Mixin' It Up!

Last week I received some photos of yet another awesome project using my Mix Tapes fabric. This one comes from Venus in San Diego, who made an adorable tank top for her youngest daughter, Lala. The tank has a sheer, lacy back and is embellished with a sparkly button closure on the front. Such a fun mix of feminine and funk! Check out Venus's blog, Suburbia Soup, for fun ideas and inspirations for the whole family; and her Etsy shop for sweet, stitched surprises!

Lovely Letters

I've received some really nice correspondence and promotion from Rebecca of Littletree Designs in the UK, so I thought I would return the blog love by showing you my favorite thing in her Etsy shop: this lovely alphabet print. The colors are so beautifully retro and the letters are so wonderfully whimsical! She is considering turning this design into fabric, so keep your eye out! Rebecca's blog has lots of eye candy--fun stuff to spark your creativity, as well as features on other artists and craftspeople, and more!

New product line, new obsession!

I am pleased to announce that some of my patterns are now available on iPhone cases and iPhone/iPod skins, and you can find them online at Society6! Here are just a few:

Tooting my own horn (for vintage stickers)!

After 12 years of searching on eBay and trading with fellow collectors, I have finally completed my collection of 1980s Cardesign Toots stickers! With the exception of rare variations I have never seen, and random strips printed in neon colors (I'm not sure how many of these exist, as they were made in the mid-1980s, after I moved on to other collections...and boys...), I now have at least one representative "sample" of each of the 147 different sticker strips. With variations, the total is 247! You can scroll through the whole collection starting here.

Did you collect stickers when you were a kid? What was your favorite brand or style?

What's all "The Hype" about?!

Check out these amazing children's bow ties made by Erica in Maryland for her Arin Madison shop of fine children's accessories! The top three photos feature bow ties from The Hype collection (notice the one on top uses my Stars On 45 fabric!), while the pink and green harlequin design was made as a custom order, but I just loved it! In addition to bow ties, Erica makes headbands, barrettes, and more, and you'll love the adorable kids she has modeling them on her Facebook page!

On the House (Industries)

Since House Industries first appeared on the type scene in the early 1990s with their progressive, punk/grunge, subcultural Bad Neighborhood and Flyer Fonts, I have been a huge fan. Their work is timeless, and their catalogs are works of art. Has it really been almost 20 years?!

Applying their type to product design has been one of their most recent endeavors. Check out these amazing new kitchen towels--so bold and so graphic! They are true type craftsmen, with an appreciation of design history and a passion for its revival.

For the Love of Books

This week's Spoonflower fabric design contest theme is 'Books'. This was a tough one for me because I love books and made a living designing them for almost 20 years, so there were endless possibilities... Aside from the books themselves, old or new, borrowed or blue--what can be learned from them, how they look, how they feel, how they smell--I find that books are incredible for decorating. You will find my Pinterest 'decorate' board chock full of photos of floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, you know, the kind that require a ladder to get to the upper shelves. Incredible.

So I decided to take photos of the bookshelves around our home, so I could recreate some of the 'displays' made with books, and have actual spine references, so the books looked 'authentic' (whatever that is). I limited myself to a palette of six rather seventies-ish colors (mod 1970s, a la Terence Conran), so the final design came out very stylized, yet looks a bit realistic from far away. And the bookshelves can go on and on, depending on the yardage.

If you like the design, you can vote for it in this week's contest by clicking here and following the instructions on the right side of the page. You can vote for as many designs as you like, and I'm guessing there will be a lot of great entries!