over easy

Sigh! This is the first year in quite a long time that I won't be celebrating brunch season (friends brucnh is well documented) with all my buddies. I look forward to it every year thanks to the sheer amount of food, friends and mimosas... AND PARTY POTATOES. I know, you don't know what party potatoes are. I forgive you, you truly don't know what you're missing.

But now I'm in another state! So instead of sit around and bemoan my lack of party potatoes (and the buddies that go along with them) I  decided to make a fun brunch invitation that anyone can use! For free! I know, I am truly the kindest of people. It's not like I love drawing rabbits, no sir. They are not the cutest rodent lagomorph known to man, not at all. 

AND, if you're having a brunch with children (of any age) invited, I also made a fun little sticker sheet! You can get full page sticker paper at Office Max or Staples or online and cut them out with an exacto knife. 

So go! Invite your friends to a brunch and make sure someone brings deviled eggs.

Download the invitation here / Download the sticker sheet here

orange you glad

Starting last Sunday we drove from Minnesota to Iowa to Nebraska to Colorado to Nevada to Utah to a tiny bit of Arizona and finally to California. We are exhausted but happy- now it's time to focus on getting the apartment together and finding work.

In case you're wondering, we stayed at the Golden Gate Casino in Las Vegas, which is in the "old" section of Vegas. We eventually made our way over to strip, but I enjoyed the Container Park (plenty of artsy shops and bars) and the Fremont Street Experience (weird light shows? tiny bayou themed coin slot machine casinos? yes) the most. The hotel itself was kind of a mess though, so I'd recommend finding lodging elsewhere.

motivation messages / before and after: madness and empitness

 

various sights along the road: car (not even all the way packed yet), food, cat, mountains

Vegas niceties 

Final destination

 And! A bonus video from the passenger window:

date book

I've been working on several wedding invitation projects for the past few months - they've been such a blast and I'm lucky enough to know at least one person out of every couple, so of course that makes them even more special. They're all wrapping up (except for my brother's wedding suite, which you'll get to see later!) so I thought I'd post a couple!

Each one of these features some hand lettering, which is what really draws me to custom wedding invitations. If this is what you think you want in your wedding invitation (or baby shower invitation or 80th birthday party invitation etc etc etc) you should contact me! 

p.s. We've successfully arrived in LA! Once my head stops spinning I'll be sure to post about it.

inbetween

I always try to have some fun personal work going on so I can take a break from freelance and rest my noggin. This time around I decided I wanted to work on character design, mostly just so that I could draw some kicky tweens in cute clothing! Will someone let me go shopping for their middle school aged child? Seriously, H&M and Steven Alan have some PRETTY CUTE stuff right now. I love a good combo of cute & tomboyish.

Also it snowed a TON and now I am the saddest snowbunny.

life round here

Snow, food, snow, food. Things are kinda hectic when you're planning a cross country move/selling all your belongings on craigslist/doing your taxes/trying not to go broke/thinking about a wedding, so I haven't had a good chance to update this here blog... so here are some photos and a song.

play with magic

Britt Sabo (MCAD whatttuppp) and Victoria Grace Elliot are my heroes this week. These are the ladies running the Witchsona tumblr, which exists purely so that nerds like me can draw themselves as a witch and put it somewhere. 

So here's my witch! She only wears black Jeffery Campbell boots, puts cell phone charms on her broom and has a black goose familiar named Walter Gropius who helps her suss out gems and minerals for her collection. Essentially she is living my dream life.

There have been SO MANY good witchsonas so far, but I managed to collect a few of my faves. NACHO WITCH YOU GUYS.

rebecca tobin / lucy haslam

choo / lei shoon

haha also don't hate me but I kind of love that Katy Perry Grammy performance. YOU HATE ME NOW I KNEW IT.

band together

Here's a project that's near and dear to my heart. Fair Oaks is an amazing band out of Minneapolis, two of whose members also happen to be buddies of mine! When Molly and Andy came to me to see if I'd do their album art for This Is The River clearly the answer was yes. They were pretty open to the look of the art, but after giving some early cuts of a few songs a listen I felt like the whole thing just came together! That photo in the background is totally a polaroid I found at an antique store by the way - there was nothing else in the shot ... just that tree trunk. 

there are also totes and t-shirts available!

Seriously though, this album is worth giving a spin and then enthusiastically buying. You could go for my favorite track (THE CLAPS) or you could check out this awesome lyric video for another stellar song that my awesome fella made for them! 

The CD release show was last weekend, so all of this is fresh in my mind. The album is already getting a lot of positive spin, and I couldn't be more happy for them!