(Inside A Black Apple)

Venus Zine is so good to me

I'm so excited! You can click right here to cast your votes.

My pal Mary emailed me last night to let me know I had been nominated...I had no idea til' then. Venus is maybe the best magazine there is, and it feels so darn good to be in the company of such excellent indie-craft stars...especially Hillary & Sarah. And you could vote for all of us, if you like, because you get to choose your top three!

Thank you SO much for voting (if you do). It means a lot to me...really, it does.
Happy Friday, my sweets!

Roll-y Poly

There are times, in the Black Apple household, in which certain package deliveries emit ridiculous amounts of squealing and shrieks of delight. These new custom address labels (for your packages!) is one such delivery:

I think they look so sweet with my kraft-colored mailers.

PS: Thanks to conscientious Elizabeth, who reminded me that it's not the smartest to publicize your home address on ye olde internette.

PPS: For everyone curious, the labels are just from Uline.com! The drawing/design is all me, but Uline printed them for me :)

New Hedgie Tees!!!

Just a little note: Here is the  sneak preview of the hedgie tees that will go up in the shop on Tuesday, as promised:

(A close-up of the grown up tees)

The lighter blue is the kid's size...I have 2, 4 + 6. In the adult size, I have S-XL girly tees, and M-XL guy's tees! They're American Apparel, super soft, and utterly adorable for everyone.

I'm a busy  bee, and I think that the update Tuesday is going to have some really great stuff. Back to work (painting, sewing, packing orders) for me, and I'll show you more artwork tomorrow!
xoxo 

The Renegade Report, Part 2

So, we were pretty tired, and darn well sold out of a lot of things...but we tromped back over to the McCarren Park Pool for day two. This time we were armed with a big cooler of drinks, which made everything...well...a bit more laid back.

I look hilarious in sunglasses, and they don't really stay on my tiny nose too well...so I decided to go for broke and just get heart-shaped ones.

The whole time we were there, I was deeply jealous of Heidi's kids. They were just chilling out under the table on a big quilt...eating pizza and ice cream...and generally being lucky ducks:

That is the life.

Piece of evidence number 139842 that Heidi is the coolest mom: on Sunday, she started to teach her older son, Mr. K, to embroider! There is a beautiful picture + Heidi's version of the story in this post.  He designed and stitched the best robots, and I knew they had to be mine. Luckily, he is the entrepreneurial sort, so he was excited to sell them.

Please note the price tags, because they are awesome. Especially the one on the right with the "price-slashing". I cannot wait to press them gently and frame them up for my studio!

With his proceeds, K bought the coolest Jenny Harada tree. When he came back from his shopping, I asked him to take me over there so I could get my own tree. Her stuff is amazing! There are so many softies in the world, so I think it is really special when you find genuinely quirky and amazingly designed ones like hers (or Heidi's, of course).

The design of the stump part is just so perfect and cool! Not to mention they are so Suessian and reminded me of trees that the Lorax would defend.

Oohhh I had such a great time, it's worth repeating. Tiring, but great. Oh, and the lovely Marilyn has some cute Renegade pictures up on her Flickr, including one of me with all my stuffs! 

Happily, the house has been put to rights, and so I am free to catch up on shipping and make some stuff! Hooray, hooray.  So even though  I sold lots of stuff last weekend,don't dispair!  I'll still have a good little stockpile of cool stuff for the update next week!

Happy Friday, my dears!

The Renegade Report, Part 1

I'm back!
We got in late last night, tired and dirty, and now we are putting the house to rights. Everything is such a mess (studio, laundry, bedroom) and there is so much to be put away...and I just really wanna make stuff. I want to sew. Maybe this weekend.

Anyway, Brooklyn was great (visiting is wonderful, as long as I know I don't have to live there). Renegade was FANTASTIC, due in no small part to having:

A.) A rock-star spot at the fair, and amazing neighbors, in two of my favorite crafty pals the adorable Heidi (and cute fam) + that saucy minx, Kate Black. I felt very comforted by their presence.

B.) The best two helpers there could be.

and
C.) All of the amazing fans! You applets came out in full effect, and I felt very loved.

Here is my little tent/setup (photos are from the first day):

The whole-tent-view.

The table with originals + The Sophie Dolls + etc.

My print display (very cute, no?) and some tees (the ones on the right side are the new ones in kids and adults sizes!)

The doll family + my helpers just after set up.
(Thank you so much, Sarah and Josiah, for being the best elves ever this weekend. It would've been an impossible task without such good help!)

I was really, really happy with how everything looked...the display, etc.
I was nervous about everything, but it all went super smoothly, and we nearly sold out on Saturday (the first day!!!). I was legitimately worried we would have nothing for the second day of the show. We did, albeit a very scaled-down version.

I cannot justify any more glued-to-the-computer time while the aparement and studio is in shambles, so I'll be back tomorrow with part two of my report. Thank you SO MUCH to everyone who came out, said hi, chatted, and took things home with them.
You made my first Renegade a huge + fun success!

New Tee Tuesday!

 

You must love that trashy, flash-ridden photo of Josiah. Just tryin' to keep AA's aesthetic alive. Kidding, it was just dark yesterday when these came in, and we were too impatient and excited to try them on!

I am flipping out over these. I flipped out over the silhuoette tees, too, but I am personally so in love with mine and ready to wear it every day. They're just so darn soft and fit so well and it's been a personal dream of mine to have a wearable family of hedgehogs at my disposal. Well, they're now at YOUR disposal, too, over at shop as of just a few minutes ago! Hooray, hooray.

The only slightly wierdo thing is that the supplier was out of the small grey tees, so there is a pretty light blue for you small-ies:

They're flipping adorable as well. I fancy them just as much as the grey!

Oh, so exciting. OH! I forgot to mention:
There are also a few boy's sizes, as well...only a few of each size, though (L & XL, all the mediums are spoken for already).

Happy Tuesday, loves!

A Giant Cupcake with the Fishes

Yesterday we all had a crazy-fun day, in honor of Sara being born some years ago.

I both baked AND happily remembered to photograph the aforementioned giant cupcake:

Then we headed off to the aquarium in Atlanta for the day. We had a nice lunch and then several hours later found ourselves rather blue and eerily illuminated:

(birthday lady looking cute)

This is a just little bit of the wonderful fishies and creatures we got to see:

 

The moon jellies were my favorite thing, and were also the trickiest to photograph! I also love seahorses, though, and whale sharks, and have since I was a little person. They have 3 huge whale sharks in their giant tank, and they are just incredible.

After aquarium-ing, we did a little bit of night-shopping at the best store and came back to Athens for dinner and giant cupcakes and presents and a grueling game of Scrabble.

I think that Sara had a pretty great birthday, and I, personally, had a very lovely day with my very lovely friends! I feel darn lucky to have them.

Happy Weekends all around, my sweets!

Oh, Hooray!

Black Apple Birdsnest Silhouette tees are now available in the shop!!!

This is an extremely limited run of 25 pieces, available in 4 different sizes (S-XL) printed on American Apparel organic cotton tees. It's an off-white, natural colored shirt with solid black crisp printing of the silhouette.

They are very soft and super cute in a simple, elegant way. I'm not a tee gal, normally, but you know that I'm loving these big time...

Hooray! Go tees!

Next month I have another round of limited-run tees in the works, and I'm working on a wee clothing-related project right now, so more wearable-excitement is to follow.

Happy Friday and xoxo, my dears! More fun stuff tomorrow.

Under a Cookie Sun

Hey, you!

Yeah, you!

Thanks so much for making today's update another big success...there were so many originals this time around (paintings have been top priority in my world lately, as I've told you) that I hope all that wanted some original work got a piece they really love.

I promise that next time there will be some more sewn stuff. My sewing machine was looking at me so dejectedly today as I finished stitching up the hedgie plush...

...it seemed to be saying something along the lines of "Come on you big jerk! Drop the brushes and get with the...um...stitchin' (?)". So, I'm going to work on some dollies (yay!) in the coming weeks, and some more hedgie plush (I'm still tweaking my pattern, AND they are so darn fat and fun to make).

The little mushroom-sitting girly at the top was part of the update today, as was this sweetie:

"Tess" 6"x8"x1"

As well as this gal who looks-not-unlike-myself with a kitten-not-so-unlike-my-own:

"Me + Miette"  6"x7"

Also, this set of quadruplet hedgies (a couple are still in the shop if you hop over there quickly!):

 

And since it's TAX DAY (I think?!) today, I thought I would share a little comedy (well, it's funny to me).
This is my tax return paperwork, ready to head off to the IRS a few weeks ago:

 

Yep, I definitely gussied it up as if it were one of my regular orders. I even included some postcards and a print...I'm not kidding. It was about 3:00 AM when I finished them, so that might've been what possessed me to woo the IRS with my cuteness. Or maybe I just wanted to impress upon them the notion of why I had to write them such a frighteningly big check. Like, "See all this goodness and sweetness? That is why I have to give you this moolah. Because I make this stuff for a living". Anyway, I took a picture cause I knew you'd get a kick out of it.

Whew! And now I'm going to make some dinner and eat some more of the chocolate chip cookies I managed to make in between all of my update-readying-last-minute stuff today.

Happy Tuesday, sweet peas, and thank you again for bein' around.

Drink your Milk

I broke down and got the crazy-pricey overseas subscription last November.
Even though everything on the website is in French, I just needed to do it, because, this magazine is the most magical of magazines. I think it was when Lisa finally caved and subscribed to Selvedge that I decided to go for it. And then, no magazines came. It is quarterly, but still. When two (or maybe three?) issues came and went on the website, and none came to  my mailbox, I began to grow a little concerned.

So, against Josiah's good advice, I wrote to them in awful, hilarious French, inquiring about the whole debacle. Well, it seems that my pleas in broken French touched the hearts of the subscription dept. at Milk...it was probably the phrase "Je suis triste" that really got 'em. (wink)
Less than a week later, the newest issue was delivered to me! Sorry, I just needed to share the drama and turmoil surrounding my Milk Magazine, so that you could understand why I went crazy with happiness at its arrival yesterday.

Just some snippets of its beautiful children and whimsical strangeness (please ignore the stubby fingers):

 

 

 

It was so worth embarrassing myself.

Enjoy the rest of your Sunday!
xoxo