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...