Dishware

I wanted to share some pictures from the Certified International showroom at the Atlanta Gift Show. This was such a highlight of the trip for me, walking into the showroom and seeing my new collections with them on an endcap and center display table. It was a moment when I felt my heart racing with excitement as I saw the dishes for the first time myself.

I've always wanted to design for dishware. I love setting a beautiful table with personality and color. I like all things 'kitchen'- especially a good meal! My sister and I used to regularly check the sale area at Hudson's for our favorite dishes on clearance. Then we would piece together place settings from the bargains we would find. I think it feels festive and fun to have different moods to my plates for entertaining and eating. I've had to purge out many dishware collections through the years due to lack of storage. But now I think it's time to splurge and have fun with them again!!

The new collections I have with Certified are Modern Garden and Vino/Appetizers. Can't wait to get my own sets and toast to life, color, flowers and friends!

Atlanta Gift Show- Gregg Gifts

Meet "Bee Happy" with Gregg Gifts! The Atlanta Gift Show was my first chance to see the pieces all together- tote bag, bible cover, coin purse, ceramic keepsake box, hanging plaque and mug. The bee is embroidered on the cloth pieces to give it that added pop. And the colors on the ceramics are rich and vibrant! The people at Gregg Gifts have all been so nice to work with- they have such great quality and beautiful products. I'm honored to be included with the wonderful range of artists they work with.

And here are two of my garden flags, also with Gregg Gifts. What a happy day to see these in their showroom!

Atlanta Gift Show

Wow! New year and it feels great already! The holiday season feels like a blur, partly because the time was filled with kids home all day for the winter break (3 weeks off school) and my husband with vacation time and I was trying to get ready for 2 shows in January while doing a freelance project. Very full December. Still, I got to see some great movies (Avatar, It's Complicated, Julie & Julia, Alvin the Squeakquel) and spend some delicious time with my family.

So into January and a new decade. It started off with a great trip to Atlanta for the Atlanta Gift Show. It was my first time ever in Atlanta and on my visit they have a freak winter storm, complete with snow, more snow and iced-over roads. And cold...yes, I am a wimpy Southern California girl and remember clearly why I live someplace warm now. But it was a lovely city and a fun trip. My agent had a booth in the License and Design section of the Mart and I really enjoyed meeting some other artists who I know from our licensing community through shows or online forums. A couple of them shown here...Ellen Crimi-Trent and Carol Eldridge and one with my good friend Darci Phillips of Phillips Allrich. I am constantly impressed with the creative ideas and enthusiasm of the artists I meet through this work. They are an immensely talented group of people.

More to come on Atlanta...dishware and giftware!

The Seasons of Decoration

I spend so much time cleaning up and trying to clear things out...the big declutter.  Then October hits and it is all out the window. We have entered the Seasons of Decoration. The kids could hardly wait for October and now that it is upon us the house is full of stuff. 

Fall is the time of decoration. First Halloween with spooky delights. Then Thanksgiving harvest and then of course the Grand daddy of holidays- Christmas. For Halloween we do simple decorations but the house still feels different to me. It can be as simple as the focus on color palette- adding black, playing with orange, rearranging and combining. And of course sometimes it's the treasures hidden away for 12 months, waiting to come out and play. I have to admit I really love some of my specially selected holiday decorations. They have personality. Pedro my Day of the Dead skeleton keeps me company while I cook. I'm tempted to keep him out all year.

Simple. Warm colors. Fall harvest, October oranges...enjoy...

Halloween Stamps

October is here...time to get in the Halloween spirit! Thanks again to the great designers with American Art Stamp for all the creative delights with my stamps!! Top to bottom, the designers are Janine Orchard (top two pumpkin cards), Amy Rohl, and Christina Fischer. Check out more of their great creations at American Art Stamp!

My Young Seamstress

My daughter finished a quilt making class and this is her quilt. It is actually not the first quilt she's made. My mother, an avid sewer and quilter, has worked on numerous projects with her, but they have been the size for her American Girl doll. She has her own sewing machine and supplies and is quite motivated to create things. I couldn't be prouder. My grandmother loved Vogue patterns and making fashionable clothes. My mother made many outfits for us, whirring away on her Pfaff sewing machine, an early gift from my father. It was sturdy and made from steel, like the kinds you'd see in a factory. It was a scary machine with the middle speeds burned out so it went from barely moving to full race car. It had a tempermental knee pedal and that is the machine I learned to sew on. Now I am not a great seamstress by any means. To me, sewing is a creative activity for exploring stitch and texture on quilts, fabric or paper and mixed media. I sew up the binding on a book mock-up, make bags and totes, and shorten jeans, basic stuff. But I do know the difference between a raglan sleeve and a set-in sleeve and some parts come back to me with just a little reminding. And as for the old Pfaff, well today my mother does most of her sewing with her smooth-purring Bernina on numerous creative and contemporary quilts, making colorful, textural art pieces.

So I am very happy to see my 10 year old daughter have an interest in sewing. When some friends were over for dinner the other night, her friend had a small rip in her dress that started to spread. My daughter got out her sewing machine and fixed the dress while the rest of the kids were swimming in the pool and having fun. Sometimes I think she is 10 going on 40. She looked satisfied that she could do it and I didn't help her at all. She creates projects in her mind to make. Is this something that is passed down and is in your blood? I can feel the influence of generations of women in our family that have sewn and created with fabric and thread.

And all of it made with love.

Gentle Pushes

my dear friend Corine...my friend whose writing makes me laugh and sigh and opens a door to the soul- you feel like you KNOW her when you read her posts. And I am blessed to actually KNOW her, to know the real person and know the she is as spendid as the writing would entice you to believe. She is a gift.

I ran into Corine today. We had a brief discussion on the walk up to the school to pickup kids, and it was a fun moment laughing about the HOARDERS show on A&E. She had just blogged about it. I had just watched an episode my husband recorded this weekend (strategically left in the recorder in hopes of motivating me). It was the first time I had seen it. I sat up watching past midnight while everyone else slept...horrified, not by the people, but by the similarities I shared with them. My heart was pounding in an uncomfortable way, exposed, uncertain, shaky. Yes, I can walk through my rooms. Yes, most of my house is pretty normal and streamlined. But my office...well, it is my territory of cluttered, saved, stored, smooshed, piled and lost items. And a lot of other hidden spaces are as well, including the coat closet, my clothes closet, the laundry room, the pantry, the linen cupboard...ANY cupboard. The show ended and I got up. 1am.  While everyone else slept I cleaned out the space under the bathroom sink, wishing instead I had a dump truck outside and could start on my office, knowing I needed to go back to sleep so I could tackle more with the early morning light. 

And tackle more I did. 8 bags of recycling later and finally finishing some badly needed paperwork. My friend Susan came over and helped me go through some piles and a milk crate of papers that I have been carting around for over a year. It was uncomfortable to have someone else go through MY stuff. She commented that I started working faster because of the panic at having someone else do it. Yes. Sometimes a kick in the butt is what we need. A flame to the fire. Getting out of our comfort zone.

The clean-up is still in progress but it is so incredibly motivating. I believe you do need to make room for the new. If your space is too full, then you don't have breathing space to let the new wonderful prospects come to you. Every time I declutter I find money, gift cards, unexpected surprises and treasures. And wonderful things happen...the call about a new project, a submission gets excepted, something good comes to fruition. The space makes new things bloom. It's like I am asleep under a warm and heavy wool blanket and when I throw the covers off I find Spring has come and it's glorious.

So back to Corine and today. We talked about how the Universe can give you that push to move you forward when you can not do it for yourself. It comes in uncomfortable ways like losing the job that was crushing your soul so you can move into work that makes your heart sing. Disappointment from a friend so you become stronger on your own. And even having a hard drive crash so you don't waste time in the past but work with what is new and fresh in your mind. Ouch. It all hurts. But there is a valuable push in there somewhere. It is part of releasing the clutter, clearing the space and more importantly, clearing the mind.

Ah, and now I must listen to my own words. No, my hard drive did not crash, thank goodness and knock on wood. But I have felt the push. As I visited Corine's site, I saw the images of my fabrics, ready for the world to see. 

And my heart about stopped.

 

Yes, they are out in stores and I am proud of them. But I have been waiting for the time to show them more, to send them to other blogs, when I have sample items made to REALLY show the fabrics more.  Waiting for...waiting for what? Why not now? Corine, you have given me a needed push I had not given myself. Show it more to the world. Get out of my comfort zone. So I am going to try to live according to my own advice (ouch again!) and be living what is new and fresh in my mind and not hoarding my gifts to share and stalling in my "someday" cluttered talk in my head. 

Thank you my dear friend for my needed push.

Hugs...