Salvaged t-shirt

Miss M outgrew her Snow White shirt, so we cut out Snow White and
sewed her onto a new shirt!
A little zigzag on the sleeves and hem, and suddenly we have friends
asking where we got such a boutique-y shirt.

Fancypants #2

Last night's project

Okay, so my friend came over last night with some holey jeans she
wanted to patch up, so we turned it into a jean project night...
At the end of the night, we got into buttons, which - of course - have
to be used in much moderation... And these pants, who have been
awaiting some ornamentation, finally got their fix.
When she emails me photos of her pants, I'll post them...
This got me thinking... I think I want to maybe do a Summer Camp for
women... One night at a time, and call it "fancypants" ... Where women
would bring their jeans and pants and we could do embellishments on
them... What do you think?

Today's smile

The Design Director and me

So we were off to another princess birthday party last weekend - this time for 4 year old twins, and I decided I didn't like the gifts I had bought for them...

ahhhhh.... well, the 3.5 year old Design Director and I got to work... and we made these with some fun supplies we had laying around here.
of course, she had to have one as well... but the fun part was that she did make a lot of the decisions herself - 4 flowers in each garden, since they are 4, which colors, which buttons for the sunshines... we had a lot of fun putting these together... and they didn't take all that long.

The best part is that we found another use for Great-Grandma's yoyos... so we carry more of her treasures with us through life, and pass them on to other friends.

I have the coolest friends (Nichole at cupcream)

So my friend Nichole is my favorite superhero. She's an awesome mom, a miraculously fast seamstress, a fabulous designer, a great Disneyland date, and she's really really responsible for much of the figuring out of my skirt pattern - how to get all the different sizes, and she helped me put legs to the DoHippy bag design , which was only sketches until she came along.


She's also an unselfish friend, who is into helping other women business owners and I met her by the recommendation of Jill at AllyZabba...

Well, we own a couple of her Avery's Closet dresses for Miss M, but she recently (finally!) launched a website where you can get her classic-ly designed little girl dresses. They're fabulous and we ordered them a little big because M likes them so much that she wears them every chance she gets.
Hooray for new website launches! Visit www.cupcream.com
(and many congrats on the new *real* baby, too, Nichole!)

For the love of tshirts

Ok, so I love shirts and I love love anything with strawberries on it.
I picked this one up at Target, and the kids hadn't seen it, but I am
so happy I got it... It was blue, so I almost didn't get it, but when
I picked up M from school today in it, she squealed about it because
she thought it was so funny... That was worth the price of admission.
Z noticed it too and asked what the strawberry's name was...
Though this one is an obvious comment getter, they notice even little
details like jewelry choices or shoe design... my kids are destined to
dabble in design at some point...

Save the shoes... The skirt's going into the wash...

90210 coffee stains and all...

Out in beverly hills

We were at a coffee shop in beverly hills today with tifanie before picking up m from school... It was a fun time, complete with shopping at anthropologie, but was capped off by the perfect 90210 quote... As we left the restaurant in a small rush, I dropped my latte and it splattered up all over my cream colored vintage fabric skirt and my bone shoes. As I was checking Z to map sure he wasnt burned, someone shouted, "oh no! And you are wearing white shoes!"
Never mind the scalding hot coffee everywhere, SAVE THE SHOES!

Worlds collide

This photo makes me laugh. Back in my "glorious" days of textile (read: carpet) design I knew the pattern name and manufacturer of this carpet... Now, just like the rest of the world, the carpet is just a distraction to the image I wanted to get....

We used to make carpet and hope it could be considered art... We gave it names like "oxygen" and "soul"... And in the end, it was just walked on.

Talk about a great learning ground (no pun intended) for design... Work like it is high design, and eat humble pie in the end, so you can never really get a big head... I'm glad I started out that way... And I love where I am now, too. Even with packages on my dining room table and a studio that never gets organized due to my constant influx of inspiration.

I must say, I have loved the journey so far. Its been a great story and I know its just gonna get better.

From public relations to art history to drawing to a summer in Italy doing figure drawing and textile design to carpet design to jewelry and collage to studying painting at the Art Institute of Chicago to skirts, bags, baby slings and more jewelry to.... Who knows????