(Inside A Black Apple)

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Happy Friday, everyone! I hope that there are good weekends in store for us all. I've been so darn busy with new stuff for the shop...which is great and fun, but also a little exhausting. I might try to have a non-Black Apple weekend, but I think the thinking/sketching/designing gears will still be turnin' and so that probably won't happen.

This is a new painting that I did as a gift for my lovely Ms. A's recent birthday:

For Amy    7"x9"x1"    Acrylic on wood

She's gotten her gifts from me now, so I can show it here without spoiling anything. She has been such a dear friend and source of support since our move here, so to paraphrase Jim Croce, "I had to say I love you in a song".

Er, painting.

I'll be back on Monday with a set of a few somethings that just came back from the printers. I'm so flippin' excited about them!

See you soon!

New Illustration: Books!

I just added this brand spankin' new illustration/print to the shop!

 

I've had this image kicking around my head + sketchbook for a while now.

Aaannnd...since I loved both colors for the text, there is, da dum da dum -
A choice of colorways!

Very exciting.

This is one of my favorite quotes...it's so cheeky, but so true (at least that's the way it feels sometimes). 

Obviously,  people are the most important thing, but books and things make the whole rigamarole so much nicer.

Whole Lot Of Lovely

Sometimes, I find that my mind (and bookmarks) have accumulated a lot of neat things from the internets in a fairly short period of time. And then I feel like it's silly to keep them all to myself, so here are some things that have tickled my fancy in the last month or two:

(Photo credits go to each individual blog owner/shop keeper)

- The fiendishly lovely frocks n' old things blog, The Snail and The Cyclops.

- This card is undoubtedly my favorite from this post of beautiful, delicate old calling cards.

- The dolls of Misako Mimoko! Be still my heart. It's all about the shaky, embroidered old-timey eyes.
And, I just saw that she has an adorable little embroidery pattern up as a gift for anybody with a needle and an appreciation for tea-kettle-headed things.

- Julianna generously began to archive her personal collection of ephemera, at, where else: Ephemeratopia.

- The American Archives, especially things with lots of pictures, like children's books and natural history books. The Bird Book (depicted above) is pretty enrapturing alone, and the vast resource the archives already is (let alone what they're building toward) is a thing of beauty.

- Also! And this is not from the internet at all, but from real life...Ashley gave me an amazing little deer yesterday (you might've seen it on this post). She is so generous and such a great friend to have.

And I think she was just tired of me staring at it longingly.

New Old Things

I've accumulated some really excellent old things lately, and I thought I would take some photos to share them with you!

Let's start with this insane quilt:

 

I nabbed it just last weekend at the antique mall. It has, embroidered in the squares, all of the state birds! And state flowers! And little, odd, totally unofficial (updated: Thanks so much all of you who told me what's what about these older abbreviations) state-abbreviations in banners!  When I found it, I did the crazy, looking-around-suspiciously thing you do when you can't believe that someone hasn't snapped up a quilt featuring all of the state birds and flowers and state-abbreviations in banners.

I had been watching this little old-as-can-be taxidermy duck at the antique mall for almost a year and I finally brought her home and named her Clementine. She manages to be quite cute and quite gross, simultaneously.

I got this locket from an Etsy seller in February...okay, it was my Valentine to myself. I love stars, and a vintage locket with beautiful stars and a tiny photo of somebody's fella from about 80 years ago is as good as it gets.

 

Pretty brown purse (local vintage) + briefcase (Ebay'ed), because I got really obsessed with having a little briefcase a few months back:

We actually ended up going thrifting today, and found some gems, mostly for the house. Observe the back of our car:

Very little makes me happier than a good thrifting day.
Especially when it includes these two things:

We have so many lovely old things, but luckily we all really love old treasures.

And I do mean all of us:

You've got great brains + Two quick things!

Just a little note about two shop-things...

1. The Escape From The Black Forest print is now available in the shop. I was dazzled when I picked it up from my official high-res-image-makers (the excellent Pushdot peeps, for anyone local in need of that sort of thing). They do such a great job with the originals that are just too large to scan!
2. I now have a little ol' sale section for the Black Apple! Find it here. The way it will work is that I'll rotate in 15 prints and other goodies at any given time, and keep fresh things cycling in and out of "good deal" mode. And who doesn't love a good deal? Nobody, that's who.

And holy excellent suggestions, applets! Thank you so much for all of your fun thoughts and input, and keep them coming. So far, I'm seeing some definite trends develop in what folks are after the most...and happily, in a lot of those cases, I'm already working on them behind the scenes.

See you soon + thank you kindly!

Odds + Ends

This little drawing is the beginnings of something...a brand spankin' new Black Apple product that'll be available soon!

I've got a million things and ideas swirling around in my head right now...new products, projects, gifts for friends, paintings, ideas for booth set up at Renegade this Summer (we're doing SF...excitement!). Oh, just everything! It's a good problem to have, though...certainly better than no ideas at all. That is the worst.

And while I've got my brain in high-percolation mode, I'd like to ask you smarties if there is anything you'd really like to see on the Black Apple production end of things.
Product requests?
More of this or that?
Old products you'd like to see resurrected and back in the shop?

See you soon + Thanks for stopping by!
xo

Saturday View, Sunday View

What a wonderful weekend!

It was wildly beautiful here this Saturday and Sunday...and this is coming from a girl who much prefers 50-degree-Fall-ishness. I had just commented to Josiah the other day that in between Winter and Summer, it's difficult for me to get inspired about dinners and things. I think it's because the choices aren't obvious. If it's Winter, you make a soup or stew or some cozy thing...if its Summer, the weather calls for pasta, salads, avacado (as if I don't consume plenty of those 52 weeks a year!). But we had two nice, warm, easy days and two Spring-y/Summer-y dinners.

Saturday:
-Antique stores
-Bagels + Iced tea/coffee
-Park...dozing, reading aloud, enormous lemonades
-Big salads for dinner (which are, quite literally, just big salads with lots of good stuff on them)
-Drawing at night

Sunday:
- Pick up friends from airport
- Grab picnic food and take it to...
- Park, again! Hours of drawing, bird-watching, and cherries. And more lemonade!
- Work at home in the evening
- Make off-the-cuff "white lasagne" for dinner with basil, tomatoes, chicken...85% smashing success, will futher perfect and share
- Drawing and movie-watching at night

Any weekend in which we end up on a quilt at the park two days in a row is a total success in my book. Worthy of celebrating with crazy-expensive cherries...I always try to resist, but they totally got me yesterday.

Happy Monday to you!

New Springtime Prints!

All of these Spring pretties are now part of the shop.

And the Escape From The Black Forest prints will be forthcoming...early next week!

In the world of nice-people-who-I'm-so-grateful-to-call-friends, I just got home from hanging out with Amy and her little blonde fairy-daughter all afternoon, and it was just sweet as can be. Amy baked this wildly good orange-chocolate tea cake confection, and it was amazing. She's the definition of a good egg. I''ve got the remaining half of that cake sitting in my kitchen, daring me to eat it all in one sitting.

I've got a bunch of paper-goods ideas flooding my sketchbook and brain right now. It's getting to where it's forming a bit of a queue, so I better get to bugging the printers. Stay tuned for the results!

Little Magician Trading Cards

Thank you so much for that great update yesterday! I am so grateful to have such lovely people like + buy my work.

Now, I'm pretty excited that a new Black Apple + Pinball collaboration is now hot off the presses! Plus, there's a really sweet interview with me on their CoinOp blog...read it here.

When Laura asked me to design a card for their Designer Card Deck, I was really excited...and the little cards themselves are pretty darn lovely. At first, I fretted that they weren't flashy enough. But then I remembered that I intended for them to look like a stray card from a vintage deck of mysterious, magic cards. The gold, while it kind of blends with the chipboard in this photo, makes the stars "glitter" in real life as you tilt the card this way and that. I'll be throwing in these pretty little cards with random orders...just another nice little thing to include!

I just love Pinball and the work they do so much...it's easy for me to get real nerdy, real fast when I talk about those guys.  I have a few more collaborative projects (this time for the shop) with them that'll be on the presses soon, too, so keep an eye out!

Sweet Spring Cleaners

Here are the other little doll pals that will be a part of tomorrow's (Tuesday) update! They are happy little Spring Cleaners, here to help you sweep out any lingering dust bunnies:

 
Each doll is an edition of 3
Each is crafted of new and vintage cottons, muslin, wool felt, vintage bias tape (for the apron strings), and are stuffed plump with poly-fil. Their faces are, of course, hand painted.

 

And there's the cute tag, right on the bum:

Happy Monday & See you tomorrow for the shop update!

Escape from The Black Forest

Here's a new painting I've been working on off and on for the past few months. It's finally finished, and I'm pretty excited about it. I tried a few new things with it, and it came off the way I hoped it would!

Escape From The Black Forest    20"x16"x2"     Acrylic on paper and canvas

I used this really beautiful floral paper underneath the grassy part of the painting, which you can see pretty well in this close-up:

It'll be part of the upcoming Spring shop update!

Also, Happy Mama's Day to the mamas out there (and especially the mamas I know and love, particularly my lovely Alison W. Martin).

Oh! And we saw new Star Trek last night, and it was as good as everybody's saying. I resisted, but it won me over...it's impressive to pull off a film building on a franchise like that and manage to be both fresh and also true (in spirit) to its mod, charming source material. The ladies were still in kicky knee-boots! It's pretty wrong how happy that made me. And I always thought that it was just Leonard Nimoy and his amazing voice, but after seeing this new fella I'm pretty convinced that Spock is just one of the hottest fictional characters.
(Wow, was that out loud?)

Helpful Hannah Dolls

I've got a pretty big crush on these new little gals!
Their pattern is essentially the same as my Sophie dolls, but with (much) shorter legs, and helpful little linked arms that you can slip tiny things into.

A note, a photo, a tiny book or miniature toy...if it's little enough, the Hannahs will gladly help you hold it.

  

And they have cute, sparkling, simple little 1960's-toy eyes and rosy, rosy cheeks!

All of the dolls are wool felt, new + vintage cottons, stuffed plump with poly-fil, and hand-painted. They measure approx 12" tall, from head to toe-tips.
All three will be available in the update!

Happy Friday to you!

New York Dispatch 3

 Aannnd...if you missed the TAL live show, there is actually an encore tonight (May 7th)!

Hooray!

Check below for new posts!

New York Dispatch 2

 

Wrap Your Troubles in Dreams

Here's a new ink piece I have to show you!
I like comforting "reminders": platitudes, sayings, aphorisms, etc...but instead of artfully spelling it out literally, I tend to interpret them in image form.

So, here is my comforting visual reminder to myself (and to you) for the day:

Wrap Your Troubles In Dreams    Drawing Ink on bristol board    
8"x10" (image area is approx. 6"x8")

The title comes from that old standard...the version I love is the Bing Crosby one (you can watch a funny little video of him performing it here). More and more often, I find myself listening to  music from the 20's and 30's more than music made in more recent times...like during my lifetime! Right now it's 30's music and the Cocteau Twins and that's pretty much it for me.

We had a really nice weekend around here. I planted ranunculus and raspberries, and pulled about 500 dandelions. Being out of commission for a few months really did a number on my usual getting-stuff-done rhythm. But I'm back into the swing of things, and making and baking, and generally getting to feel back to my usual self. I'm so glad!

This little drawing/painting will be part of the Spring update, which is almost ready (dolls need faces, framing needs to be finished). I'll be announcing the date + time for that soon!

Thanks for visiting + Happy Spring!

Naturalia, Part Second

I have lots of actual photos from the AMNH to supplement my little comic from yesterday's post, so I thought I would share some of the diorama-ific goodness with you.

When I was looking through my photos, I noticed two things:

1.) It's unbelievable how much some of the (three dimensional!) dioramas look like 19th century paintings. Especially when photographed! They are really things of beauty.

2.) Even though the dinosaur wing is my second favorite place (the first being the bi-level underwater chamber), I have no good photos of anything from it. I think that can be chalked up to the different approach in there: it's bright, white, not cavernous at all, and the dioramas (if there are any) are quite spare...to complement the bones, I suppose.

 

  

 
(I knew there was something different about that polar bear...and looking at my post from a few years ago, my suspicions were confirmed!)

Also, I am crazy about those little prehistoric under-sea dioramas. They are so nostalgic and comforting...I think they look a lot like illustrations in my childhood World Book encyclopedia or something.

 
Tiny skunk babies!

When I lived in NY, I would go to the Natural History Museum to get some quiet time in the dark, cool beautiful world they've created. It had been so quiet + deserted every time I've been, in fact, that I've actually worried for them! This time, it was hustling and bustling with tons of schoolkids, grownups, travelers, etc.

But it didn't diminish the magic that place holds for me. Not one bit.