East Bay Mini Maker Faire 2014

This Sunday is the East Bay Mini Maker Faire in Oakland. I'll be there selling my Fluff Engine plush toys and patterns. Come check it out, it should be a ton of fun.

Plush You! in Seattle

Tonight is the opening party for Plush You! an awesome plush show, which I'm happy to say I'm a part of this year. It's curated and hosted by Schmancy, an neat designer toy shop in Seattle, WA.

Opening: October 10th, 2014
                5pm to 9pm

Schmancy
1972 2nd Avenue
Seattle, WA 98101
 

APE 2014

This weekend, October 4-5 is the Alternative Press Expo in San Francisco. I'll be there with my Fluff Engine toys sharing a table with Liz Prince, Alec Longstreth and Tugboat Press.

I'll have some new toy designs, like these squirrels and fish, plus the third issue of my Terrible Movie Nights zine.

Summer Wedding Party Dress

Along with the invitations, I designed and made a new dress for my wedding celebration. It was during Fiestas de Santa Fe so I looked to traditional fiesta dresses for inspiration. I found the cream colored lace fabric first and let that dictate a color that would pop out well. I've worked with gold lamé in the past and it frays so easily I wanted to find a gold with a little more body. The fabric I found is still very metallic but it has a shantung feel, so there are some more fibers running through it to give it more weight and it doesn't just fall apart when you cut it.

I did my best to incorporate special things in the day of the celebration. The buttons are from a Lilly Pulitzer mens jacket that belonged to Alec's grandfather, which I remade to fit me. The thicker bracelet belonged to my grandmother and my mom gave me the thinner bracelet. The locket was a high school graduation gift from my dad and brother. My wedding ring is from Alec's grandmother so I think I got a lot of family covered.

 I know we don't look super excited in this photo, but it shows the dress the best and we were very happy but we had a lot of photos to take.

CMYK Wedding invitation

This past weekend was my wedding celebration, and I designed the invitations. My initial color inspiration was the pinball machine Party Zone from 1991 which incorporates bright fluorescent colors. I quickly came to the realization that this party was not just my rave but a party for our families so I should keep it tasteful. To me fluorescent colors don't stand out well by white, it fades the brightness and I wasn't ready to use black as the background, so I dropped that idea. Instead I went with pure CMYK, to make it as bright as possible without using custom inks.

Making a Snail video

I nominated myself for the Martha Stewart American Made awards because I'm an American maker. While there is a panel of judges choosing the majority of the winners, there is also a spot for an audience favorite, so anyone can vote for their favorite maker from September 15 to October 13, 2014. For the application I made a little video about making a Snail Mail toy.

Cat Portrait: Dolly and Blue

My friends Angela is having an art show for her birthday and she asked me contribute something, so I painted her two adorable kitties, Dolly and Blue. When I get more info about the show I'll update this, but I'm assuming it will be in Oakland somewhere.
UPDATE: The art show is at MOCO 372 17th St, Oakland, CA 94612 and it should be up for the month of September.