Thanks for giving my Fiancé the Heimlich Maneuver

My fiancé, Ben, almost choked on his lunch last week at work. Kurt came to the rescue and delivered the Heimlich Maneuver just in time!

This is the note that I am sending along with some chocolate chip cookies (and a bottle of wine) to Kurt. It is a very sincere note, but I couldn’t help but make a little joke with this thank you card. I mean, how often does someone save your fiancé’s life at work! He works in social media… it’s not really a high risk environment.

Hilarious right? and thank goodness these tiny spiraea florets came in today to further my “beyond hipster tongue in cheek” but still very very serious note.

Here are the cookies… they are really good too… My secret recipe and Ben’s FAVORITE!

 

Jose & Joel’s wedding invitation

Last year I got the opportunity to collaborate with Lisa Vorce on Jose Villa and Joel Serrato’s wedding invitation. Tiny Pine was responsible for the graphic design and layouts. Papel & Press printed the suite and I think the invitation turned out lovely and pristine. I always love to work creatively with this group because it turns out splendidly every time. It’s always also great to design something and see the production finished so nicely. 

And I have to give a special mention to Anne Jones!!! She did an amazing job with the calligraphy. I know Annie must have written very slowly on that leather. She does some impressive work! 

Anyway, I am extremely proud of this work and that I was able to contribute to Jose and Joel’s wonderful wedding. And here is the link to the Martha blog feature. 

enjoy!

ps – the photo is by Elizabeth Messina

the meditating dog

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We were so excited to see our meditating dog (actually meditating Fou Fou, the dog who modeled for the illustration) letterpress stationery in the new issue of BARK Magazine! They published a wonderful article about letterpress printing and printshop dogs. I love these cards – they go with a whole line of meditating animals available in the tiny pine etsy shop. They are great for DOG lovers – which are plentiful here in Los Angeles, that’s for certain.

My fiancé and I just got a dog…. Dash… He comes to work with me every day and sleeps or spazzes out around the  studio and mixes things up with Izzy – the other little doggie who works here – or plays here – or lays here! We love him but sometimes he freaks out and loses his zen… probably because we have yet to teach him to meditate so I can illustrate him – or I could just make him a dancing dog shiva – he does like to dance!

A dinner for The Hollywood Farmers’ Market

When the production of The Cooking Channel series “He Cooks She Cooks” asked me to create a printed menu for a benefit dinner cooked by Suzanne Goin and David Lentz, I jumped at the opportunity.

I LOVE cooking (well, baking mostly but more top of the stove lately) and I LOVE the Hollywood Farmer’s Market. So it was an easy “YES”. They gave me the menu which was based on locally available ingredients, and I typset and printed the menu in a jiffy. Hopefully the letterpress was helpful in raising money for the Farmers Market!

The show aired this past Sunday, but hopefully will repeat so everyone can see it!

Oh, follow this link to a better description of the show and the recipes for some of their creations….

Letterpress of Pray (for Japan)

About a month ago I got an inquiry from Bluemoon Letterpress - a letterpress studio in Japan. Takuma Nakagawa is organizing and exhibition of letterpress work titled “Letterpress of Pray” where she will show and sell in a few different galleries with 100% of the proceeds benefitting orphans of the tsunami.

I was unsure about what my printed prayer would look like until I went to a vintage stamp shop in New York on my vacation. There I dug through a pile of vintage Japanese postage stamps and found my inspiration. Mine would be a sort of letter, using Japanese stamps for the recipients and United States stamps for the senders (I suppose I was speaking for everyone in the good ole USA… is that weird?)

I found out from some special Japanese fluent helpers that one of the stamps portrayed Fukushima, which isn’t where the tsunami hit, but was badly injured as a result. 

I particularly loved the coloration of the two palm tree stamps. I think they really showed the similarities between that area of Japan (not sure!) and California. This was an instant match.

Then in my not very practiced handwriting, I wrote what I wanted for Japan. I chose green ink for growth, and printed away.

I sent off 17 prints today to Japan with hopes that my message will reach far more than 17 people and that the beauty of communication will be translated.

a french lavender wedding

I just came across all these beautiful photos from Andrea’s wedding in France. We worked on her wedding stationery for over a year and I think it turned out beautifully.

 

One of my favorite elements was the program. We used my very favorite stiff cotton organdy as the sheer cover of the program with two lavender plants attached to the cover page. The booklet was an ethereal sweet nugget!

 

 

Inhale Peace. Exhale Joy.

I love and support the Joyful Heart Foundation. This year the theme for their gala is “How will you join?”

I was meditating one morning and I found inspiration. It’s an action that everyone can do, in that we breathe. We can inhale for peace, and exhale for joy. It somehow seemed so obvious in the moment to me.

This was the concept for a new Joyful Heart letterpress card. I printed a giant light pink heart and then used typewriter for the inhales and exhales, and my handwriting for the peace and joy.

The press was inked up in the same color scheme as the Gratitude cards. and I hand printed in two letterpress print runs, packaged the cards and sent them off to the foundation, all the while breathing peace and joy. This kind of work seems less like work and more like yoga, honestly….

I hope one day to have a whole line of Joyful Heart cards…. all communicating the messages that the foundation efforts to spread… peace, joy, reunion, gratitude, love….. the list goes on!

(everytime I print for the JHF, I get reminded of the heart pins on the back of the ink fountain…)

the meditating cat

I just finished a session in a Meditation Class with Tanda Tashjian. Tanda gives great meditation guidance and the energy in the room is amazing (not to sound too hippy dippy but….)

Tanda is a real cat lover and often asks about my business. One day she asked if I had any cat stationery…. possibly a meditating cat? with a golden aura perhaps? Well, I didn’t. But I have to admit, it was a great idea.

All I could think was “How in the world will i draw a meditating cat.” I do draw a little, but I am certainly not a trained illustrator. Then one day, I could just see the way the cat would sit. and i just sat down and drew that in pencil. The aura was easy – I just imagined what electric energy would look like and made some squiggly lines.

I decided to make this a little gift for my classmates. They were thrilled. I was too.

But it was the dog lovers in the room who felt a tiny bit jilted.

So next… Meditating Dogs! (how in the world am I going to draw a meditating dog…… )

Get your own meditating cat stationery at my etsy shop….

uppercase magazine

I was so excited to get my copy of Uppercase Magazine because a few months ago, Tiny Pine got a request for 100 or so actual printed samples which would be included within the pages…. I thought that was super exciting for recipients to get an actual little piece of limited edition art hiding there.

I knew that the TPP contribution would have to be special… showing off the things that I like best. The only obstacle was timing – the deadline landed right in the middle of holiday card season. Because of severe block from being creative for everyone else, I couldn’t figure out what my piece would say.

I was going on a hike one sunday afternoon when I got a text from my boyfriend. A question answered and a wish for my hike in one text message was instantly inspiring.

“And yes. Salute the sunset for me.”

I took out a period and it was the perfect poetic message… I drew a sunset, wrote out the message in my handwriting, tore down sheets of somerset buff printing making paper, printed letterpress in two runs, and stitched the horizon line.

It occurred to me that this was also the perfect holiday greeting, so I made some extra for mailing.

Anyways, that’s the story. and now there are 100 or so people receiving those little pieces. I hope they enjoy looking at them as much as I did making them.

i heart vintage stamps

It’s new year cleaning time over here… I was digging around in my photographs from last year and I found this one. It’s a big pile of my vintage stamps. It makes me smile!