Not long ago, I reopened Gee’s Bend: The Architecture of the Quilt given to us by our friend Emily at this book shower in 2008.  The full-page full-color images are gorgeous and the writing is both a history of the place over several decades and a bit of art criticism – the good kind of academic in tone.  It wasn’t long before this (left) turned into this (below).

Fabrics in this stack include Sweetwater Sunkissed, Alexander Henry Anja, Michael Miller Etta, Melody Miller Ruby Star Rising, Rosemarie Lavin Spa, Joel Dewberry Modern Meadow, and several others that I’m not able to name.  If you recognize something I’ve missed, please leave a comment.  More on this little project to come.

When we were in Budapest over the holidays, our friend introduced us to Lost Cities, and I’m embarrassed to admit that I could have geeked-out over that card game all week instead of following our travel guide through the real city – lost in snow.  So when we returned, I thought it would be interesting to design a revised version of the game, both to play and to give to friends and family. It turned out to be a lot fun, and relatively easy:

Step 1: Design what will be the back of all the cards.  This is the side that will be the same for every card in a deck, and sometimes is symmetrical so that you cannot tell which way the cards are facing when the deck is upside down. (These are 3×5, but they can be any size, really.)

Step 2: Get that design printed in bulk on one side of a bunch of postcards. (I like to use GotPrint.net because they are reliable and the cheapest out there – you can order 1000 cards for $22!) As you can see (above), I also ordered mine without rounded corners so that they could feed more easily through an ink jet printer, and then rounded them myself.  You could also order them rounded from the start.

Step 3: Design as many games on the blank fronts of the cards as your little fingers can manage.

Step 4: Play on!

These card fronts were designed in Photoshop and printed on an Epson printer, which worked pretty well.  I was going for a math game, the design inspired part by Jasper Johns’ numbers and part by this calendar on Design Sponge.  It’s probably a good idea to order cards that have no coating at all on the blank side so that your own ink can soak into the paper better – our fingers were blue enough to give a print when we played one game fresh out of the ink jet…

Also, it could work just as well (with kids especially) to use markers or crayons for the card fronts.  Here (left), you can see examples from a modified Go Fish/Uno game drawn directly onto each card.  With 1000 cards to go through, one can design any number of different games, or even Pokemon-style collector cards, or you could use them as postcards, or fake train tickets, or table-scrapers, or card castle building materials, or laminate flooring for a doll house…

…and there will still be more left over…

Happy gaming!

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Every now and then, funny thoughts and little ideas from posts on the blog turn into something else we do in the studio.  Here are the summer squash sketches from the Bewildered Gardener back in August materialized – literally – into the Gourd Family Gathering on some fabric for Spoonflower.

Here is a little eye-candy montage from October’s Alameda Antique Market.  It’s amazingly close to our home, nestled on the edge of what I overheard a gentleman kindly refer to as the “Oakland Riviera” – right under the noses of the huge cargo ship cranes that look like a fleet of Trojan horses when you fly out of OAK.

We almost bought a turquoise 1950s Samsonite suitcase that I was going to reupholster with Cathy Heck Studio fabrics, but when I could not clearly state when that was going to happen, we put it off to that indefinite date when one has – if not extra time – at least a storage closet.  I kept my eyes peeled for this rainbow rack of vintage that Dena Designs spotted back in March, but I’m guessing it has dispersed since then.

Several of our favorite blogs have recently posted odes to summer 2010, making me nostalgic for lingering afternoons, lemonade slushies, and cherry-vanilla L’Oréal Kids shampoo.  Here are two of my photo-crushes on other people’s summers: a hotel pool scene from Hyena in Petticoats, and a child with balloons walking into the sunset from Valori Wells.  (I guess you can’t really go wrong with a child, balloons, and sunset!)

The balloons actually reminded me of some cute illustrations that will be part of our newest collections coming out in January (another huge part of this summer), so I can’t wait until we are allowed to reveal more of what’s to come in the new product department.

Inspired by this theme, here are seven snapshots that capture the best of this summer at Cathy Heck Studio West.  From top to bottom, left to right they are: the Oregon coastline, my sweet husband after his 27th time around the sun, a colleague drying her prints in the light of a west-facing window, etching inks and transparent base in the process of being mixed, more ink, a very proud papa seal, and the festive Santa Cruz shoreline.  Hmm, I’m noticing now that the overall coloring here is not giving off a very sunny-summer vibe with all the sea and fog…  Welcome to the Bay Area!

In Lithuania, my husband’s grandparents have the most wonderful, weightless, incarnation-of-joy, farm dog in the entire world.  His name is Sharikas, and even though I am admittedly not a dog person, seeing him bouncing through the dried grass and herding hens that are bigger than he is breaks my heart from happiness.

However, he moves so fast that I can never seem to capture him with the camera; in photos, he is only ever a blur of gray smeared across the farm yard, and if I increase the shutter speed, he seems too still to be the same animal.  So, in an effort to share more of Sharik’s essence, I thought I’d try to introduce him to you the U.S. Patent way (I knew all that graphic design homework would come in handy some day…):

Perhaps it is impossible to patent joy because it has so many sides that no one could ever claim it completely.  Even so, I hope these six make you as happy as Sharikas makes me.

We’ve been working with a lot of new patterns recently in the studio, so I kept my eyes peeled for inspiration while we were in Lithuania a few weeks ago.  This particular shop window in the Vilnius old town displayed some patterns that remind me of old French tapestries and others that look like they originated in the 80s – and yet they seemed to complement each other nicely.

The trees wanted in on the composition as well, as you can see, so this picture reminds me a bit of some early debates about esthetics – as if the trees are insisting, “All of man’s art originates in nature.”

Every year, right before our niece’s birthday in February, the Caldecott Awards are announced, and we are able to give her a brand new fresh Caldecott award-winning book.  (Okay, I admit it, I give myself the same book.  Happy Grace’s Birthday to me!)  This year, when I realized that the award might have been announced, I zipped to the ALA site to find the winner.

When I saw that the Caldecott Medal winner for 2010 was the Lion & the Mouse, by Jerry Pinkney, I had to have a little smile remembering another little girl I know, who loved the stories illustrated by Jerry Pinkney.  In fact, that little girl, who happens to be the co-writer and artist of this blog, wrote a second-grade report on Mr. Pinkney in 1992 .  And, miraculously, I was able to find that very report.  I think the assignment was to deliver an oral presentation pretending to be someone with a career you might like to have someday.  Afterward, each student wrote about his or her experience.  Below is Ellen’s report on her report.

Here are several studies of Mr. Pinkney using a variety of mediums, which she included in the pretend portfolio she used with her speech.

Then, coincidentally, several weeks later, Jerry Pinkney was having a book signing at a little book store near us in Connecticut.  Here is Ellen (and her little sister) meeting Mr. Pinkney in person.  Jerry Pinkney, and many others, had a big part in inspiring this little gal to be an artist when she grew up, and, now that she is, I think she might say, just as she did in second grade, “It is gret being an artist.”  (You can see how Ellen’s work has evolved here.)

Do you have a budding artist in your house?  If so, what artists spark the creativity of your little ones?  Do you have a favorite Caldecott book?  Comment below so everyone can be inspired.

In her early years, my sister Jules had an incredible gift for finding those tiny little hidden objects in the pages of I Spy books. I was more of a Little House on the Prairie girl myself, but I remember spending many hours with Jules looking through those spreads of things – so many things – and wondering, where on earth did the people who made these books find all that stuff?

Well, they definitely could have found them at Creative Reuse a Goodwill-like donation and purchase shop on Telegraph in Oakland, where you can donate your old art materials and get a great deal on…well…stuff.

Yes, boxes and baskets and bins of shells, corks, bottles, crayons, caps, candles, stoppers, beakers, and anything else that might have been donated by someone who – for whatever reason – had a few extra boxes of, say, cards that say “this product is organic.”

I went down there hoping to pick up a stockpile of backing cardboard, but I think that Creative Reuse is a place you have to go without any hopes or expectations – like a garage sale, really.  Because you may not find your cardboard, but you will certainly stand there wondering, “What could I possibly do with ten pounds of corks and an old cassette box?”

Any ideas?