unlisted #8

Another set of items occupying my mind grapes - from the edible to the legible! Previous versions: 1 / 2 / 3 / 4 / 5 / 6 / 7

bloodline | We were hurting pretty bad, TV-wise, after finishing House of Cards AND The Jinx in short succession. I love a good crime drama, true or fiction. After two episodes of this show I'm thinking it's exactly what I needed. Doesn't hurt that  Kyle "America's Favorite Coach/Police Offier" Chandler is in it.

korean bbq pizza | There's not a lot that can tear me away from a classic red sauce on a piece of pizza (I'm looking at you, white sauce- you have no right being on my pizza), but this recipe made me think twice. I'll admit, I was lazy and got a premade BBQ sauce from Trader Joe's, but they had this new sriracha kind and I really want to try it. Also I used premade dough too. No regrets.

myth, magic, and millennials | Usually when an article uses the word "millennial" in the headline I roll my eyes and go back to checking instagram while I drink my kale cold pressed juice. I KID I KID, but also not really. Anyway, this piece was actually really interesting and kinda hit the nail on the head for me.

good luck bar | After living within walking distance of this place for an entire year we finally made it over to Good Luck Bar to have some tasty tiki drinks. Of course, nothing holds a candle to Psycho Suzi's when it comes to tiki tastiness, but I definitely enjoyed my rum concoction.

the southern reach trilogy | I got the first book in Jeff VanderMeer's "sci fi" (if you could call it that and I still don't really know what to call it) trilogy from the library, and it so captivated me that the next day I ran out and bought the whole collected series. It helped that I'd seen the cover making the interweb rounds for quite some time and thought it was gorgeous and perfect, but really it's this weird/strange/gross/scary/beautiful story that got me so excited.

newpon | I follow two different rabbits on instagram. One of them is this fella.

seek & ye shall find

Show of hands, how many of you read food blogs?  EVERYONE DOES, RIGHT? What's better than opening up your web browser of choice and navigating that baby straight on over to a well designed & well photographed utopia of tasty delights!?! 

For the first time I got to participate in the designing of one such blog! Tasteseeker's Kitchen has gone live, and just look at that beaut. Working with Annie & co. on coming up with a charming but simple logo was a blast, and I love seeing it in place now in the midst of Kate's fantastic web design work.

Here are some sketches I provided at the onset. They were a little more image driven, and eventually we simplified the logo down to a more type based design.

Final sketches, and color palette building (a guilty pleasure). 

The final logo! Hello, baby.

greener pastures

I just want you to know that, according to the weather channel, it is 29° but feels more like 17°. They also have a slideshow of 25 Dogs in the Snow to Melt Your Heart, but that's neither here nor there. 29° is warm, folks, compared to the last couple of frigid days. All I can do is stare longingly out the window at the clear blue sky and obsessively look at swimsuits online. Major cabin fever, dudes. Major cabin fever. It's no wonder then that I've been finding myself attracted to bright colors big bold shapes (and floral imagery, as always). 

The card above from Mister Boddington (featuring one of my fonts!) really has me thinking about greens. Emerald, after all, is the color of the year! I also focused on simple and bright when the lovely Lisa invited me to participate in her blog, The Scribble Project. Normally I work digitally, but colored pencil felt like the right option for such a fun assignment. Check out the rest of my scribble page, and the whole site! It's chock full of really great artists coming up with creative answers to Lisa's questions.

And, because I couldn't help it, here's my dream shopping spree outfit to incorporate my winter neutrals with some bright colors in hopes for an early spring...

sweater / bracelet / necklace (out of stock from swaychic) / shoes / clutch / skirt

the write stuff

These days have been occupied with one of three things: working on a big project (secrets!), updating this very blog, and creating a brand new website. The website bit comes with the fun assignment of giving myself a new header... which means HAND LETTERING. Hand lettering is maayyybeee one of my favorite things. I pretty much went to town on this project, above are a few of the options.

Sadly you'll have to wait to see my website, as I'm running into a few technical hiccups. Actually my website doesn't work at all right now, which is a little terrifying because the cure seems to just be to wait. How awful is that?

In the meantime I decided to do a round up of some fun, hand drawn looking fonts. Paying for a font might seem a little painful with sites like dafont.com and fontsquirrel, but guys. Lets real talk for a second here: do you want a font for your blog? For an etsy shop? I like free fonts just as much as the next person, but most of the time they will not deliver the gorgeous little details that a paying font will. You'll get a full set of glyphs (ever go to write a % or a & in a free font and all you get is a little square? yep, that's fun), you'll get better kerning and letting, heck you might even get more than one version of a letter or even a few dingbats thrown in. And all for $20-$60! Considering you are buying someone's art to use on your own product legally, that's not a bad deal.

Okay, getting off my soap box, and ON to my font box! Look at these bad boys, don't you want to take one home today?

Belluccia - starts at $29 | Trithart (oh hey, self promotion!) - starts at $24.99 | Verner - $26.25 | Sverige - $59 | Cerise - $68.40 | Coronette - starts at $29 | Emma Script (how perfect is that?) - starting at $39

in store

LEIF is the kind of store that I love. They don't have a giant stock of items, just a small selection of housewares and accessories with a fantastic eye for simple, well designed loveliness. If I could, I would buy one of everything. Don't you love it when you find a little treasure trove of items that fit your aesthetic to a t?

Here, a selection of my favorite items.

1/ batik coffee scoops 2/ clint box 3/ speckled boulder mug 4/ quartz cluster necklace 5/ spear towl

ladie's night

Jessie Schneider

Going to art school has to be one of the greatest times of my life. It's so wonderful to meet people who really care about creating and actively discovering great artwork, past and present. I met a lot of great folks at MCAD, and have continued really meaningful relationships with a lot of these folks beyond school. Recently I've been reconnecting with a few that I haven't seen as much since graduation, and man. There are a lot of really talented ladies! Of course there were talented dudes too, but since I'm a lady and I love ladies, I think its time that some of my favorite MCAD girlz got the spotlight!

(I'm only posting a few, but I should seriously make this a regular series... when I went back to edit this I realized that I left out SO MANY talented MCAD women. Keep your eyes peeled!)



 
Jessie Schneider again, this girl has an enviable knowledge of color.... and also has some very enviable hair. Seriously, I think I need her hair cut.
 
Kelly Abeln is a whiz at skee ball and illustrates regularly for ROOKIE, making her my hero
 Sami Foust, you make graphic design and rollerskating look like a breeze.
 
Carla lives in the apartment below me, makes amazing/haunting photographs and is the best dancer you've ever seen. 
 Annnnnd of course, my best ladies: 
Katie Wilson is one half of Dude & Chick. She's visiting in a few weeks from LA and my excitement is tenfold!
 
You probably know Allison from her blog, dotluv, but I met Alli BEFORE the blog - we've been friends since our early college years! She's a fabtastic photographer, but I didn't have to tell you that.

baby grand

BABIES. BABIES EVERYWHERE! If you have a baby, you know a baby, maybe you even are a baby (and if so, how did you learn to use the internet so fast) perhaps you would like to get a beautiful onesie from this great company called Slumby! I did some design work for them earlier in the year, and I have to say it was a lot of fun.

Speaking of gifts, I've been loving all the great gift guides that design*sponge and riflemade have been putting out! I'm finally getting a good idea of what to get my various family members!

exchange rate

bored? need eye candy? graphic-exchanGE will keep you busy for an estimated five billion years.

cover story

i found this book while doing some research for a (shapeless/nameless/baby stages) project at the st paul public library. i wish it were mine! Also, if you ever get the chance to go to the Central Library in downtown St. Paul, you should go. It is BEAUTIFUL.

brave

"I am not afraid... I was born to do this."
-Joan of Arc


for this week's illustration friday the keyword was "brave". I have been moving away from the fantasy art that captivated me all the way to my early college years in favor of more serious or more girly topics, but recently I've started a project that's bringin' me back to my Dinotopia, Red Wall, Sailor Moon, and general fun monster drawin' fantasy roots. This project has also been causing me to want to research a lot of the cultural heritage of Minnesota - namely Native American and Scandinavian, but I'm also thinking I should look at Hmong and Somalian imagery too.

Anywho, that's where this image came from. This week I also really like the contributions of hsinping pan, moira millman, and alice carroll (HOLY CRAP THAT LINEWORK!!!)

ALSO I have a new hand set font available for purchase at You Work For Them. His name is Alistair... be nice to him, he's gentle.




p.s. "Two posts in one day, Emma?" you might say, "That seems in excess." "NAY!" I will respond, "I actually wrote that last post about jeans two days ago and forgot to post it. Also it was boring!"

label maker

I am researching wine labels for a birthday wine, and it is FUN. That is all. (click pictures for the source)

color by number

I don't use colored pencils in my usual work, but if I had 500 GORGEOUS colored pencils like these ones from Social Designer, I might have to. Like it's (just a little) less cool "of the month club" brothers, with 500 Pencils you get a set of 25 colored pencils once a month for 20 months, leaving you with the most complete spectrum of pencils I've ever seen.

There are also FOUR DIFFERENT display cases that make the pencils lust-worthy decorations, too. I'd go for the "Aurora" myself, but they all look good. Also, they have some real sweet names like Tragedy, Rhett Butler, and Golden Festival Screen.

Okay, I'll stop salivating now.

julep, plum pudding, and toucan

work in progress

this is probably a combination of my just signing the lease for a little fixer-upper artists studio and then seeing this lovely nursery and thinking to myself "If I could decorate a room just for me, I'd definitely put that frickin' awesome fake alligator head in it."

And then I decided to play the "Lets Pretend You've Got Big Dollars to Spend" with my dream studio as a theme.

+It would definitely be a combination of old but architectural (like the chair & the flat file) and modern design (including the invisible book shelves and the urban outfitters couch).

+The first thing I'd buy would most certainly be that beauty of a desk, by Wintercheck Factory. It's basically perfect - room for me to put my papers and bills, and enough room to draw. I'd probably want an extra table for a printer/scanner, too...

+LOTS of random tchotchkes. I'd want plenty of great vintage mugs and TONS of stuff by Harry Allen - especially that piggy bank.

+Grey and white walls (paint swatches are Sherwin Williams) with great colorful curtains.


of course, I'd also want my dream studio to look like it was something right out of the Selby. How great is Thomas Lelu's?

booking it

I know this is many-an illustrator's lament, but why don't children's books look like this anymore?

meme memory

This game was going around on facebook for a few days, and some fun things came out of it! Basically what you do is go to Wikipedia's random article for the band name, take the last four or five words from a random quote here for your album title, and use the third photo on flickr's most interesting from the last seven days, and put it all together!

I like how these four look like they probably belong to the same snooty independent label. Creators in order of appearance: Bryan, David, Eric, and Me.

booked

M.S. Corley has been getting a lot of attention as of late with his fantastic, classic Penguin style redesigns of the Harry Potter and Lemony Snicket book covers. I too have drooled over these, and was rather excited with the new set of His Dark Materials redesigns. Word has it the Narnia series is coming next.

Check this guy out, he is seriously talented!