Simple Christmas Greetings

I made a few Christmas postcards using mainly images from old children's Golden books.

Most are simple...

Some are sweet...

Check out the rest here.

Collage Machine

Addicted!!

Cool Site- Collage Machine

I found a link to this cool site and haven't been able to pull myself away since. I'm impressed by all the tools and options on it and the ability to order the layer of images and draw. Here is my first attempt.

A little silly but I look forward to losing more hours to mashing images together in cyber space.

View from Gold Hill, CO

We set out with intentions to explore Boulder but we just kept on going once we hit the town. We drove up through a canyon and past Gold Hill and stepped out to hike with this view in our sights.

Thrift Store Love - Satin Ornaments

I found some awesome DIY/Knitting magazines from the 1960's and saw some cool round satin ornaments. I guess it was all the rage decorate the styrofoam balls with beads, sequins, ribbon... basically anything shiney. I decided I was going to try and recreate one of my own so I kept my eye out for those satin wrapped styrofoam balls of the past on my last thrift store trip.

I think I stumbled on something much cooler than what would have been my self-designed sequined ornaments. I'm not going to alter these one bit just use them to decorate our house a little for the holidays.

Found- Scary Eyebrow Epidemic

I found this in the bar parking lot yesterday. I don't typically pick up trash from the ground but I was slightly buzzed and I was thinking I was going to find some kid's homework on the college-ruled loose leaf. I was so psyched that I picked it up after reading just the first line. I submitted it to Found Magazine, maybe I will get lucky.

If only the slides were with it too.

Halloween Decor?

We got these cool photo coasters for our wedding so I found this skeleton image today to use in them. All four of them together looks good so I might just hang them on the wall like little frames. 

Hiking at Echo Lake

I drove up to the mountains with some friends last weekend and we hiked around the Echo Lake area. It was definitely late fall up there but it was perfect for getting one last hike in for the season. Now it's time to start thinking about skiing...

I had a good time collecting leaves and photographing them today. The fall colors are really intense here but they are about to end. Check out more fall photos on my flickr page.

Hitched - Nine Years in the Making

Thanks to all who helped us pull this together and was a part of it with us. It made the day memorable and unique to share it with all of our close friends and family.

and a big thank you to M.Gold for taking tons of photos as well as to all the others who have contributed to the flickr pool.

1. Bridal Bouquet, 2. Rings from Shade Jewelry + mini cake, 3.Sydnee the flower girl, 4. Cake , 5.Bride and Groom, 6. a family, 7. Groom and Best Man, 8. Handmade Veil by Jess, 9.The Crew (with Owsley)

Thrift Store Love- Vintage goodness

We had some good friends visit from New Mexico this weekend. On Saturday the girls left the guys in the record store and went hunting. We stepped into some really great thrift stores on Colfax that had some unbeatable deals. Here's a little snippet of my finds.

1. White Bird, 2. A Flock, 3. Thrift Store Love- Saturday Finds, 4. Bird

The colors and and objects just all go together so well that I feel like the best word for it is Yummy (even if that word makes me twitch a little bit).

In the bottom left picture there is a picture in the background of a huge crowd of people fleeing something, I got that picture out of a Horizon book that I found while scavenging. The fuzzy white background is a cool sweater I found at an ARC store and the vintage Douglas coffee decanter in the side of the top right picture is my favorite find of the day.

Now I need a project that I can incorporate a million little birds, especially before my little kitty starts sneaking away with them.

Broadway in Denver

I stumbled across a really awesome art supply store, Meininger's, here in Denver on the net a couple days ago and decided to make it a Labor Day weekend mission to check it out. I was really impressed and pleased with what I found. I came across it online when I was searching for some screen printing supplies that are hard to find in most art supply stores. In the printing section I found all but one thing I needed and on top of that the employees were so helpful and knowledgeable that I almost felt spoiled. I highly recommend this store to any person with the slightest bit of creativity.

Then just right down the road there is another great store called Fancy Tiger. I read about it in this Denver Design Guide on Design Sponge (one of my favorite blogs to stoke the creative thoughts during the slower times at work) before we moved but never popped in until today. It was geared more towards knitters and sewers so my sister would love it but all the fabrics they had in there were so unique and inspiring that I was tempted to pull out my sewing machine.

Ultimately though, I got super-excited by these awesome needle felting kits they had. But that will have to be a project for another day. One thing at a time...

You can read about them on the Fancy Tiger blog

In addition to all the cool craftiness on Broadway there are a whole lotta bars (sporting neat screen printed posters for shows), bookstores, and head shops with exception of my d.i.y. abilities I almost didn't feel hip enough to be there.

Tableware

I found these awesome avocado-green napkins during one of my thrift store trips and decided to "upcycle" them and embellish them with this screen printed image. They turned out fairly well for my first time printing on fabric. I'm hooked!
I went in search of more napkins to print on today and found a huge selection. I had to hold back from getting them all, but I figured there will always be more napkins. I also found a couple tea towels that I look forward to designing a print for. Any suggestions?

Announcements, Thank you notes, or what not

Our good friends got married this past weekend and M and I decided to make them some screen printed cards to commemorate the date. We were thinking they'd serve as announcements for the people who couldn't make it or thank you notes.

This was my first real screen printing project and I really like the result. It helped give lots of ideas for our upcoming wedding.
I particularly like the cards printed in two colors giving a 3-D effect. Printing with two colors was M's idea. The font used and the composition in general was inspired by letterpress and wood type.

screen print trials

I have finally broken into the world of screen printing. I had the supplies and ideas for more than a year now but just never got on it... 'til now.

It took a few tries to get a good screen but luckily I had screens and chemicals that allowed me to wash out a couple bad screens.

Here is a picture of one of the okay screens and a print from it.

This can be a card or postcard created to accompany any etsy sale, swap, or general correspondence. The font I chose is a little hard to read so it may be back to the drawing board.
I have another project that turned out pretty darn good but I will wait until after this weekend to post it.

Can I quit my day job now?

In my backyard

Apparently we arrived in Denver just in time for some fickle weather. First a record was broken and far surpassed for the number of consecutive days above ninety degrees in the Denver area and then within days the temperature dropped to below sixty. What the hell... I can see my breath!!!

It has been raining for almost two days straight and our "backyard" is a river. Check it out.
In the middle of the new pond, where the No Swimming sign is located, is where the actual pond exists and is just beyond where the sidewalk is supposed to be. I'm glad our condo is on the third floor and at least the ducks are enjoying their new real estate.

Switching Up...

It was high time that I aligned all of my online identities and to fully give my sister the Hot Cakes name so I have changed the name of this blog, opened a new Etsy shop, and changed my user name of Flickr.

The idea behind a.m. designs is that I do all of my best crafting and thinking in the morning when the day still has so much potential. The name also contains my initials, not so clever but it is cleaner. Aside from that I was getting lots of hits on my site for people looking up recipes for panqueques, I sure had a strong international showing. Here are some of the new graphics I created for the name change. I got the fonts for the first one off of dafont, a cool site I was referred to by spit and image.

And this logo for a separate shop on Etsy for Vintage Wares.

Chapter Collages

I found a really awesome teachers workbook called America! America! from the seventies at the thrift store. For some reason the worksheets are printed with wax for carbon copies or something on the back so it makes the pages look totally cool.

Here are the Chapter collages I put together from it. I am thinking about posting them on my new Etsy shop.

A New Lifestyle

Struggling for the Dream

A Time of Isolation

These are inspired by F. Scott Fitzgerald's This Side of Paradise combined with another thrift store find, a Time-Life Book called This Fabulous Century 1920-1930.

Snack Attack

Yikes!! Went camping and woke up to a five a.m. nightmare of a bear chomping down on my breakfast outside the tent. We put away all our dry foods but totally forgot to put away the cooler before bed. Lesson learned...

No TV. Just Sound

Original handmade collage postcards

Wedding Invitations

Finally, last night M & I completed the majority of our invitations with one last step left, to send them out. Here's a little sneak peak.All the components of the invitation were done by me through Photoshop. The zine images were collaged on paper and then scanned in with text added and the image on the invitation was from a greeting card that I had made for valentine's day this year. I am pretty happy with the finished product even though it has taken a while with lots of questions as to how the wedding planning is going.

Cooler Climes

Today Owsley, M, & I went up to the mountains, a much needed escape from the ninety-plus degree weather. When we got out at Guanella Pass we were almost too cold, thank goodness for the old Isotopes hoodie. There is nothing I could wish for more than sweater weather and mind-blowing scenery. Here are some shots of the loveliness only a short and scenic hour away from our home. I love NM's juxtaposition of the mountains and the redness of the mesas but I am discovering the Rockies here in Colorado offer a whole different experience. Above the tree-line expansiveness feels so inviting and I feel nothing short of in love every time we visit them.

Finished Product

I decided to give my ATC's a sweet little sleeve, with magnetic closures and all, before I sent them out for the Birds ATC Swap. Here is the finished product.

Bird ATC Swap

I just finished uploading onto Flickr the ATC's for this Birds ATC Swap on Swap-bot. It's the first swap I have participated in since April and these are also the first ATC's I've made in even longer than that.

"They seem to thrive in places where other birds find it hard to hold their own."

"There is nothing outstanding about pert, gray woodland bird except its crest."

The cold hard facts about these birds make me laugh. The paper that these were created on are left over from our wedding invitations we printed, I'm glad to be getting multiple uses out of them.

You can see the rest over at my flickr page.

Slideshows

About a week ago I came by this sweet slide viewer/t.v.-looking thing only to find out that it doesn't view my kind of slides.
I have a pretty good collection of thirty-five millimeters from my grandparents, I thought I could view pictures of my family on t.v. ! ... no luck. Coincidentally there are slides of M's dental work that I framed right above the "tasco" that maybe it will display. There's nothing like studying dental work.

In it's place I used the available resources (window, metal clips, wire, and suction cups) and fashioned a smaller slideshow. With hundreds of slides it will be easy to make this a revolving trip down memory lane.I like the hue differences between the slides, one magenta, one cyan, I think I need to find some yellow ones now.

"Brave Steve Swimming"

This one is a picture of my dad in July of 'sixty-six.

Sunday Morning Exploring

This Sunday morning I was in serious need of a good breakfast burrito and thanks to google we found an awesome place for all of our breakfast needs, Sams No. 3. It was important to establish a reliable breakfast place in our new surroundings so now we can mark that off our To Do list. After polishing off breakfast and a good portion of Saturday night's hangover we decided to go exploring. We found two amazing places in the same shopping area both seeming like they did not belong there. Really it seemed like nothing had flourished there in a while.

First we spotted Hampden Street Antique Market. The second we stepped into the store it was almost overwhelming but such a welcome surprise since we've been developing the taste for hunting for vintage awesomeness. These for example found at the arc thrift store on Mississippi and Sable-It's hard to resist the somewhat hideous, yet rich, colors of the 50's, 60's and 70's... add rust and classic type to it and Hot Damn!! ... even if it is a vacuum cleaner....and back to the original topic, here is one of the gems at the antique store but we just couldn't justify hanging it in our closet even at the reasonable price of fifteen big ones so we left it for some other lucky hunter, maybe someone a little more in need of a gas mask?
And then a few doors down, as well as centuries into the modern era, we found the largest store I have ever been inside of... no not super wal-mart... it was a showroom for Scandinavian Designs. There was so much awesome furniture under one roof that it made me pine for riches, but surprisingly their prices were reasonable so maybe just moderate success will suffice. Here's M test driving one of the living room sets. There's nothing like a shiny cherry-red living room ensemble.

In Other News

when we got home we found that the kitty has finally found the best perching spot for her favorite position, the Beached Whale.

and poor Owsley still has Floppy Ear Syndrome more commonly referred to as an aural hematoma. We've been told if left alone it will go away eventually but leaving "cauliflower ear" in it's wake. Poor pup... but in the interim there is the added bonus of him being even more cute than before, if possible.

Denver Colorado USA

It's been a while since I have blogged and that is mostly because M & I decided to pick up house and move in the last couple of months. There is nothing like going through every single one of your possessions and deciding it's level of importance in your life... and then hauling it four-hundred miles and three flights of stairs. I really hate stairs. It's been one week about and I am still getting over the stairs. Soon though.

Although we have planted ourselves willingly in the middle of six other households I feel a surprising amount of privacy and space. Privacy in anonymity maybe? Anyhow, each of the neighbors have their "things" but oddly none of them are invasive, thanks to a good architect.

Anyhow, as proved in the last post, I don't have many images of my experience yet but here's at least one from the 3rd floor area of Coors Feild from last Saturday's game. Thank goodness for King Super's $10 tickets.

Thrift Store Love- Couldn't Help Myself...

Could you?It's been more than three months and this is all I have... Weak? Yes

There is a story behind them sweet deeries (one having to do with real life deeries) but they are now in my living room mostly because they're cute.

...and that painting?

That's a lot of man hours.

Legs

I created this latest series of postcards for a handmade postcard swap on swap-bot. I have to turn around and send it tomorrow and wish I could hang on to it a little longer. I think I will try to work in the punch pattern into some future postcards.
The next swap on the list is called I Love to Read Books. I look forward to trying to capture some of the wisdom that is found in Siddartha by Herman Hesse. I picked it up the book this morning and am nearly through it this evening, it is really ringing true.

My 1st Inchie

I made my first inchie today inspired by a cool postcard I got in a swap recently. The idea of making a one x one piece always seemed interesting because I love how just a little can go a long way. I drew a similar spaceman for Mig's valentine but that will remain out of the blog world.

New Mexico Postcards

I started a series of New Mexico postards for a handmade postcard swap. I am quite fond of this one and may have to make another one so I can keep this in my collection.

Check out the rest here.

Succulents

I didn't get enough of the thrift store love on Friday so I went to a different one on Saturday. I found some glass containers and sweet old bowls with cool patterns on them. Conveniently a great green house is located around the corner so I picked up some charmingly petite succulents. I combined the two purchases to form a loose prototype for M & I's wedding decore in Oct. I hope to collect enough plants in between now and then and find glass globes of every size to plant them in.

I love the mellowgreen softness of the leaves.