Fresh from the studio…happy news and happy mail.

Time to Make the Donuts...and the cupcakes, and the macarons, and the cake, and the pizza…and the kitty cats. We've been saying it for years…we feel like a bakery. Of course there's the visual similarities…and then there's the way we work. Batches and batches of handmade goods all lined up...drying as if they're on cooling racks…waiting to be frosted…or varnished…and then the dozens of sweet items are nestled into pink bakery boxes and tied with classic bakers twine.

We try to orchestrate our workday so that all of items get finished in the evening. The following morning we come downstairs to our worktable which is stacked with the pieces we finished the night before, plus bakery boxes, tissue paper, our big jar of taffy, little bags, Thank You stickers, and a couple varieties of shimmery confetti. 

This way, the dirty work has all been completed, and the workday at hand is solely about making everything pretty and presentable. 

Besides all of the "time to make the donuts" days, we've had some other projects we've been chipping away at here and there. We love making use of our sticker sheets any chance we get. In the above project I used some of our "Talk & Thought Bubble" stickers. 

Looking at this pic I had a flashback to last winter. Aaron took one of these sweet gals and stuck her to the faucet to remind us to keep the water trickling so that the pipes wouldn't freeze. But guess what…the pipes froze anyway…a couple of days before we left for our trip to CHA in California.

 Oh geez I am so not ready for Winter. We're actually planning on another California trip for this Winter. Probably for February, or maybe even March. We've been dying to get back out there. We're working on setting up some teaching dates. I'll keep you posted when I learn more specifics. Can't wait!!

You might remember that we had hinted at something fun and exciting that involved our Art Journaling. Well we can let you in on it now…Yep, that's our names on the cover of the Autumn issue of Art Journaling Magazine, which is one of our absolute favorite mags! 

It's always packed with so much eye candy and features so many talented Art Journalers. Every issue is big and thick, and is book quality. We've heard from a few folks that they already have it. So check your local Barnes & Noble, Michaels, etc…it might be on the shelves right now.

I can't wait to get our hands on it! We have a 10 page spread and interview. Say whaaaat?! It's such an honor! 

The other day one of the sweetest packages arrived at our door, and it was totally unexpected. It was from our dear friend Julie…aka Wonder Woman. Julie not only beat cancer…she shared her experience with all of her friends and kept smiling the whole way through. So inspiring. And she's one of the sweetest gals we know…seriously gives the best hugs ever!  There were so many sweet things in this package...incredible homemade jam…lots of gifts…and up above is one of her handmade bracelets. So clever and crazy cute! Made with a vintage tin toy race car, which is even more lightweight than the beads. I love it! 

And while we are talking about cute things…you may already know that we are big big fans and collectors of vintage birthday party ephemera. These little plastic candle holders are not only in the original cardboard packaging…the cellophane is also unbroken. I adore the graphics! That cake is soooo cute.

And we also grabbed these vintage birthday party place cards. They melt my heart with their hand written names. 

Ok, that's it for now…just stopped in for a little hi and hello. Thanks so much for reading!

xo, Jenny…and Aaron says hi and hello as well!  

Eat More Cake Art Journal Spread

I find Art Journaling to be such a break from the everyday work. In our "real" work everything has to be so perfect. And I feel like Art Journaling is the opposite of that. It's a chance to be haphazard and messy. It had been a long few days of making, packing & shipping, and while the clear coat on a bunch of die cuts was drying I found some time to play around in one of my Art Journals. This is one of my smaller Moleskine journals and it's nearly filled up. This is one of the basic Molskines with the very thin pages. Prior to doing this spread I had went ahead and bolstered most of the pages with extra layers of paper and paint. Me and Aaron each have several Art Journals and jump back and forth between all of them.

Many times with me, an Art Journal page or spread begins with a vague idea that's related to a certain image or piece of ephemera that I'd like to use. In this case, it was this birthday cake image I had cut out from a piece of vintage wrapping paper. Everything about this image makes me swoon! I just had to use it. So I started the page by painting simple oval shapes in pink and cream, and then pieced in some pink and cream stripe paper. A lot of times when I'm doing a spread, meaning two pages, I like to make the pages mirror each other in some way. Sometimes I do one full composition that spreads across the two pages. But here I wanted it to be two separate pages that fit together perfectly.

Then I did some sketchy colored pencil outlines around the ovals, and added some paint spatters. Like I said…haphazard and messy is what I'm about when it comes to Art Journaling.

Besides the cake, I felt like the spread needed a muse. A face to be the spokesperson. And who better than this little chubby faced doll. I love using my collections in my spreads without actually "using" my collections. I just snapped a pretty close and clear photo of the cutie and printed her out.

I then glued her in with some decoupage medium. And from that same piece of vintage wrapping paper I cut out the corresponding slice of birthday cake and put it in her hand. I didn't want the page to be all pale color, so I then added some bright berry pink polkadots with a dauber, some Sharpie pen doodles, and bit of bright aqua paint details.

I knew I needed washi tape somewhere on the spread. I always need washi tape!

I selected my washi tapes and then pulled out my vintage printers tray full of all my bits and pieces.

Last week I had made these tags using my fave Ashley G stamps. I def wanted to use one of these!

I love how well black compliments pretty pastels. I added some more sketchy details with my Sharpie and also a bunch of stamped flourishes. I remember when flourishes were all the rage. I've got tons! I wish I knew who made these. I don't have the original packaging, and I doubt they make these anymore.

So I taped in my cute girl tag with a bit of metallic gold striped washi. I love how it compliments her gold glittered skirt.

I used some fairly crude handwriting skills to render these letters and cut them out of aqua polk dot paper. I adhered them to the page but then felt that they needed to pop a bit more. So I added a drop shadow with some tan paint, and used my sharpie pen to add "stitching".

I glued in some pink sequins for a bit of shimmer.

And while I was in shimmer mode I figured I'd add some glitter. I keep my most used glitters in this adorable chicken wire wall rack.

I added some ultra fine gold glitter to the candle flames.

Just wanted to share some of my Art Journaling with you guys. I plan on sharing a bunch more…I had been Art Journal all this time but I wasn't taking the time to take in progress photos. I'll try to do this a lot more. And yes…I 100% believe that we should all Eat More Cake.

Not so much that we blow up like a paint and paper filled Art Journal…but you know what I mean. :) I still get a kick out of watching a new moleskine go from the skinny guy on the bottom to the chubby colorful guy on top. 

Thanks for reading! And Happy Art Journaling to you!

xo, Jenny…and Aaron says hi!

A peek into our Art Journals

A peek into our Art Journals…this is going to be a recurring series for us. Every single day we are working on art in one form or another. It's our job. But we still make art for pleasure, and this usually happens in the pages of our Art Journals. For us, the Art Journal is the one venue that is strictly personal, fun, and loose. We can have a vague idea and get started on it in an instant. We don't have to plan it out, or work hard on pre-sketches or tracings. We can just go go go. 

So, we thought this would be a great thing to share with you guys. Teaching art is one of our absolute favorite things to do. It feels so good to be able to impart to others even the slightest bit of knowledge from our nearly two decades of being professional artists. And Art Journaling is probably one of the fastest and simplest ways to get right down to a person's creative source. There aren't any rules or expectations. Your Art Journal is what you make it. 

It has now been almost two years since we have done our weekly Art Journaling tutorials here on the blog. It was really Hurricane Sandy that ended the series so abruptly. And then life got hectic, and then we got busy…we wrote our book…designed a scrapbooking line…and also kept our business going. But those tutorials WILL return. We aren't sure exactly when…but we are looking forward to doing full step-by-step pages and spreads with you guys again. For now we'd like to periodically share glimpses into our Art Journals just to show you all what we're up to, and to hopefully inspire some of you to do more Art Journaling of your own. 

Ok, now lets talk a little bit about our latest pages. "Take Me To The Sea", is a page I had worked on in my spare time this past week. You may have seen pics of it on Facebook or Instagram. I really wanted to do something summery before the season ended. That was my initial inspiration…Summer.

One of my favorite parts of the Art Journaling process is gathering my supplies. And I don't just mean paint and stuff like that. I love digging for the source material…old photos, ephemera, papers, and even phrases I had scribbled somewhere in a notebook. 

The girls in this spread are from a book of paper dolls from the late 1940s or early 50s. I set them against a new beach and ocean that I painted, and I gave them new bathing suits that I made from floral scrapbooking papers. I guess the most obvious aspects of their makeover are the tattoos and pastel colored hair. This was my way of updating them a bit. I took classic gals from the 1940s, and made them into classic gals of 2014. At beaches in our neck of the woods, gals with lavender hair and dozens of tattoos are de rigueur. 

I just used pencil to quickly sketch some basic tattoos all over the gals, and then gave them pops of color with a tiny brush and acrylic paint. I wasn't worried about the details really. I was just trying to give the overall impression of lots of tattoos.

And the banner was inspired by vintage beach postcards. I love those so much. I can stare at them for hours. The colors are so dreamy…which is what inspired our seashore bathroom here at home. I also love the old classic lettering style. I think I may have had the phrase "Take Me To The Sea" fixed in my mind before I had even started the page. And the designs on old postcards so often will include gorgeous florals. I love combining lush floral clusters with beach scenes. They go together so perfectly. The florals here were clusters that I cut out from scrapbooking paper and then I totally repainted them to have my colors and bold outlines.

Ok, now I'm actually going to hand the keyboard over to Aaron so he can personally explain his own pages. Take it away Aar...

Aaron: 

In my Art Journal I often like to try to capture trivial little memories. One morning last week I was thinking about the yellow rotary phone that was in my parent's kitchen when I was kid. Yes, I'm a child of the 80s. I have all of these childhood stories that center around the memory of that phone. To name one…prank phone calls. If you were a kid in the 70s or 80s I'm guessing you made your fair share of prank phone calls. I was the youngest of three boys…so when I was very young I borrowed my older brother's friends. I just tagged along with them and did what they were doing…precocious by way of convenience. Anyway, those were magical times. Riding bikes, running around up on the wooded beach behind my house, going to the local swim club, all that stuff. 

So, prank phone calls were simply a fact of life. You and your friends could center an entire evening around silly phone calls. As you can read in the little note above, there was this mean photo of my dad right there in the center of the dial. My parents were funny like that. The photo was serious…my dad really didn't want us abusing the phone for silly purposes. But the photo was also tongue in cheek. We were supposed to fear it…but we also knew that the whole idea of it was funny. I of course don't possess the actual mean photo of my dad, so for the purposes of this Art Journal I just had Jenny snap a pic of me looking a bit mean. My dad had the same beard in that era…and we definitely resemble one another…so I figured I'd pose for the reenactment. And yes, the pic in the bottom right corner is Tanner Boyle from The Bad News Bears. I had that hair at that age, and in my memory every single kid in the world looked like that in my childhood. So Tanner simply represents youth of that generation. The station wagon on the opposite page of the spread is just a typical family car from then. My mom drove one that looked just like it, except her's was green. And I selected the yellow floral pattern behind the car because it looked like typical kitchen wallpaper from back then.

I laugh at the idea of telephone poles and cables…how they're serious and essential constructs of modern civilization…but us dopey kids were crowding up the lines with our dumb jokes. And the sketch I did of the blue victorian house on the left is my childhood home…which is still my parent's house today.

Both Jenny and I paste phone book pages into our Art Journals all the time, just to bolster the pages, and we also like how the small print adds texture to the page. We usually gesso over it and let just bits of it peek through. But in this case, the phone book page was totally fitting. I really like to combine photographs, patterned papers, sketching, and hand painting. And if I can use these elements to tell even a simple little story, then I'm happy with my spread.

Ok guys, hope you all liked taking a peek into our Art Journals. Like I said, we'll share glimpses as often as we can. And real deal tutorials are coming back…I promise.

xo, Jenny & Aaron

Life Lately

Me and Aaron kinda have a pattern that we fall into over and over. We make new art, and then get busy with orders and other things, and then gradually make some headway, thus making more time for making new art…and then the whole process repeats. Right now we're in the middle of making some headway, so we've got lots of creative projects starting up. The first thing we tackled over this past weekend was a little unfinished business. When we painted our pink frosted doughnut last month we had also started a chocolate frosted one, but we had to put that painting aside for bit in order to fulfill some orders. So, with our smidge of spare time over the weekend, we finished the chocolate doughnut! We love how it came out.

Oh, and do you see these doughnuts in the foreground?….they are vintage play food from 1987! And they are scented. They still smell like "Donuts"!

Here's a better view. We also have four munchkins that came with the set. They're from Dunkin Donuts. I've seen sets on ebay that come with the original Dunkin Donuts box, and they're pretty darn pricey.

So yes, being that we're debuting the chocolate frosted doughnut, and will possibly debut some other new pieces, we're keeping our Summer Sale going a little bit longer.

Once again, over the weekend we shipped out a bunch of orders. We love to see so much art going off to new homes.

And the good mail wasn't just outgoing. There was some great incoming as well!! We had to wake Lt. Dan up from a nap to tell him that he and his brother had received gifts from our friend Kimberlee. 

Kimberlee's signature color is black, hence the black bonies for the boys. And she also is very accustomed to big dogs. These would be tiny treats for her pup…but in order for our guys to make any sort of progress with these, we had to first break them up into smaller pieces! so funny. They loved them!

Kimberlee also hunted down the sparkly aqua collar we had been wanting for Lt. Dan…but wouldn't you know it…he is such a tiny peanut…so the collar was too big. We think it's the perfect hand-me-up for his big brother Carlos. Fits great, and it looks so good with his black coat. This pic here is after the two boys did plenty of running around like nuts. 

 Kimberlee always sends the most incredible care packages…just so thoughtful!! One of the treasures included was this incredible vintage wedding couple. Her arm grasps his! So darling! They look so sweet atop one of our faux cakes. 

Also over the weekend I pulled out my art journal for the first time in a couple weeks. I've been so occupied with orders and canvases that my journal has been lying there neglected. But that's what an art journal is for…you can open it and get to work whenever the mood strikes. And then close it up and put it to the side until the mood strikes again. Our journals don't mind that we artists are fair weather friends. 

I always notice that I do my work-work up on tables…and I do my play-work down on the floor. Probably because I'm being looser with my creativity when it's playtime. I might not have anything specific in mind, and when there isn't a set plan, it's good to be able to spread all of my supplies on the floor around me. I make a massive mess. 

Do any of you guys have similar work/play habits?

And yup, we also chipped away on the pink moldings while orders dried. We never get to do home projects in one sitting. They get spread out over many days.

Ok…this next thing is more than a big deal. Do you see the lovely Lt. Dan? And do you see that piece of artwork beside him? Well that is an original from Mary Engelbreit herself!!! It would be impossible for me to overstate what fans me and Aaron have always been of Mary. For 20 years she has been our hero in the world of art. So, when this gift from her arrived in the mail we were both in tears. It says: "for Jenny & Aaron, with thanks & love. Mary Engelbreit"

The greatest surprise ever! We will treasure it always! So so so so kind of Mary to take the time to make this very special piece of art. If you woulda told the 17 year old me that Mary E would send me an original painting one day, I seriously wouldn't believe you. Well, for that matter…if you told me even as recently as last week, I still wouldn't have believed you!  

Also over the weekend we finished up a bunch of hand painted signs and die cuts that are all going to a very special home. 

 These two are a couple of my faves.

And lastly, here's a great little pic to send you off on your way. I walked in the room with the camera and called the little peanut. This is exactly how much he peeked. And then I think he went back to his nap. I love this teeny tiny speck of love.

Ok, just wanted to check in. We expect to get very creative over the next couple of weeks. We hope to have some great stuff for show & tell!

thanks for reading, xo Jenny…and Aaron says hi!

Hooray! "The Sweet Life" hits stores this week!

Today was definitely a good mail day for us! And hopefully there's an equal feeling of excitement being felt at shops around the country...and the world. In our mailbox was a package full of items from our scrapbooking collection "The Sweet Life", which is the first offering from our partnership with Melissa Frances...and we couldn't be more excited about it. And if it arrived in our mailbox today, then that means that there is a pretty good chance that lots and lots of stores have received their shipments of the collection as well. Which is SUPER exciting!

 On the one hand it feels like we've been waiting forever for it to arrive...and on the other it feels like just yesterday that we were designing the stuff. A major highlight in the whole process was our trip to CHA. Just being there with the line and having the chance to talk with all the shop owners who will be carrying the collection was such thrill. Everyone was so enthusiastic about the collection...and probably one of the coolest things was how many times we'd meet someone at CHA and it turned out that they have been longtime readers of the blog. Also, so many shop owners came to check out our line after being tipped off by one of our faithful readers...which just totally melts our hearts. A huge thank you to all of you who have been cheering us on from day one! We hope you love the collection as much as we loved designing and painting it!

In today's package there were lots of goodies. Above you'll see chipboard pieces, Washi Stickers, Treat bags, journaling cards, and sweet saying stickers.

And this here is a very very cute mini book kit! It comes with everything that you see here! 

I love this tiny little "Sprinkle every day with Fun" element! Look at our tiny ice cream cone! 

There are so many sweet little bits to adorn your pages! 

It is really such a fun little kit! 

And the journaling cards are so adorable! They would be perfect for project life! 

I love seeing our bunny here rendered chalkboard style.

And treat bags! Aren't they so sweet?! You get this variety of 4 in each pack! 

We are just so excited to have these in our hands. Cannot wait to start creating and crafting! 

And of course our papers! 6 Double sided sheets! We blogged all about our special design process...each pattern is hand painted by us. 

Oh and I just had to share these pics that Carolyn Peeler sent us. Carolyn, who you may know, is the Senior Creative Director at Melissa Frances, and she was just in Norway teaching at a fabulous shop called Bikuben. We blogged about meeting the sweet owners Ellen and Egil at CHA, and later had a fantastic dinner date with them. Well, they carry "The Sweet Life" at Bikuben, and Carolyn took the trip there to teach some classes that featured our line. And from what we hear, they loved working with "The Sweet Life" collection! Carolyn asked the class attendees in the pic above to hold up their favorite papers! So fun right? Seriously, we LOVE putting our work in the hands of other artists and seeing how they go off in their own creative direction. 

And we just love these samples Carolyn colored using Copic markers. Above you can see the two sides of our paper titled "Mixed Media Doodles". One side has layers of vintage baking book pages collaged with some of our abstract painting strokes. And the other is an antique-y looking coloring book style page featuring Allie & Amy! some of our roses, a cake, cupcakes, a bunting banner, scrollwork, and other things that are ready and waiting for you to work your magic on! Perfect for Art Journaling! 

We will be carrying "The Sweet Life" collection in our shop very soon! But you can always let your favorite loal shop know about it as well! Thanks bunches for popping in and for being such awesome cheerleaders! We couldn't have made this collection without you all.

xo Jenny & Aaron