Thursday Things

Sooo, I'm working on a new item for the shop and I feel equally excited and frustrated by it. It's a journal, see! I've been wanting to do these for a while now but kind of put it off, because while I have a bit of bookbinding experience, I haven't done any in a while and definitely wouldn't call myself an expert. So I've been practicing and playing around with it and I'm just very, very impatient to get a perfect finished product. My first try was better than I expected, though. Good enough for me to carry around in my bag, or for like, my mom. Who is great! And more about her in a minute.


But for now: the journal. It measures about 4.75" x 6.5" and has 144 soft white, unlined pages. The cover will feature the Nesting illustration and the bookcloth is a yummy chocolate brown. I also designed a pattern of the hairbirds from Nesting to use as the endpapers. I'm pretty into the paper, actually, and am devising more ways to use it. Wrapping paper, perhaps? I dunno. But hopefully there will be one or two perfectly perfect journals in the shop very soon.

On to my cute and nice mom. As a faithful reader of my interviews she noticed I keep mentioning my love of illustrator Maxfield Parrish. And it's true, I love him. And growing up my grandfather had a first-edition copy of Eugene Field's Poems of Childhood, which was illustrated by our friend Maxfield, and that I was pretty obsessed with. Somehow, though, the book mysteriously disappeared(!) and it was sad. So my mom, being cute and all, recently went and found me a copy.


So great! I just love it. And, it features one of my very favoritest images of all time, The Dinky-Bird. My dad actually had a poster of this made for me which I had all through high school and in my first couple of apartments in college until (!) it mysteriously disappeared as well. Something's going on here. Seriously.


But anyway, the best thing about this illustration is that in the poem it accompanies (which you can read here, if you like) the Dinky-Bird is described as a bird, basically; a bird, with feathers, who sings in a tree. But! The illustration is definitely not of a bird. It's instead a eunuch, of sorts, with really frizzy hair. On a swing. In the clouds. Amazing.

Oh, All Sorts of Stuff

First off, I'm way excited to have one of my illustrations doing some actual good old-fashioned illustrating in the current issue of N.E.E.T. Magazine.


Check out our old friend Lengthening in a feature on natural beauty products:


A perfect fit, I think. I didn't know exactly how my piece was going to be used until the issue came out and I'm quite delighted with it. So thank you and thumbs way up to Stephanie for putting together another great issue. Go read the whole thing here.

I'm also pretty excited about a little package I found hanging on my door this morning. I'm working on some Day of the Dead-themed wedding invitations and my very awesome friend and neighbor, Raquel, left me a little goody bag of amazing items to reference for my work. She is the best, and this stuff is sooo great! Look, look:


I'm obviously most enamored with the mariachi band in the little box (that whole small thing again) but it's all exactly what I was looking for in terms of inspiration and I'm gonna start drawing the second I stop typing this. Right now!