Found Thrift Store Patterns

Feeling guilty because I decided to play hooky yesterday at the thrift store instead of getting work done, I decided to do a little research and take pictures of patterns I found around the store. Made me feel like I was getting something done!

Spooky Vintage Halloween Polaroids

This tiny Polaroid Land Camera album has been tucked in a cabinet for a long, long time. Finding it again was like finding money in an old jacket pocket! These pictures may have been taken in 1962, a guess on my part, based on its design, and because the number '62' is written on the cover. They are shown below at actual size, and in the order in which they appear in the album. Enjoy, and have a Happy Halloween!

TBT: Match Your Mood to Your Refrigerator

Last weekend Turner Classic Movies aired this original Westinghouse promotional video for their line of 1960s decorative refrigerator panels. The 1968 promo, entitled "Match Your Mood", is groovy, hipster, and psychedelic all in one. The patterns range from pretty awful faux wood ("Supreme Walnut") to my favorite, the Andy Warhol-esque soup can. I have seen this or similar products advertised in magazines from the 1940s, but for some reason I never got the urge to get up and dance the pony from the print ads. I think this would be a great idea for Spoonflower wall decals!

TBT: I Spy Mod Hand-Drawn Type

Spring cleaning is allowing me the opportunity to look through and reorganize the books on our shelves. I had forgotten about the awesomely MOD hand-drawn lettering on the endpapers of this 1966 Whitman I Spy: Message from Moscow book.

Three and the Moon: Early Work by Illustrator Boris Artzybasheff

During a recent thrift excursion, for some unknown reason I picked a book from the shelf and boy was I glad I did! You see, the library-bound cover was nothing spectacular, so who knows why I was drawn to it.

But as soon as I saw what was inside, the book was in my cart. And I haven't read any of the stories, yet, because I can't stop looking at the striking illustrations! The book is Three and the Moon: Legendary Stories of Old Brittany, Normandy, and Provence by Jacques Dorey, illustrated by Boris Artzybasheff, and published in 1929.

Later in his career, Mr. Artzybasheff moved on to produce more detailed illustrations of three-dimensional, often surreal and grotesquely anthropomorphic objects. He also illustrated several Time, Life, and Fortune magazine covers.

It's a Paint-By-Number Christmas!

Inspired by my collecting obsession with vintage paint-by-number paintings, I decided to go the "original" DIY route with this week's Spoonflower contest entry.

The assignment this week: create a festive tree that can be printed on one yard of fabric. My one yard features a 24" x 30" tree painting in a vintage frame, along with seven ornaments you can paint yourself (using the color key provided, or using your own colors), then cut out and attach to the tree! One yard of Linen-Cotton Canvas actually has an additional 12 inches, so the extra space includes more unfinished ornaments, as well as seven finished ones. I plan to adapt this to a wall decal, too, once the contest is over. Might be a fun way to decorate a child's room for Christmas!

What do you think? Wanna vote? Click here! Thank you!

Detail of the unfinished ornaments:

Detail of the finished ornaments, using the color key provided:

And a mockup of a decorated tree!

Happy New Year? But, it's Halloween!

Today is Halloween, which means there are less than 8 weeks until Christmas. It's time to start thinking seriously about the holidays: parties, gift-making, gift-giving, New Year's resolutions, all that stuff... Wait, New Year's? 2014...already??? There is an episode of "The Brady Bunch", the one where Greg moves his bedroom up to the attic, and Mike and Carol tell the rest of the kids they can each move up to the attic when the Brady kid just older goes away to college. At the end of the episode, Cindy is calculating on the kitchen chalkboard how long it will take for her to get to live up in the attic room, since she is the youngest. She tells Alice that it might as well be the year 2000 (!) before she's able to move to the coveted space. Every time I hear that, I can't believe the year 2000 has already passed...and 13 years ago no less. We've even supposedly partied like it's 1999 already, and back when I was a kid, 1999 was the FUTURE... What happened to all that time?!

Yes, 2014 is fast approaching, which means it's time again for the Spoonflower annual Tea Towel Calendar contest! This is my favorite contest, not just to design for and enter, but to see all the calendars other designers have created.

This year I was particularly drawn to colorful 1960s and '70s psychedelic and Pop Art, a la Peter Max, with its clean lines and hand-drawn look. Here are some of the images I frequently saw floating around Pinterest, which I tucked away for inspiration:

And here are a few screenshots of the work-in-progress:

Below is the final design I am entering this year. If you like it, please vote for it by going to the Spoonflower Fabric-of-the-Week Contest page.

All you need to do to vote is click on the Vote in This Week's Contest link on the right, then find my design and click on it (a green border will appear around the image). At the bottom of the page, click the Review My Votes button. When you have reviewed your votes, you can click Submit...and that's it! You can vote for multiple designs, too! Designs that make the Top Ten are automatically offered for sale on the Spoonflower site!

Thank you so much, and have a Happy Halloween!

A Kaleidoscopic Wonderland of Hi-Fidelity Vibrancy

Okay, so check out the amazing stack of vintage record album banners I shuffled up on the Stereo Stack website, developed by my favorite local Seattle record shop, Jive Time Records. Shuffle the stack if you want, and purchase coordinating prints and tees. Bold, graphic, and retro. I love it!