Cheers to a New Year!

It is that time of year again. The time for popping corks, drinking champagne, making resolutions and such. High on my list of resolutions for 2014 is to no longer ignore this little blog. 2013 was so full of work, play, and generally wonderful things that it seemed that there was no time to stop and chronicle any of it. But as the most touching gift I received for Christmas this year was a digital transfer of a home video taken 20 years ago, I realize that recording moments and projects is really very valuable. It is a habit that I want to get back into in 2014, and I'm going to start taking steps to do that today!

One of my favorite personal projects of this year has been working with David on these little desk calendars! The Calendar Girls started as a conversation with friends about what would make an interesting desk calendar for an end of the year project, and evolved into a full-blown production on all fronts! I love to problem solve, and from start to finish these girls have certainly been an exercise in exactly that!

The original concept was to make 100 original and completely unique Calendar girls for 2014 - all hand cut, painted, and packaged. The girls would function like paper-dolls - the stand is a unique girl and the pages for every month are a different dress.  They would be reserved for attendees of CTN-X, Kickstarter backers, coworkers, friends, and family for 2014, and depending on how well they were received we would make a new run next year. The response was overwhelming, and as it turns out we will have a few left over at the end of the year... and we would love to share them with you!

To celebrate the New Year,  I will add about 20 Calendar girls to my Etsy shop at noon PST on January 1st. Each one will be unique and is numbered between 1 and 100. After that, we won't be making any more until 2015, so if you are interested I would definitely recommend snatching one up!

I hope you all have spent a warm and wonderful holiday season celebrating with friends and family, and I wish everyone a fantastic New Year. Let's make 2014 the best year yet :)

Comic Con 2013

It is that time of year again!

Comic Con 2013 is underway, and we are once again hanging out at Small Press table O15. We have a new batch of Confetti, as well as originals, prints, buttons, and now iPhone cases! If you are braving the crowds in San Diego this week, please stop by and say hello!

And if you want to stay up to date on all of the Comic Con shenanigans, follow me on instagram and twitter (@britsketch). 

Have a great week!

The Best Day.

 2012 was a big year. While I don't usually like to delve too much into personal details on this little blog, I reserve the right to do so when I believe it is necessary! David and I got hitched back in August, and we were very fortunate to have our wedding featured this week on Green Wedding Shoes! Since the incredible photos by Sloan Photographers and our absolutely stunning video by Geoff Boothby of Sharkpig are out there for the world to see, I thought this might be an opportune time to share some of the paper goods from our shin-dig. 

And oh. Were there ever paper goods.

These are just a few of said paper goods.

The overall design of our invitation suite was eclectic - just like us! We drew inspiration from some mid-century design, the gold and coral/pink palette that we had already chosen for our wedding, my love for biting off more than I (or we) can chew, and the bond that holds us together - movies. We met in film school. We work together on films. And when we are not working, you can usually find us arguing the finer plot points of a movie we have just seen over cocktails. It is just what we like to do!

So our save-the-dates were Jaws themed. Why? Well, we were brainstorming one night and David drew a fabulous concept sketch (his drawings have much more character than mine do). It was so funny that I cried from laughing so hard.  The wedding was taking place on a lake, so water seemed appropriate. We already had a movie theme going, so Jaws could work right into that. And I loved the cheesy play on "saving" the date. We engineered the card so that when you pull the tab at the base, a pretty-little oxygen tank releases from or boat. If you have seen Jaws, you know why this happens. If not, well, maybe you should re-visit this post when you have.

I designed the cards (based on David's sketches) and he figured out the necessary mechanics to make them work the way we wanted them to! Teamwork!

Then came the actual invitations. This is where the "I love to bite off more than I can chew" aspect of this project comes in. Our save-the-dates were so unique that we had no idea how to step-it-up for the invitations. Except by making them 3 layered, full-on pop up movie-marquis cards. So that is what we did!

We liked the idea of having our names in lights, so we designed a movie-marquis around a pop-up mechanic. Each card was cut and glued by hand, then secured with a little painting that I had done of the two of us (top image) and wrapped in a gold-glitter belly band. To make them extra fancy (and to spread as much glitter across the country as we possibly could), we lined the envelopes with gold glitter paper as well. I wanted our guests to feel as though they were opening an envelope from the academy awards. Well, I don't know if Academy Award envelopes have gold glitter in them, but maybe they should.

This is just a taste of all of the crazy projects we worked on for our wedding day, but you can certainly see more over at Green Wedding Shoes. It was a wonderful day, David is a wonderful boy, and all of the time we spent on our little projects (I think) was completely worth it.

As a random side note - I wanted to give everyone a little heads-up that I recently updated the shop! A bunch of new prints with (hopefully) more to come soon. Thank you, as always, for continuing to check back.  Have a wonderful week!

Ladies of Animation!

 I am so fortunate to be part of an amazing group show this weekend at GRworks Gallery in LA. The show is titled "Ladies of Animation" and will feature the work of a ton of wonderfully talented women. You can read more about the show right here.

This is one of my four pieces for the show! I thought it might be appropriate to give a sneak peak at the Queen of Hearts, with Valentine's Day being right around the corner and all! The whole set  was really fun to work on, and I can't wait to share the rest of them at the show opening on Saturday! If you are in the area, definitely stop by and say hello! And don't worry, all of the other pieces will be online soon for those who cannot make the trip.

Each lady in the show also contributed a Valentine's Day card design that is now available online! Here is my contribution:

There are some really amazing cards to choose from - and if you can't choose, you can snag the whole set!

It should definitely be an amazing time on Saturday - I hope to see you all there!