Autumn Label Free Download

Well, I'm trying out my new Mediafire file hosting account, and to celebrate, here's a free download for you. It is a sheet of Autumn labels, made from my original photograph and hand drawn graphics. These would be cool to use for place settings at Thanksgiving, or for labeling your jars of home made pear sauce. Let me know what you decide to use them for!

More Spoonflower

What's that terrible noise coming from my optical drive?

I had just settled my kid down for the night, and I was really looking forward to watching the last episode of Mad Men Season 2 on my laptop. I had my little earphones and my power cord all plugged in, my pillows set just right, I opened up my trusty iBook G4 and heard this ghastly whirring noise coming from the dvd drive. The keyboard buckled as the motor tried to eject the dvd! Whirrrr-cha-chunk! Whirrrr-cha-chunk! The horror! As I took a closer look at the dvd slot, what did I see peeping out? Aha! It was the plastic crayon sharpener from my son's fancy Waldorf crayons, stuck 99.5% of the way into the slot! Grrr! I wonder how THAT could have gotten there? I vainly tried to use tweezers to grab onto the speck of plastic still protruding and managed of course to push it further in. As in all the way.

After I finished beating my head on the table, I searched for a tutorial on taking an OBJECT out of an optical drive, and while I did find a nicely photographed and extensive set of instructions at ifixit.com, the fact that there were 15 pages and like 38 steps (involving the complete evisceration of said laptop) made me slightly trepidatious about trying to "DIY" for real.

Tomorrow I shall take my laptop to my trusted computer shaman for him to perform the rituals necessary to retrieve something from the other side. I hope he has somewhere safe to keep all the screws. Oh, and tonight, I'm backing up my files.

Teapot Tags

I made these tags for a custom order, but I just had to post a photo, as they came out so cute! There are four different teapot colors with lovely colored borders. Of course they would be great for a tea party, but what about making book marks for your reading group, or tying one on a birthday party favor bag?

Spoonflower On-Demand Fabric Printing

I've tried numerous ways to get my designs onto fabric with limited success. Heat transfer is easy, but not long-lasting. Silk screening is gorgeous and durable, but it's a pain to do one-offs, and one needs equipment. Hand-painting is time-consuming making the finished produce very pricey.

Recently, I've discovered several on-demand fabric printing sites, my favorite being Spoonflower.

What I like so much about Spoonflower is how easy and fun it is to use. Simply sign up for a free account, and start uploading designs. Here's one I recently added.
But the fun part is being able to see your pattern in repeat.
You can see that they have lots of fabric options and sizes, as well as a choice of repeats. The one above is just a basic repeat of a pattern I designed to repeat.

This is a single image I repeated in the half-brick pattern, and edited online with their color changer tool to make a hot-pink background.

The other fun thing I really love about Spoonflower is their community. You can choose to share your designs with other users, and they can comment on or add your designs to their favorites. I've discovered some really neat designers, and when Spoonflower gets their Marketplace set up, you will actually be able to order yardage from other designers.

I've ordered a couple of my designs printed on their least expensive fabric, a quilting weight cotton, and I can't wait to see how they turn out!

Eight Great Reasons I Love Labels

It's true. I love labels. I love to make them, I love to buy them, I love to use them, I love just looking at them.

Here are Eight Great Reasons to Love Labels:

1. For labeling! You know, that shelf of craft supplies, those shoe boxes of photos, labels make your life easier (and prettier!).

2. Identifying my notebooks, sketchbooks & journals. I have many of these which I have labeled, for example, "Jewelry Ideas," or "Summer 2009."

3. Gift Tags. What could be easier than sticking these babies on all your holiday gifts? No more little tags and strings and ribbons and tape and mystery packages.

4. Address labels. Especially customized with your return address. A no-brainer.

5. Decorating envelopes and packages and letters. No wrapping paper? Use a brown paper bag and several decorative labels... voila! Instant gift wrap.

6. Faking a home made gift. I saw this in an issue of Martha Stewart Living, so you know it's a time honored tradition. Basically, you buy a jar of jam or olives or what have you, remove the store label, and replace it with your hand-written label. "Garlic-stuffed Olives." Pretty sweet.

7. For labeling your actual home made gifts.

8. Dressing up your photo albums and scrapbooks. You may not be a scrapper deluxe, but even the most minimalist photo album can be personalized with a few discreet hand-written labels. And if you are a scrapper deluxe, you know the pleasure of using labels as journaling spots.

So go ahead and make your life simpler, neater and just plain groovier with labels.

Kokeshi Doll Invitations

I finally finished them! I've had the idea for these fill-in flat card invites for a few weeks, ever since I had a chat with a friend of mine about what she wants in an invitation. I've tried to take her suggestions into account, and I hope these meet the needs of all you party-throwing folks out there!

These come in a set of eight, with matching envelopes and really nice glossy stickers. They are flat cards with space to write all your party information on the front, and lines on the back for
any additional info, such as bring a swim suit. My friend suggested keeping all the info on the front with the design so it can be posted on the fridge or corkboard and easily referred to.

I've made two colorways: Rose & Leaf, and Turquoise & Sunset. They will be available soon at my Etsy shop, and my 1000 Markets shop.