Come see me over here.

I’ve been drawing a lot of letters lately. I want to do more and more and more of this. Mostly it’s still personal projects, not client work, but I want to change that. (I will.)

I did a quick gig poster for Those Darlins, which was great late-night fun (just like them).

At top, that’s Geofree the cat, and my mostly-horrifying discard pile. See the mostly-not-horrifying finished poster here.

I’m abstaining from sleep until I look at every single plate in this book, completed by Elizabeth Blackwell in London, 1739. And you can’t stop me.

I love the story behind this book:

“Blackwell’s Herbal was an unprece­dented enter­prise for a woman of her time. She drew, engraved and coloured the illus­tra­tions herself, mostly using plant spec­i­mens from the Chelsea Physic Garden. … She under­took this ambi­tious project to raise money to pay her husband’s debts and release him from debtors’ prison.”

(From the British Library.)

Hat tip to Michelle for tweeting a link to botanicus.org.

Thanks for indulging my thinking aloud yesterday.

As many of my favorite things begin, I decided to just dive in and see where the current takes me. And so, I give you eythink-i-can. This should be fun.

After our big move, we started plan­ning our wedding for next Spring (hell yeah!). To no one’s surprise, nesting + impending nuptials = for me, DIY CITY.

It’s been really fun and grat­i­fying, but I haven’t figured out how to show every­thing off quite yet. I’m contem­plating a tumblr for this sort of thing, with process shots, before/after, and how-to posts. However, I do struggle with the idea of rein­venting the wheel (or, my desire not to do that). We certainly have an abun­dance of redun­dancy online, yeah? At the same time, I’d like to share some of the stuff I’ve been working on, and make it really acces­sible and approach­able for people who think they can’t do it. I’d also love to focus on projects that actu­ally are cheaper (or demon­strably better) to make than to buy, because while I do like to take on these sorts of projects, I like to make them count. I mean, who likes throwing their time and money into the wind?

Anyhow. I’d really like to get a magical invi­ta­tion to write a “DIY is NBD” column for someone else’s blog, dropped in my lap by an artisan, hand-made-with-love carrier pigeon.

In the mean­time, here’s a Tyrannosaurus Rex who just loves my hand-made “water­color” dot garland exper­i­ment!

Are you familiar with the Heartland Institute? They’re respon­sible for these wack-o sensa­tion­alist bill­boards, denouncing folks who “believe in” climate change. Forecast the Facts hired me to design this page, which tracks the massive amount of corpo­rate funding Heartland is losing as a result of their dishonest, damaging agenda. Look at that mercury drop!

So, clearly, I haven’t been feeling all that verbose lately. At least not in the blog­ging way.

Between moving and settling in, juggling house guests, getting to know this endless delight of a town, and assem­bling a magical studio — oh yeah, and client work! — I haven’t had a lot of mental space for narration.

With that in mind, I’m going to make an attempt. To start: mostly photos, not a lot of words.

(If you know me person­ally, you’ll note this is weird for me.)

Well, I’m a van owner now. Her name’s Li’l Peppa, and we’ll be spending a lot of quality time together pretty soon. (I’ll share photos, too!) As we enter the final count­down to our big Austin moving-roadtrip, I’m squir­reling away sundries for the drive, throwing going-away parties (above & below), and living/working in a packed-up room that some­times feels like it belongs in Storage Wars. It’s fantastic.

While we’re gearing up for this big adven­ture, I’m also gearing up to share some of the fun along the way. If you’re inter­ested, you can track our progress on twitter, check back here for updates, or follow my Instagram photos on Gramfeed.

(Speaking of, I’m having a lot of fun using the Gramfeed inter­face to vicar­i­ously visit my Austin happy places from afar. It lends some flickr-esque func­tion to Instagram photos, which I’ve really been wishing for lately.)

If you want more details about our Austin trip, or are wondering about logis­tics for an upcoming project you’d like to work on together, feel free to refer here for the rundown.