paint party and changed the drab white walls to silver drop and deep aubergine. Picture a nice light, warm gray and a deep, earthy purple accent wall. Pictures are coming soon!

The bedding matches the current wall color now perfectly and now all we need are some cool wall graphics and this art project that I can’t wait to finish! A rug would probably be nice too! Oh and a new lamp shade for that sad looking lamp on the night table.

Anyway, I’ll try to document the process along the way. I usually just like taking “After” shots, basically because I never think to take a “Before” picture. And in this case I did too, it’s just that Alex randomly took pictures of our entire house months ago…so voila. Behold, the “Before” pictures…iccckkkk!