Pinterest

I was recently introduced to "Pinterest," an amazing website where you can "pin" things you love and want to share with others. You can organize your pins by categories on "boards." Being someone who is always saving scraps of paper with doodles, illustrations from magazines I love, and other treasures, this is a fabulous virtual version to satisfy my hoarding tendencies. I also have tons of bookmarked pages on my computer, where I save things I find that inspire me. I find Pinterest to be a better way to "save" things I see online, and to share them with others. Here's a snapshot of my current boards, and a link to my boards online. You've got to check this site out! Right now you can only join by invitation; if you are interested just let me know and I'll invite you. I'd love to have more than 3 followers...

Ivory Tower

Wanted to share with you the front of a  postcard I just finished, for promoting the Townsend Humanities Lab (a collaborative humanities research website created by my employer).  The challenge here was to create something compelling with lots of images from the site, which were all super small and low resolution (and thus could not be very large on the card). We also wanted the postcard to be "fresh."  I thought this solution was a bit more fun than just a collage of square images or something like that.  Can't wait to get it back from the printer and start seeing it head out into the world!

Rain, Rain

Its been a very rainy few weeks here, and the forecast is only predicting more. I thought it fitting to share something I made while following this tutorial. Its got a kind of rainy feel. What's the weather like in your neck of the woods?

Sip, Sip: Barrel Tasting

This weekend some friends and I drove north to the Wine Road Barrel Tasting event. You pay one fee and then can tour all around the area visiting wineries, sampling wine, tasting delicious food pairings, listening to live music, & enjoying the scenery. 

 

Everything seems artful in wine country, even spills.  

 

A few of us enjoying some Zinfandel.

They serve the new wines straight from the barrel, and warn you that the bottled version will taste slightly different because it will age a bit more.You can buy "futures"--once the wine is bottled it will be sent to you.

I'm loving the color of wine-stained barrels. Degin inspiration everywhere!

I'm thankful for good friends and good times. :)

Just The Facts (And Some Pretty)

This week I had an assignment involving creating graphs in Adobe Illustrator. I decided to use this blog for some data, analyzing the category tags I post about most. So, here you have it! I incorporated a font that I am currently obsessed with (its called Cul de Sac) to help build the bars of data. I was also trying to break out of a color palette streak of blues and greens I've been in for awhile now, so I added some orange hues.

For the line graph requirement I used data from Boutique Girl's lovely shop of goodies. Remember Boutique Girl and our redesign project? It was fun to carry the look we created into a new type of document.

Pralines and Hurricanes

One of my colleagues just returned from New Orleans, and brought us some praline treats!  Aside from being delicious, I thought the box they came in was great, so I canned it for my design inspiration files. The flourishes and banners (which might seem gaudy elsewhere) are so appropriate, don't you think?

 

Speaking of The Big Easy, I am almost done with a book that takes place there. In Zeitoun, Dave Eggers offers an account of one man's ordeal at the hands of US military officials in the wake of hurricane Katrina. As I am reading this I keep thinking, "I can't believe this happened in 2005!" In any case, I recommend this book (which also has a pretty sweet cover design, if you ask me).