French Toast Girl

Dress quest

With the new 'do, and the realization that half of the clothes in my closet are not me anymore - not because of the haircut, but because all of a sudden it seems like most of the skirts and dresses in my closet are either down to my ankles or are miniskirts, which are hard to get down on the ground and help a kid while wearing - anyway, I went in search recently for some summer dresses. Or skirts. I wasn't going to be picky.

What I did find, was that pretty much anything in stores (and in catalogs) right now is meant for someone with a decidedly different figure than mine. I will come right out and say it: I have curves. Curves, okay? I more or less have an hourglass figure. I have a small waist. I also have certain rules that I have developed over the years:

I do not wear anything that makes me look like an opera singer.

I do not wear clothes that don't fit me.

For the love of God, no more black. (I used to wear it all the time. I'm done with it.)

I am not, and never will be, "sporty".

While I am blessed in certain departments, I have no desire to show them off to the average passerby, thank you.

I have an aversion to paying $36 for a skirt made of t-shirt material.

So it's very frustrating to hit the summer sales hoping to scoop up a sundress or two, when everything - everything! has an empire waist. Or is baby-doll-styled. Once or twice I found something workable, and just needed it to be bigger (or smaller), and lo and behold, either there were none in my size, or they were black. Or dark brown.

What's a girl to do?

After doing a little searching online, I'm thinking the answer is to find a wrap dress - I have never worn one, but it looks like that would address some of the issues. The other idea is to go find a pattern I like, and make a dress myself. Then once I found something that worked, I could go get lots of fun materials like this and this and this and make them different.

Interesting links:

Clone yourself a fitting assistant by using duct tape. Genius. Seriously. I want to do this.

Found this through Metafilter (some NSFW): I have made almost ALL these mistakes. And they're right about the correct-fitting undergarments making all the difference.

Metafilter thread: I need to dress for success, but in the office not at the bar

Labels: design, diversions

french toast girl

Enough

My cards arrived yesterday! (Squeeee!) While I'm really excited to have them, it wasn't what I planned on. Remember? I wanted 2-sided cards. I was going to have three different designs. And then the printer died and needed to be resurrected, and the cardstock we got wasn't printable on both sides, and I needed to hurry up and just get them done already*. But I am getting a thrill about having so many of them, and the kids are each carrying one around with them. Petey calls it his "library card" and it almost went to bed with him last night.

Right now, I'm completely exhausted, which I thought was some dire disease (note: do NOT look up symptoms online or you will terrify yourself needlessly) until my mom pointed out the 97 billion things I've been doing in the past two weeks, and not eating because I'm not hungry, and not sleeping. Surprise! It adds up. So instead of pushing it, instead of crawling up the stairs to put yet another piece of paper in the printer, I'm going to take it easy today. My mom is very philosophical about all this. "You take whatever you have finished by Sunday, and we set it up." That's about it. So I'm giving it up and trusting that whatever I have will be enough.

* Can I just say here how much I love Printing For Less... who also did my Christmas cards. They called me up before sending the proof because they wanted to make sure the blue was going to print the way I liked. Consulted Pantone colors with me. And then went and looked at my website, because they were genuinely interested in my artwork. They totally rock.

Labels: art, design, NaBloPoMo

french toast girl

asking again

Sooooooo ... I have the nifty glossy card stock, I'm about to start printing out business cards. I listened to your feedback; my name is bigger, the other info's on the back, and even though you can't see it, the font is more interesting. I definitely want to make the two fairy cards, but then I'm thinking, no matter how gorgeous my tree/girl/heart cards are, should I be handing them out for free at the fair when people should be buying the print instead? What do you guys think? Make them, but don't bring them to the craft fair?

Labels: art, design

french toast girl

in which I am very confused

Thank you, everyone, for your input into the cards. But now I am so confused I don't know what to pick. :) At least I like all of them! So I'm going to sit on it over the weekend, print them all out, look at them carefully, and remind myself that I am only printing 100 at a time, so it's not a major committment. I run out, I print different ones. It's picking the first 2 that's stumping me...

What I did yesterday was big-time scheduling. I had the calendar out, and amidst the class trips, doctor's visits, and playdates, I carved out definite dates that I would do two shopping trips (one for the art store, one for Christmas shopping), and one date to place orders online. I also snagged the first slot next Saturday morning at our local photo studio to get the kiddos' portrait done. Last time we did it, they had to resort to Photoshop tricks to get the three of them in the same pic, and it was reassuring to know that it wasn't just me who had to do that.

I've also been compiling a load of helpful links, here are a few:
Flickr's "Do More" page - lots of options to print and make things out of your images. I thought I wanted to make the Moo cards, but now that I see the dimensions (long and skinny) I don't think they're going to work for me. Still keep exploring the other options from their partners to see if I missed something. :)

Preparing for a Craft Fair - this and many other posts (and wonderful comments from you guys!) are getting the old brain ticking overtime. Keep 'em coming!

Printing - while I dearly, dearly love this printer, they don't do short runs on business cards. So I'm going to give these guys a try.

Labels: art, design

french toast girl

help me pick

As I mentioned yesterday, I figured out that I can swing more than one business card, which is good, because out of all the designs I came up with, it boiled down to which picture people liked best. I revised them, figuring that if I had two (or three) that went together, they should actually match as a set, so... which ones work for you? I have two that are my definite favorites, but I'm not saying which 'till people weigh in. For the vertical ones, the contact info will go on the back. What do you think? (And did I overlook some piece of artwork that would make for a great card?)

Labels: art, design, illustration

french toast girl