Delicious Foods call for Beautiful Menus

I recently had the opportunity to create menus for one of our favorite clients ~ for her wedding in Quebec. She wanted the menu be presented in both English and French, so I silk-screen printed the menus in dark blue ink on Fabriano cotton paper (my favorite) and sandwiched red card stock between them. 

Just typesetting her menu made my mouth water - such amazing foods. I'm going to make menus for my next dinner party. Even tho' the food won't be quite as jazzy, adding a pretty menu will make the occasion more festive and special. Just another way to show family and friends how special they are to me!  

Pencil Pocket Shrines, honoring loved ones

I recently took a wonderful class from Lisa Engelbrecht, an amazing artist and calligrapher. In the class we made personal pocket shrines out of plastic pencil cases. The shrines fold up and you can take them with you. Collaging bits of paper, photos, fabric and more was great fun. Lisa also taught us some simple pointed pen calligraphy. My little shrine celebrates my sweet daughter (Angel Hattie), my dear friend Anne (St. Anne of the Open Heart) and Frida Kahlo. It's not quite finished yet - I'll re-photograph it when the rest of the embellishments are added.  

Here's a detail of a shrine done by one of my classmates, Susan (from Louisville, Kentucky), who had an amazing collection of religious icons. The shrine below was done by her daughter. The Beatles would be pleased, I'm sure.

Letterpress Printing - fantastic impressions on paper

Our favorite type of printing at Good Taste is letterpress. If money and time allowed, we'd encourage all of our clients to use this time-honored method. The tactile quality achieved by this process adds so much to even the simplest piece. Designing this invitation for SAMS's (Seattle Art Museum Supporters) recent tea party, held at the museum, was a creative challenge - I had a limited budget and the turn-around time was quite short. Luckily I had a stash of Fabriano Mediovalis - a wonderful cotton rag stock with a deckle edge. Our good friends at Evolution Press in Ballard donated the printing, and as always, did an outstanding job. Matching envelopes were all we had to purchase.

Here's the invite I designed for our Good Taste open house, held earlier this year. It's actually a tri-fold, but I cut it apart so that I could show all 3 panels. Fabriano Artistico is the stock - trimmed to size. The folder paper is Stardream Lapis, the green build is off-cut from a job done years ago (I always make the press give me left-over paper). 

I drew the little bird for a rubber stamp that I never got around to making - he fits perfectly at the top of our house. Again, our friends in Ballard worked their printing magic helping us to achieve just the look we wanted to celebrate the our new home and DIY Good Taste.

Taking Photos - To Flash or Not?

I have a fantastic camera - a Digital Pentax K100 SLR. It has lots of bells and whistles that I'm still discovering, especially the flash. This picture was taken yesterday in my studio. 

The light on the pencils, pin cushions and number stamps caught my eye - this is what I saw. Everything is soft and, to me, intimate. The photo below was taken with the flash on. While the color is brighter, all the tones are the same, the objects look flat, the number stamps grab too much attention and, to top it off, the neighbor's car across the street shows up. 

To me, taking good photographs is akin to creating good events - it's all about the personal: the mood, the intimacy, the connections made, emphasizing specific areas and subduing others. And lighting always matters. When you succeed in combining all the elements "just right" magic happens.

Journal: A Bird in the Hand

I've been out-of-town and sans computer (a nice retreat) - making art collages and meeting new people. Have tons of photos on my camera but haven't downloaded them yet. Also cleaned the studio and found lots of great stuff that I'd totally forgotten about - papers, images, old art and more.  Here's a collage I did awhile ago - the birds came from an Urban Outfitters catalog.

Tag you're it! Tie one on.

This past Christmas I decided to wrap all my holiday gifts in brown paper (one of my many attempts at becoming a 'greener' artist). Consequently, I needed to add a something to make the gifts a more visually exciting. Using left-over invitation papers and ribbons from my stash (I can't bear to throw even the smallest scraps away) I designed a bunch of collaged tags.

My  Slice cutter makes wonderful letters - so every tag was personalized with the recipient's initial. Rubber stamps, metallic inks and lovely awards stickers were used and ribbons functioned both as ties and decorative elements that hung from the bottom of the tag.

Jazzy tags have many uses: as place cards (wrap the ribbon around a napkin or tie the tag to the back of your guest's chair), thank yous (write a little note on the back), name tags (great as an ice-breaker when your guests don't know each other well) or book marks for all your book group buddies. Manilla-colored tags can be purchased in bulk at office supply stores and you can get a wide variety of colored tags at specialty paper stores. 

Prayer Flags - Spread good energy around

I've been making prayer flags ever since 9/11/2001. First out of cloth, with silkscreen images and quotes, now I make them out of paper, using ribbons, rubber stamps, grommets, thread and more. Some have favorite quotations, others are more image-driven. I think of these flags as "flying" invitations - encouraging positive thoughts and energy to swirl into my life and the lives of the people who receive the flags as gifts.

I'll be teaching at class at Letters of Joy 2009 (LOJ) on May 2nd at Edmonds Community College. You can sign up for wonderful classes at this event - an entire day of letter and paper arts, taught by talented artists. What a great to spend a Saturday.