These are the elaborate crafts we’re doing these days. 🙂
Having a baby and naming him Axel? Or Tori? My friend Jenn is, so we made her a rockstar invitation to her shower!
Get your own customized, printable version to print on your own printer, or send to a local printer:
I love sports so much. Hahahaha, okay, biggest lie I’ve ever told. But I do love making things pretty, and making data easy to digest. So I jumped on the chance to make an infographic in the most recent issue of Wildcat, WSU’s magazine.
I also created a few other pages in this issue: Davion, Legendary, Who’s Waldo, and the tattoo on page 48. Maybe I should quit my day job and become a tattoo artist. Or not. Still on the fence over how I feel about that one. But it was a very fun spread!
Have I mentioned how much I LOVE being on an amazing team that writes great stuff, and comes up with striking ideas, and how we end up with cohesive pieces!? I love it. I love graphic design. I love my job.
And I really do mean sketchy. I’ve been attending sketchbook skool, and learning tons of great stuff form artists like Tommy Kane, Jane Lefazio (omg, what a character!), and more. So tell me world, how can I improve my skills? In particular, the people’s faces. The one is so bad, I can’t even post the face. I can’t.
My sister challenged us to do a week of service. And I watched a TED talk that discussed the value of gratitude journaling. I documented my week in sketch form. I’m starting with this, so you can see how bad my facial drawings are. 
Help. Sorry Annie, I promise you’re much cuter than depicted here.
This isn’t your average ‘Thanks!’ card. It pushes the limits of Rad. It’s the Rad-O-Meter at full throttle. Seriously. Which would you rather receive?
This:
Or this:
I really hope you picked the first. The second makes me sad. Ugly things that could be pretty with a bit of attention make me sad. But that’s rude, and it’s another story.
Front is hand-drawn, then printed on heavy cover stock. Back is blank to send with a stamp. Or throw it in an envelope with an airhead. Nom.
Sister Tayzia has a pet rat named baby. Ew. Whatever. Sister Tayzia left to Texas for a few years. Leaving lucky mom with pet rat. Sister Mitzi is very likely the MOST creative person I know. She’s around creative fourth graders all day. Sister Mitzi wanted to send sister Tayzia a cute package. So she created an amazing story about baby:
Continue reading “You’ll never meet a rat with a better adventure than this one.”
I’m going to write about graphic design today, which is not exactly crafty in the traditional sense, but it is artsy and creative, which is kind of crafty (?), so bear with me.
My paying gigs (WSU & ICE) are doing graphic design. I work with a team who does all the hard work: meet with clients, write text, take photos and make beautiful art. I get to do the fun and easy part: combine all of that hard work into one piece that sells. Or gets people to an event. Or raises awareness.
A recent design project was to promote an engineering day for 6th-9th grade girls. Our client provided the info, and our writers wrote. Then I scoured stock photo/illustration sites to find some elements that screamed teenage-girl-turned-engineer:
Next I combined it all into a poster, flier, tshirt, newspaper ad and online ad:
The event reached the registration maximum and even made the local news. I absolutely love seeing my design out in the real world. Must be my ego, but it is super fulfilling to see something I made in so many places.
We love sending hand-written letters to people! Only problem: my 7 month old baby is just not that great at it yet. Or maybe she is. She just needs a little help. What she is super great at, is knowing when my phone camera is on. It’s a skill, I’ll never understand. Anyway, we wanted to write some letters to our family, so we pulled out the cards and pen. Got situated in our writing position, and away we went. Well, eventually. Check it out. Here is the final result:
And here is the process:
See? Very little help needed. She’s perfect. Or I’m obsessed. Let’s go with the first. 🙂
[10.20.13 Edit] Jess received the CUTEST response, thanks Joey!!
As you may well know, I’m a sucker for every kind of craft. Okay, well, I’ve given up on scrap-booking, because, well, there just isn’t enough time to do every kind of craft. But lately I LOVE creating fabric patterns. I’ve done a zombie monster pillow and a baby alphabet career book. But my latest fabric creation: forest animals! Complete with some trendy chevron, woodland colors and all. 🙂
I think they would make an adorable purse, or baby blanket. What would you make with it?
Em is Crafty 