Anastasia Drawing and Dreaming

Although I am terrible at blogging, I am indeed an avid follower, and daily stalker, of many wonderful design and lifestyle blogs. So, when one of my card's is featured by someone with a beautiful and inspiring blog that I hadn't yet discovered, I am always so excited!

Yesterday my "Rorschach Flowers" card was featured on Anastasia Drawing and Dreaming, a lovely lifestyle blog out of Australia by the artist behind Percival Road Designs on Etsy.

Her blog is a little bit lifestyle, a little bit art, and a little bit fashion, all with a keen design eye and a peek into Australian life! I love it.... Her Etsy shop Percival Road Designs is also filled with beautiful paper goods that I am thinking to by for Greta's 1st Birthday Party! (I can't believe my baby is going to be 1!)

All images from Anastasia Drawing And Dreaming, and Percival Road Designs

A New Year, A New Way Be Inspired...

(quote originally from http://www.momdot.com/inspirational-quotes)

As a new year begins, I feel the need to explain the lack of new work and updates in the world of Pretty.Simple.Things. I've tried to keep the personal side of my life separate from Pretty.Simple.Things, but I've come to realize, that one's art is intrinsically tied to ones place in life. In 2011 I lost a mother, and gained a daughter, all in the span of 4 months. My husband, my eldest daughter and I spent much of last year in flux while we cared for my sweet Mother-In-Law and took over her businesses in California. Her illness came on fast and furious and losing the woman who was such a nurturing, and grounding, fixture in our lives effected us and our day-to-day life greatly. We had only been back home in Savannah for 2 months when our second daughter was born. We were still feeling immense grief in our loss, and the surreal experience of feeling that grief, while welcoming one of the greatest joys into our life (seriously, our now 7 month old is the happiest, most joyful little being you've ever met) had us all a bit mixed up.

I'm sharing all of this with you because the last year has been so much about just getting through each day, that all feelings of creativity and momentum with Pretty.Simple.Things was lost to me. Up until recently I was simply trying to be a good mom, enjoy my children, and find my way back into a normal routine for our family. I was not able to find inspiration in the day-to-day, and had no motivation to find the time to get into my studio and create new work. I am happy to say, that the last 2 weeks I've turned a corner. I feel as if a fog has lifted, and I'm finding my way back into my right brain, back into wanting to create. And even though I haven't been able to get into the studio and print (having a 4 year old and a 7 month old has left me with not much time in the everyday scheme of things) but I have been sketching out new card ideas, and trying to carve a space each week where I will eventually have time to bring these new ideas into life!

One of the things that has helped me find and organize inspiration, in Pinterest! I absolutely love Pinterest, and if you haven't started Pinning - get to it! Creating your boards on Pinterest reminds me of being in Art School when I made mood boards for whatever project I was working on, only you can make them for all realms of your life, and it's totally addictive! I'm including a link if you want to "follow me" on pinterest and see what's inspiring me right now.

New Additions...

I've been on a long hiatus here at Pretty.Simple.Things, and here is one of the main reasons! We welcomed our second daughter on May 27th. Her name is Greta Suzanne, we call her Gigi...

Follow Me: the Making of Bergdorf Goodman's 2010 Holiday Windows

A dream job of mine, of course... Amazing to see how these amazing little worlds are created...

and a couple of the finished creations as seen from the street...

See the full article about the Bergdorf Goodmans window creations in the Holiday Issue of Lonny Magazine

Handy for the holidays...

These casserole carriers by Vonny are exactly what I would buy for all of the wonderful cooks in my life who I share meals with potluck style through the Holidays. As we are hosting the second annual Potluck-Thanksgiving in our home for some of our friends who have become like family to us, the burden of transporting hot casserole dishes (so as not to have a traffic-jam at the oven right before we sit down to eat) would be all but solved if I had discovered these nifty carriers a few weeks ago. I will definitely be buying one for myself for all the Christmas holiday parties I will be schlepping hot dishes to! They retail for $46.00 at vonny.com

The Perfect Holiday Dazzler...

I love this dress by London based designer Anna Popovich... It is oh-so-perfect for holiday parties!

Find it at her Etsy shop!

Sweet Paul Magazine

Maybe it's because I still miss Domino Magazine everyday

(not to mention Cookie Magazine, and Blueprint Magazine)

but I am so excited by all the new online magazines

that have been springing up.

I've loved Sweet Paul the blog for sometime, and was

thrilled to learn about the new Sweet Paul online magazine.

It's filled with amazing recipes, and some of the most

gorgeous food styling and photography I've seen in a

magazine thus far.

I may have found my mother's day breakfast recipe in the

page below!

Click Here to view the whole magazine.

	Look inside >
Spring 2010

Off the grid living...

I came across these amazing photographs by Keliy Anderson-Staley today on Apartment Therapy, originally from Ahorn Magazine. Anderson-Staley grew up off-the-grid, without electricity, plumbing, or phones, in the woods of Maine. She started this project of documenting life "off the grid" before she moved away from the community. She returned to finish the project, and the pictures are not only beautiful, but her musing on life as it was, and is, off the grid is lovely.

Both my parents (separately) live off the grid, but with solar power, well-water, septic, and they both as of the last few months have cell phone service reaching them. My dad has a log cabin, my mom a submerged adobe, they both live within 1 hour of a large town or city. Although they do have creature comforts like electricity and water, there is still a huge decompression that happens when you travel down a long, very bumpy, 4-wheel drive necessary, unmaintained road, to reach there green-homes, and there is something satisfying about watching your consumption out of necessity rather than choice. You have to monitor usage and waste of all kinds to live this way. I find it so refreshing to unplug, and focus on simple pleasures and pastimes, the beautiful, quiet landscape surrounding, and all that sky!

Leaving you with flowers...

I'm closing up shop for a couple weeks to take a little vacation... It won't be all play, but it is still almost 2 weeks of unadulterated time with my family and friends! I am leaving you with some images of Eloise Corr Danch's paper creations, which seem fitting right now for this beautiful time of year, and the festivities of this Easter weekend. Her botanical paper creations and nature scenes are a huge source of inspiration to me, I just can't get enough of them! 

Check out her website for more images of her amazing work, http://eloisecorrdanch.com/

SpringBoard...

  I am working on a line of nature inspired cards so I'm trying to channel spring, and all it's loveliness (which in Savannah, is particularly lovely with perfect weather and colorful blossoms abounding).  A rather hard task given the gloomy weather we've had for the last few weeks.  I thought I would put together a mood board, a spring-board if you will, to gather the images and items that have been driving my creative process through these dark and cold winter days.

1&2)Megan Park's spring/summer 2010 collection for women and girls.

3)The lovely Oaks that line the streets and fill the parks in my neighborhood in Savannah, Ga.  

4,5&6)The printed pieces by textile designer Virginia Johnson that I love to wear and fill my house with!

7&8) The imagery and homewares from Anthropologie's February catalogue. 

9&10) Photos by the great Deborah Mclinton for the Erica Tanov spring/summer 2006 catalogue, one of my favorite seasons for Erica's designs, and my favorite ET catalogue of all times - that I still look to for inspiration! 

11) The Chie Mihara flat's I'm coveting for spring! oh they make me weak in the knees, and there never was a more comfortable shoe maker ever - in my past life (pre-baby when my career involved dressing well every day) I could wear there 3 inch heels all day long without any soreness (and my job was not one in which I got to sit often).

Below are a  few of the sketches I've done with the help of my inspiration board. The scanned images of the drawings are always a bit lackluster to me, but the images come alive when I silkscreen the pigments on the paper - a reason I love my process, something about the way the pigment sits atop the paper and transforms a design into this brightly saturated image with a life of it's own. I will post images of the complete line when they are in there final form.

1)Savannah Oaks     2)Spring Flowers            3) Marsh Grasses