Springtime

I'm pleased to announce that things are now back in order after a brief mishap involving a faulty hard drive, a year's worth of irretrievable data, and one very disappointed (but not disheartened) girl. Thank you for all of your kind words and support! I'm starting fresh with a blank slate and looking forward to recreating lost designs, streamlining and reorganizing. Meanwhile spring has arrived - quite a timely parallel, for the season's fresh start is the most beautiful of all.

Above, a collection of snapshots from my Easter Sunday: Leaving school and city behind, I returned home to find a rambling and charmingly haphazard garden alive with blossoms and bluebirds (to my surprise). While the feathery visitors were far too elusive for my lens, I managed well enough with some close-ups of my father's prize daffodils. And after seeing delicate white petals flutter from tree branches, I couldn't help but recall a passage from my girlhood favorite, Anne of Green Gables. I gathered a few slim boughs in a light yellow pail and added a sprinkling of old wooden ornaments.

"She had been studying her lessons, but it had grown too dark to see the book, so she had fallen into wide-eyed reverie, looking out past the boughs of the Snow Queen, once more bestarred with its tufts of blossom." L.M. Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables

Click Your Heels

After being tagged - by my esteemed fellow bloggers Creature Comforts, Theresa J, Jewels and Knits, Moose, and In the Night Kitchen - to share seven facts about me, I'm finally facing the music with (sorry to break the rules) one fact about what I do when I'm not drawing, painting, crafting, designing or studying. So without further ado, an ode to Irish dance. It was a most enjoyable pastime, perfectly suited to my love of beauty, tradition and history. I put in nine years of lessons, practices, performances and competitions. (Yes, those are my feet!) I unfortunately had to quit upon going away to college, and have since tried to fill the void by taking up tap here at the university. However, at times I feel like a bit of an outsider in the mainstream dance world.{About} Two types of shoes are worn - soft shoes (ghillies) and hard shoes (more akin to tap shoes). Soft shoe dances are graceful yet bouncy, incorporating leaps, hops and kicks, while hard shoe dances incoporate heel clicks, rallies or trebles (similar to a shuffle in tap), and stamps. If you're interested in learning more, Wikipedia sums up Irish stepdance in a succint yet detailed article. Finally and quite appropriately - Happy St. Patrick's Day everyone!

Ship Shape

Dear me! I've scarcely had a chance to post. Final exams are approaching and I've also been hard at work on a new project - it's a surprise to be unveiled here in the coming months! But for now, I've put together some snapshots of a Natural Historie order packaged for shipping.

{How an Order is Shipped} Earlier this winter I redesigned my thank you notes - they're now stylish textured flat cards, with quirky pin dots, a few of my sketches and a lovely script font. The thank you note and order (in this case a set of Robin Egg Tags) are tucked inside a pristine sheet of light pink tissue paper, secured with a dotted blue seal, and slipped into a padded envelope. Just a few shipping labels on the front and it's on its way. P.S. If you're enamored with envelopes and embellishments you mustn't miss Good Things Come in Pretty Packages.