Without a small toddler in the house, we had to ask our pup, Neville, who will be 1 year old on Thursday, to model our seasonal Do-It-Yourself project.  I know he looks a little bit humiliated here, but I pointed out to him that at least I had chosen blue ears to match his argyle collar, plus we gave him many excellent treats afterward and he was totally okay with it.

So, if you find out that you need some instant ears this week (school play or school project or just because) and it’s too late to run to the craft store, you can easily make these with supplies you might have on hand.  This project is rated E for Easy … so easy, in fact, your little ones can make them in one sitting.  Caution: Keep out of reach of dogs, because we could tell Neville was thinking about devouring his tasty-looking head gear after his photography session. “Bunny Ear Appetizer, Yum.”

Here are the quick and easy steps:

1. Make an ear pattern on scrap paper adding about 2” to the base for turning under the headband.  Trace around the pattern onto shirt cardboard or cardstock. I happened to have some stiff felt, which is sold at most craft stores these days.  (We keep this on hand in case of occasions like bunny ear emergencies.)

2. Find a headband in your headband drawer … the version with teeth works best because it helps to hold the ears in place.  (If you only have boys, thus no headband drawer, you can find these headbands at any grocery store.)  Wrap the base of each ear shape to the back side and staple from the front.

3. Cut out two pieces of ‘inner ear’ from a contrasting color.  Glue inner ear to outer ear, covering the staples. We used roller adhesive because it is just so quick and easy.

4. Voila! Bunny ears in a snap.

We thought it would be fun to send our friends and family a Cyber Easter Egg each day this week leading up to Easter.  These are from our collection of handmade Pysansky eggs that we have been making ever since the girls were little when we ordered our first Ukranian egg decorating kit from the Chinaberry catalogue.  We only make a few each year, but after a while, they add up to a basket full!  If you would like to take up this tradition, here are a few tips that we have learned which might make it a little bit easier for you. Happy Almost Easter!

We thought it would be fun to take a stroll down memory lane and see how styles have changed over 25 years.  Whoa, this memory lane was a long one, we’ll just have to share a little sampling!

We have been happily working with C.R. Gibson for 25 years this year.  Happy Anniversary to all of us!  We just returned from a visit in Nashville with our wonderful C.R. Gibson friends, and we couldn’t wait to get back to the drawing board to get started on the next 25 years.

Photos: Top left, a welcoming sign when we arrived.  Bottom left, our newest collection, Welcome Home Noah. Right, Cathy with Sherrie McCulloch, Director of Infant Products, after a lively discussion of new designs for 2011.

We thought it would be fun to take a stroll down memory lane and see how styles have changed over 25 years.  Whoa, this memory lane was a long one, we’ll just have to share a little sampling!

1986, Share A Hug Paper Dinnerware; 1994 Woodcut Santa Christmas Collection; 1988 Village Square Kitchen Collection (I created this during the country-country-everywhere trend–I still miss my cool Ralph Lauren prairie boots!)

My first collection with C.R. Gibson was Share-A-Hug®, which was a group of characters built from this festive fella (above), J. Randolph Reindeer, who was based on a Christmas card (below) that I made when we lived in New York City, (note antlers) while I was veeeery pregnant with my first baby, Ellen. As you know, Ellen is the co-blogger of this blog, so, I guess you could say Ellen has been collaborating longer than she is old.

After Share-A-Hug, I continued to produce several everyday collections, Christmas groups, and eventually my first baby collection. And, then another and another … as you can see below, we love to make artwork for C.R. Gibson products!

Above top left clockwise: 1996, Little Noah Collection (best selling baby book at Babies R Us for 7 years straight! … and, I am having memories of all these borders painted by hand before computers … approximately 100 feet o’ flowers, whew!); 2003, Little Carousel Collection; 2004, Baby Princess Collection (more parents were learning if they were having a girl or boy, so we could now make an all-girl book … it was a pinkapalooza for us!);  2004, Baby All Star (boys-only, too!); 2004, Zoophabet® (These ABCs have found themselves decorating over 70 products); 2006, Little Pond (four years later and still a favorite). Photo below: 2010, our newest collection, Welcome Home Noah.

So that was a smattering of our collaborations with C.R. Gibson, and happily in 2009, we were able to say that over 2 million babies have a Cathy Heck baby book. We love to think of all the babies learning about their first milestones with our little characters.

So, we better get back to work for the next batch of babies.  Ellen and I are working on a bundle of fun new surprises coming your way soon.  Thank you to everyone at C.R. Gibson for giving us the opportunity to make lots of beautiful books for lots of adorable babies!

I am about to start making some mock-ups for Surtex, but I couldn’t help but first post a few photo-odes to unused craft supplies.  I’ve done this before – what can I say?  Is it that blank paper and organized bundles of string are beautiful per se, or is it the unbounded potential of these unused materials that is so enticing?

Are you the snack mom any time soon, like tomorrow?  If so, here is a great snack, which is super easy, AND, if it’s already midnight, you might even have the fixins on hand.

It was the night before our advisory snack day again, and we had nothing that would be desirable for a room full of hungry 16-year old kids.  But, we did have some apples and bananas.  And, we even had bamboo skewers, (because at some time in my life I needed a few, and they were packaged in a bag of 100!)  So, with a late night run to the grocery store to grab strawberries and pineapple cubes, we were prepared for a quick assembling of this sweet (yet, healthy) snack the next morning before school.

Interestingly, it doesn’t take as much fruit as you might guess.  For 16 kebabs, I only needed 4 apples.  If you want your treats to last until later in the day, (avoiding the brown-fruit dilemma) my secret is a tasty basting marinade made of lemon juice and agave nectar, (or sugar).  See our printable recipe page for my basting method and the kinds of fruit I assembled, but you could easily make these with any seasonal fruit that you have on hand … in fact, you could make a different kebab ensemble for every season!  Happy Kebabbing.

Over Spring Break, my sister, Jules, and I were trying to recreate one particularly fabulous day last year when the two of us roamed the city at 6am, drank hot chocolate by the bay, and sat watching the dynamics of sea lion society for over an hour at Pier 39.  This time, we took the waterfront walk from the Embarcadero to Fisherman’s Wharf and back, and then wandered up Market St. just in time to catch several gallery receptions at 49 Geary.  The sun was out and everything was in focus.  We ate paper-wrapped In-N-Out burgers that we just managed to order before a tour group of fifty French-speaking fifth-graders took over the restaurant, contemplated several knock-off purses and bags, and generally enjoyed the hours of sisterly QT that the 2.5 mile walk laid out for us.

Below, you can see Jules outside of the Thursday farmer’s market, and behind her, the line for those pork sandwiches, the deliciousness of which my mom has already described.

49 Geary is always a great place to stop if you are in the mood for a lot of art, fast.  I enjoyed going with Jules, who has been writing a lot of art criticism lately.  Our favorite show was in the smaller exhibition room of Stephen Wirtz Gallery, in which some of Castaneda and Reiman’s collaborative works on sheetrock were displayed.

It was a great day.  I hope we’ll get to try to recreate it again next year.

At Cathy Heck Studio, we are big fans of the color green.  In honor of this, the only day when one is protected from being pinched by wearing a garment that reflects light of a spectrum dominated by energy with a wavelength of roughly 520–570 nanometers, I have randomly collected green items from our apartment to assemble this humble ode to a great color:

Happy St. Patrick’s Day!

Usually, Ellen (in Berkeley, CA) and I (in Austin, TX) work together seamlessly, uninhibited by distance, transferring files back and forth and forth and back on our ftp site (our computer in the sky), but every now and then it’s nice to do certain projects eye to eye (and laugh to laugh).

This week has been one of those weeks.  Our “California office” came to Austin, and our newest studio member, sister number two, came from Virginia, with her newly acquired Photoshop and Illustrator skills, and we basically created our Surtex booth in the entry to the studio.  Surtex is a trade show in May, which seems far away, but will be here before we can blink!  We had many decisions to make: what to show, how much to show, how to show it, and the issue with which I became obsessed–how to make our booth meet the New York City Fire Department regulations even though it is made entirely of paper.  I think the best moment of this ongoing discussion was the instance in which Jim tried to show me that I was over-thinking this concern and held a match to a piece of foam core with aplomb, and we all had to quickly say, “Dad, the foam core is on fire … really, look … the foam core is on fire.”  Needless to say, I won, and we ordered every kind of fire retardant available.

I do want to take this moment to say that Jim (although a tiny bit know-it-all about the fire matter) is our biggest supporter and journeyed out on many late-night-Home-Depot runs and invented two magnificent ways for attaching our shelving and hanging our boards, as well as providing frozen yogurt for the late night workers/daughters.  Thank you Jim/Dad.
So, that was our work week, and, although I did perhaps spend too much time thinking about fire over the course of the week, we did accomplish a great deal, and we are more or less ready for Surtex.  It was a great week of making art, mocking up art, and displaying art.  We also squeezed in a few episodes of Modern Family, because we think the writers must have planted secret cameras in our house to create some of their episodes.

Here are a few photos from our studio work week, just to give you an idea of what life is like in a family business like ours.  If you see any scenes like these in future episodes of Modern Family, we will know for sure that there are some secret cameras around here!
Do you have a family business?  If so, we would love to hear about your family/business dynamics.  And, I’m just wondering: do you ever ask your “employees” to empty the dishwasher?  Just wondering.

Number 24! Congratulations, Marci, who said, “These are so beautiful! Thank you for the chance to win, I have my fingers crossed.”

We will be sending you your new Welcome Home Noah baby book, calendar, and photo album very soon.

Many thanks to all of you who entered the contest.  Please, stay tuned for more chances to win and updates on this adorable collection.  Again, we toast the online random number generator which decided our winner – you saved us on paper and scissors and a hat.