Crystal Madrilejos

[Image via Condé Nast]

The past few weeks have been full of Christmas present making, birthday gift buying, baby stuff planning and baby shower invite designing!

We’ve been making the majority of our presents for a couple of years now; which is fun, budget-friendly, as well as, time consuming. In my family, we mainly do presents for the kids and just a gift exchange for the adults since there are so many of us. Andrew’s immediate family is smaller so we buy gifts, but we’ve also made gifts for them in the past.

This year we got an early start and many presents have already been completed. I’m really excited about them and want to post them but I wouldn’t want to ruin the surprise for some people!

So instead I will post about a few of the gifts that we’ve made in the past years. You can read past posts about Christmas gifts here, here, here, here, here, and here.

Apron and cookbook for Monica: Designed and sewn by Andrew. Made from thrifted fabric.

Bag O’ Shapes for Arwen: Designed, sewn and screenprinted by myself and Andrew. Made from canvas, thrifted fabric, and polyfill. This is something that we eventually hope to make more and sell in our etsy shop.

Doll for Abigail: Based on this design from a Japanese craft book. Crocheted scarf and a skirt made from a doily.

Leg Warmers for Abigail: I designed and crocheted these, but it was difficult because I’ve never made a pair before and I didn’t have Abigail to try them on as I was making them.

Crocheted Bag for Mariela: I crocheted this from a free pattern that I found at JoAnn Fabrics. Made with Bernat Handicrafter Cotton Naturals (you can find the pattern online here at the Bernat site, but you need to sign up for a free account.)

–c.

I saw this over at “design is mine: isn’t it lovely?” and was completely blown away. Love everything about it and think it would be a perfect addition to the baby’s room.

Here is a detail.

–c.

(Click here for larger version)

(Click here for larger version)

[Graphics via GOOD Magazine]

If you are like me and a total sucker for info graphics maybe you’ve already checked out GOOD Magazine’s Transparency, “graphical explorations of the data that surrounds us.” Holy fantastic-ness. If you have many minutes to immerse yourself, please do click here.

–c.

Andrew and I were asked to make a logo for a disc golf tournament that will be taking place in Medina this summer. The course is Roscoe Ewing and is actually one of the first disc golf courses in the country and the first one in Ohio.

The organizers wanted a dragon to be a main part of the logo. A dragon perched on top of a disc golf basket to be specific, an item of which you may or may not be familiar with. The tournament is called Roscoe’s Revenge and here is the logo we came up with:

In our research we found some pretty crazy dragon art (as you can imagine). One of my favorites was a site we found called Neon Dragon Art that features the work of artist Jessica Peffer. I don’t think anyone can truly appreciate dragons until they’ve actually attempted to draw one. Seriously, try to draw one. I dare you.

–c.

We’re back from NYC! Thanks to our Brooklyn friends that came out to see us on our short visit, we had a wonderful time as usual.

Before we embarked on our 8+ hour drive from NE Ohio to Brooklyn, NY, Andrew printed out a list of every local NPR station from here to there ensuring our listening capabilities. We’ve done the drive so many times that we have to keep coming up with new ideas to keep us occupied. And this brings me to the main purpose of this post!

I’m sure many people are getting weary of listening or watching the news and being bombarded with dropping employment rates, rising UNemployment rates, stimulus packages, and swine flu. Talk about a real downer! Unfortunately, the bad economy has hit us close to home so I’ve been especially happy to announce that I am contributing to a new blog dedicated completely to thinking positive.

The company I work at, Wise Group, has launched a grass-roots campaign to “Unleash the Positive” to inspire people during these tough times. My first post on the wiseUP blog is up today, you can check it out here.

You can check out all the posts by going to www.wisegroup.com/blog where you can learn about our “10 to Change” challenge where we are encouraging people to try to make a difference in the world/community/city/town/themselves with only $10. My “10 to Change” idea will be posted next Wednesday (May 20th) so check back then to see what I came up with.

If you have any ideas for a “10 to Change” please feel free to email me or my editor Ann at Wise Group and we will post it on our site.

–c.

If you haven’t noticed, our blog has a new look. Tonight I played around with different layouts and this is what I ended up with. I still haven’t wrapped my head around how these layouts work so it was a bit frustrating at times. I’m going to play around with it a little more since I’m not 100% happy with it, but it’s a start. We’ll see where this goes.

This image is currently my desktop and it makes me really happy.

[Photo by John Rawlings. Available to purchase at Condé Nast]
– c.

It’s been over a week and I’ve been too swamped to post this wonderful news! Some of you are already aware, but last week I was featured on the blog spruce [décor]. I was interviewed for the “Midwest Minute” section and am super thankful to Lissa for having me. You can check out the feature here.
–c.

The last element that I designed for the Dina Shower, that I previously posted about, the thank you cards.

I’ve been updating my design website with new work that I haven’t had the chance to put up until now. You can check them out here.
–c.

Paintings by Milton Glaser (LOOK Magazine, 6.14.1966 Issue)

–c.

I want to give a big thank you to two people, Wanwisa of Modern Vintage for posting about our wedding, and to Laura Budde for recommending us and for making my beautiful dress. You can check out Modern Vintage Designs for the feature or click here to go directly to the post.

Thanks again!
–c.