Rainbow City by Vikki Chu

I’ve been slightly obsessed with little houses and cities for a while now. You can tell if you check out my mini paintings on Etsy. I don’t think that obsession is going to let up any time soon. Isn’t this watercolor adorable?

Anywho….check these fabulous finds out! {Click on the images to be taken to the artist’s page}

Work Hard, Stay Humble by Shauna Lynn Panczyszyn

Do What You Love by Pamela Gallegos

The Gift of Words by Amer Amin & Manara

Create by Jessica Holdaway

Lets Fly Tees by Dimitra Tzanos

Your Time Is Limited by Marta Harding

Mental Maintenance Poster by Jessie Hall

Creativity Is… by Justin Poulter

Do Good Work and Share It by Steve Simpson

Get Lost Along The Way by Linzie Hunter

A commission painting of my grandmother by artist Fred Petroskey.

I called her Grandma, but most people that knew her called her Queenie. Oh, was she ever a queen – her sense of style and her flair for life were definitely regal. She wasn’t very grandmotherly, but she loved us and showed it in her own way. I think many of my fond memories for her relate on her unique and interesting personality and her flair for life. Her motto was “Eat, Drink, and Be Fat and Drunk.”  Well, I can’t say she didn’t live up to that, and she lived life to the fullest while doing so.

My grandmother lived on the shores of Lake Michigan on the Leelanau Peninsula. Her house, and the nearby town, Leland, always seemed like a magical wonderland to me. We used to go spend summers with her — soaking in each day with our feet in the sand, painting rocks, searching for Petosky stones, and watching the sunset over the turquoise water in the evening.

Grandma had a strong sense of style and an artistic nature. When she was younger, she taught art classes at schools. Once I stumbled upon some of her sketches forgotten in a closet and they were amazing. She always had plenty of art supplies in her house, and this kept us immersed when the weather wasn’t as nice.  I remember how her house was decorated – a lot of cheerful colors, flowers, birds, gorgeous fine art on the walls, and a sweet sophistication – that and the turquoise shag carpet which was totally awesome and trademark. Yeah, she had style.

Dad and Grandma

I think my grandma had a huge influence on my love for art, and desire to be an artist. She instilled that love of art in my father too, and both of them built that passion inside of me. One summer, I stayed with her by myself for a few weeks and we painted little birds together. We also made miniature still life arrangements with drift wood, miniature sea-gulls, and any other beach combing finds we felt like using. That’s really all I remember of that summer, honestly. Well, that and sneaking Werther’s candy from her junk drawer. I guess you can see that art was a huge part of my bond with my grandmother.

I suppose all I wanted to do here was to give you all a glimpse at the beautiful, quirky, lover of life that my grandmother was, and to show you where quite a bit of my artistic influence comes from. In fact, I’m pretty sure my favorite color – turquoise was all her doing.  Love you and miss you Grandma!

Grandma and I at the Suttons Bay, MI Art Fair

I’m currently working on creating a collection to go with this design. Yesterday, I finished the first pattern and it will be available for purchase in my shop once I get the collection done and order more swatches.

Geek on, friends!

Once we landed in the beautiful San Francisco, all thoughts of worry melted away and I fell into a traveling bliss with my husband and this city that I love. My Facebook on my cell phone wouldn’t connect, so that gave me even more of a chance to really “be” where I was instead of trying to be two places at once. It’s amazing how taking a break can reinvigorate the mind, bring forth new ideas, and even build new connections, yet I forget that when I’m hard on myself about taking time off. Can you relate?

With that said, I wanted to share some of our adventures with you! Have you ever been to San Francisco or the areas surrounding it? It’s such an amazingly diverse and beautiful region…I think it may be my most favorite place I’ve traveled, even when I think about Europe. The food is so fresh and well-prepared. The scenery is breathtaking and changes in every direction. The things to do are endless! I’m so happy that my prince and I got to share in the California adventures together!

Now for a bombardment of pictures!

Downtown San Fran

We braved the line at Mama’s On Washington Square – Best Breakfast!

More delicious food at Mama’s!

Enjoying some awesome coffee In Little Italy

Veggies in Chinatown

Gorgeous wildflowers in Pacific Grove

My Prince trying to give me a heart-attack.

Breathtaking Big Sur

More amazing wildflowers – Big Sur

Visiting with the hermit crabs while searching for Jade in Big Sur.

An incredible view in Big Sur!

Our amazing bed and breakfast in Moss Beach – Seal Cove Inn.

Cypress Groves at Moss Beach

Taking Some Pictures at Moss Beach

Exploring tide pools at Moss Beach

Freezing our patooties at the Golden Gate Bridge.

Sonoma Wine Country

Reliving my landscape architecture fantasies at Cornerstone in Sonoma.

The big blue chair in Sonoma.

It wouldn’t be an adventure without a visit to urgent care – surfing accident that got infected.

Easing the pain with chocolate at Christopher Elbow Chocolates – Yum fest!

Our last stop before the ride home – Four Barrel Coffee – a very unique coffee experience!

Don’t Cry by Akira Kusaka

I also feel like I must apologize again for my recent absence here. I promise, a lot is going on behind the scenes and I will have some things to share with you soon. Oh, and I’m going on my honeymoon next week, so you probably won’t hear from me until after the 7th. However, I’ll be sure to share my adventures on the California coast with you! Ocean, here I come!

A long time ago, I shared a youTube video by PBS that’s a remix of clips from Mr. Rogers. I used that video as inspiration to write about my creative journey as it relates to growing ideas and growing a garden.

For fun, here’s the video again:

I’d love it if you pop on by Oh My! Handmade and show some love for my post, plus check out all the other garden-y green goodness that abounds!

Go Play Outside by Jump Off the Page

Spring is officially well under way in the northern hemisphere and I hope you are getting to enjoy the outdoors! How about going outside to play today? This beautiful art by Jump Off The Page is a great reminder to get outside.  Prints are available on Etsy.

The other day I mentioned that the Oh My! Handmade Marketplace would be launching soon and yesterday was that day! This place is going to be the best resource for running your creative business! More and more businesses with a high-standard-of-awesomeness are listing their services and supplies to create a comprehensive source for nearly anything you could need. Check out the press release for more information:

Creative entrepreneurs rejoice! April 2nd Oh My! Handmade launched a new creative marketplace bringing together some of the best services and supplies for growing a creative business. Now entrepreneurs have a curated source for finding designers, illustrators, print shops, developers, on/offline events, programs and much more.

You can also find suppliers for creative, promotional, and packaging materials. Entrepreneurship is hard work and looking for the resources to grow a creative business can be exhausting. The Oh My! Marketplace is reinventing entrepreneurship by offering a community of knowledgable, experienced, and generally awesome folks to help creatives at every stage of the business journey. Collaborative and creative the friendly Oh My! Marketplace is waiting to welcome you! 

I’m very excited to be a part of this incredible marketplace! You can check out my vendor page here, where I am offering my graphic design, illustration, and art licensing services.

Oh My! Handmade is on a roll because yesterday was also the launch of their new shop. Goodies abound and are still coming. You can buy our books & guides, sign up to be an advertiser, or submit to join the marketplace here.

Another exciting launch that just happened is the Puttylabs which is part of the Puttylike group of sites. Puttylabs is an exciting new venture in online collaboration between a group of multipotentialites. Or in otherwords:

Puttylabs is the brainchild of Emilie Wapnick, who also founded Puttylike and The Puttytribe. After running the Puttytribe for a year, she began to realize what potential there was for collaboration among members. Her thought process went something like this: here we are, a community of people with random skills all over the place, who are insanely creative. We should be working together!

To test out the idea, Emilie started a discussion in the Puttytribe forums proposing that the group write and design an inspirational poster to help empower multipotentialites. Very quickly, the puttypeep began throwing out lines, and the text came together. After that, people submitted their designs and we voted on the winner. You can check out the result of this first experiment here.

This print is only the beginning. We are not sure what will come out of this project, but most likely it will result in some really original, cross-disciplinary work.

I was thrilled to be a part of the collaboration for the print and to help with the graphic design. Since graphic design is something that would be quite challenging to work on simultaneously, Emily ran the collaboration as a vote. Four of us used the words to create a poster, and one was chosen for the final product. I was happy to have mine chosen because I like to think that I made something everyone really enjoys!

You can actually purchase the poster here and 25% of the procedes are going to a great organization: 826 National. The rest of the profits will be split between the artists, given us a little help at earning some income.

Do you have some big news to share? New launches in your life? Maybe some spring cleaning? I’d love to hear what you have going on in the comments.