lately

First of all, I have a fun little announcement! Forever ago Bill and I designed & printed this poster (SO LONG AGOOO) and recently Bill listed the remaining prints for sale on etsy! I'm still so fond of this piece, even though my style has changed quite a bit! It still feels really relevant to my interests now... and working with Bill is seriously the best experience. Buddies 4ever!

Otherwise things have been pretty rad. New things starting, hanging with new & old friends, and planning travel for the not-so-slowly incoming holidays. Wasn't it January, like, yesterday? Here, take some photos.

p.s. featured activities & locations from these photos: the santa monica pier (walk there, walk to the end, turn around and walk back), Angels stadium (get two small beers and a Nacho Mama),  La Brea Tar Pits, jumping in the pool at Tarte (not pictured: giant punch bowl of palomas), touring famouses graves at Forest Lawn in Glendale (this guide was pretty helpful!), looking at pretty books at the Art Center library, donut donut donut.

drink up

This post is dedicated to all you folks out there who have this Friday off work. Go ahead, kick back! Watch too much TV, read a book, talk a long walk to that place with the iced lattes you like... and bring me back one! I'm a sucker for an iced latte.

I'm also a sucker for a tasty cocktail (duh). Last weekend I got some ingredients together for a greyhound slushie to make with my ladies and came home with plenty of extra supplies! That's when I realized I also had various fruit seltzers, and thus this modified greyhound was born.

This isn't exactly a breakthrough in cocktail science or anything, I just took a greyhound (grapefruit juice + vodka) and added some fruity seltzer, but hey! It was an excuse to draw more cocktail ingredients, which I'm still obsessed with. If there's a publisher out there looking for an illustrated book of cocktails LEMME KNOW. I would be so down for that.

What are your plans for the 4th? Mine involve an American flag vest and probably tater tot hot dish - it was a hit at the last BBQ I went to, probably because nobody in Los Angeles has ever heard of it!

p.s. Here's a preview of a fun 4th of July piece I made for Bright's newest campaign. Check out the whole thing here!

hot child in the city

If I could I would just draw pictures of food and make pretty maps and get paid for it for the rest of my life. When I got this awesome assignment to make some fun neighborhood maps and cocktail recipe illustrations for the LA Time's Summer 2015 Entertainment Guide I was obviously pumped.

Plus now I have a collection of cocktails to make and places to visit! Who wants to go to with me as I make my first pilgrimage to Diddy Riese?

Here are a couple of the illustrations! The rest are available to check out on that link above or on my website! YAY!!

(That slice of watermelon is on my Top 5 Best Things I've Ever Drawn list)

ice ice baby

It's officially summer! It's been feeling VERY summery here in LA for awhile now - especially according to my computer, who starts the fans up around noon every day. It makes me so nervoussssss.

Anyway, I made a sparkly ice cream cone to celebrate the changing of the seasons. No matter where you are I hope you can grab a cool, tasty treat soon! These little sparkly food gifs (I've been calling them #sparklefoods) have been really fun for me to work on. I might try to make it into a weekly series! Is there a kind of food you'd like to see next?

flower power

HAPPY FRIDAY! Oh man, did you ave a good week? My Trader Joe's finally has strawberry Kefir back in stock, so that was my big win.

JK GUYS, I've been hard at working doing a TON of promo work. After I made this baby shower invitation for my etsy shop I realized it might also work great as a ~*~*~motivational quote~*~*~ to send to potential clients, so I worked that up! Don't you feel the good vibes coursing through your veins? 

Alsooooo - can you believe it's June? I MEEAANNNN when did this happen? Perhaps it was the whole "planning a wedding at the speed of light" thing, but I am feeling like this year has been flying by.

To celebrate such a thing, here are some photos from lyfe.

fun outings & tasty eats: Mini Golf at the Arroyo Seco Golf Course, exploring Graystone Mansion, egg sammies at Eggslut, donuts at California Donuts.

california dreamin

thanks to laura we snagged a couple free tickets to the huntington gardens, and it was glorious

Obviously this blog is mostly about sharing my art, but it's also a personal blog and I haven't really been posting too many visual representations of our new life here in La La Land. It's been an entirely new experience moving to a new, vastly different city in my adult life. I thought I had a little experience moving from Michigan to Minnesota for college, but that was essentially like dipping my toes into the kiddie pool and slooowwwllyyy wading in. I'm a midwest girl, and moving to California was like jumping into the deep end and then losing my bikini top. 

That is to say, it's been awesome and a little shocking! 

So here, some visual stimuli for you. We've been here for just about three months and have already had three sets of visitors, all of whom I love: My parents & brother (who was living in San Diego for a few months, so we visited him too!), Alli & Alex, and Bill, Ben & John. See if you can spot them, it'll be like Where's Waldo but for people you possibly don't actually know.

 

gorgeous foliage in venice & silverlake

taking a walk with some fashionable fellas

 

a trip to disney animation studios / the aquarium in san diego

more san diego - we saw a guy catch a bebe shark here? he took a selfie and then threw it back in the ocean

 

malibu treats: sandy crabcakes / I would take up residency at sqirl if I could afford it

took a tour of the rosebowl with the fam, found some modern art disguised as an abandoned sign

i scream

peaches n' cream ice cream from the grand ole creamery (enough cream for you?).

top six ice cream flavors in no particular order:

1. peppermint chunk
2. mint chocolate chip
3. chocolate (with any sort of chocolatey add-ins)
4. rainbow sorbet
5. cookies n' cream
6. superman (in small doses)