found :: pencil test depot

MARVELOUS  MAD  MADAM  MIM!

This is my latest kick: animation; specifically, pencil tests. I can’t get enough of them. I’m in love with the process and the perfectly imperfectness of them all. I found Pencil Test Depot today. A blog belonging to Jamaal Bradley who is currently a senior animator at Dreamworks (what?! and the coolest-freakin-job-on-earth award goes to…. JAMAAL). I’ve officially added “learn more about animation” to my 2012 to do list.

You can check out Jamaal's personal blog here.

happy singles awareness day!

We’re On The Same Page from west elm on Vimeo.

Yeah, I know,  it’s Valentine’s Day. My plans include dinner with my soul mate and best ever friend, EMILY! She’s asked me to be her gal-entine. I feel all warm and fuzzy. Hope you have the warmest fuzziest loveywuvviest day today or at least get to scam some candy/cookies/flowers from the cubicle next door (sshhh…she won’t notice).

print pretty hand-stitched notebooks

{i made this}

I found a great tutorial over at Jen and Jake on how to make a hand-stitched notebook. It took me about 3 tries to get the method right. The trick is to only pre-fold the outer cover, not the inside pages, after the book is stitched THEN fold in half and put something heavy like Martha Stewart’s Encyclopedia of Crafts on it for a day or so to get it to lay flat.

I printed the covers 2-sided and there is a book plate on the inside front cover. The notebooks are 40 pages (front and back). Once I have perfected my hole punching and stitching skills, I’ll add notebooks like these to the shop. The best part of this project was that I needed a tapestry needle and, somehow, I had a whole package of them in my sewing stash that I do not even remember buying! Don’t you love it when that happens? Happy February everybody!

image © Aimee Elizabeth McEwen

hello…love

I’m not much of a girly girl and I’ve never had any kind of wedding fantasy (a few nightmares, actually)… but this dress from BHLDN is amazing (Cascading Goddess Gown). There is a video showing how the dress flows as you walk… I would say I do to almost anything in this dress (wink).

image links to BHLDN