A lesson in Typography

Typography is the art and technique of arranging type in order to make language visible. I’m going to date myself here but when I was in college studying graphic design, we still went to typesetters to set our type. I graduated in 1990, and computer typesetting...

Friday Finds – Swimsuits!

Since it is so nice and sunny around here and next week promises temperatures in the high 80’s, I thought we should bust out some favorite swimsuits. I always love the way swim suits look in magazines and catalogs but alas, rarely do I find one that I love. I...

Graduation Party Inspiration Board

Looking for a fun theme for you Graduation Party? You can’t go wrong with a Luau theme! Always easy to find decorations and party supplies for this theme, plus some great food ideas. My son and niece are graduating this year and we are hosting a joint party. To...

What’s New Wednesday – Birds?

Nesting Design Collection Since we are licensed artists we always have to be aware of the trends and what new trends will be hot. But we always have to be a year or two ahead of the game since most of our artwork will take a year or two to be licensed, manufactured...

Got Zucchini?

Last week I bought a bunch of zucchini. It’s one of those veggies that the whole family loves. Normally I slice it thin and just cook it with a little olive oil. This time I decided to make zucchini chips and Zucchini-Chocolate Chip Muffins. Sorry no pictures of...

Let it Rain Fabric

Our newest fabric, Let it Rain, is now available. For this collection we combined rain boots and umbrellas in bright and sassy colors. Here is a link to the quilt pattern seen above. I’ve always loved patterned rain boots, unfortunately I’ve never needed a...

The Hand Written Thank You

Have you seen the movie The Jerk? There is one scene in the movie where Steve Martin is super excited about getting the new phone book, see it here. This is how I feel when I am getting the mail. I love getting letters and packages from people it is so fun. I know we...

Free personalized Sheep? April Fools!

One of our clients is Frecklebox.com. Besides designing a lot of licensed products for their site we also do all of their marketing. That includes all of their email blasts. This one is live today and it was one of our favorites to work on. Hurry up and head on over...

What is Equality?

e·qual·i·ty 1. the state or quality of being equal; correspondence in quantity, degree, value, rank, or ability. Isn’t it time we stopped arguing and do the right thing? We have a history of denying rights to citizens, let’s take a step in the right...

Holi – the festival of colors

As an artist and designer, color is one of my favorite things. The right color combinations make all the difference in a design collection, a room in your house and even your clothing. Today is Holi, the festival of colors. It is mostly celebrated in India and Nepal...

Farm Fresh

The first day of Spring was March 20! It has been sunny and warm around here and with the warmer weather the Farmer’s Markets start opening up. Some are open year round but I hate the thought of walking around in the rain to buy my fruits and veggies. But a...

Graduation Invitations and Announcements

It’s almost the end of the school year, time sure flew by! This year I have a graduating senior. Besides figuring out college, senior ball, and graduation parties, I also need to get my act together on his announcement/invitation before it gets too late. My...

What’s new Wednesday – Mediterranean Dreams Home Decor

One of my favorite design collections is Mediterranean Dreams. I love the colors and the feeling I get when I see it. We have fabric that is out now in this pattern but we are also developing home decor products using the collection for Surtex and the Licensing Show....

We Miss You Magic Land

I was doing some research last week, I can’t even remember what it was for but I stumbled across the most amazing artists. They are called Pip & Pop. The Australian artist duo Nicole Andrijevic and Tanya Schultz, create the most magical art installations....

Celebrate St. Paddy’s Day

Have plans for Sunday, besides wearing green? When I was younger (many moons ago) and lived at home, my mom always made corn beef and cabbage, yum! And we are not even Irish. We are Russian, Italian and Hungarian. I sure do miss me some corned beef. I think I’ll...

What’s new Wednesday

We have several new fabric lines coming out this month. We are expecting a big box of fabric today. It may include our Owl Friends fabric. We knew that the bird trend was not going away. Owls are super hot and have been for the last couple of years. My daughter has a...

Easy Peasy Snacks

Before I get into the yummy, easy snacks we made this weekend, I just want to bitch a little bit about daylight savings time. It is hard enough waking up in the morning and getting the kids up now we spring ahead and lose an hour and have to get up in the dark again?...

Custom Invitations and Stationery

Up until 7 or 8 years ago we did not license our artwork, but we did do a lot of custom wedding invitations and stationery. In 2005, an unknown company called Tinyprints, asked us if we’d like to be one of their first online stationery designers. They were...

Spring Nail Trends

One of my daughters’ favorite past time is doing their nails. They sit and watch Pretty Little Liars or one of their other favorite shows and come up with crazy nail designs to try. Their latest is to paint all of their nails one color and then ad glitter to one...

New Tween Collection – Rockin’ Rainbow

We have a new collection available on Frecklebox. We designed it with tweens in mind. Sometimes tweens are like crows, they just want something shiny and colorful! We tried to pattern our design collection off of the old PeeChee folders that we used to carry around in...

Free Museum Weekend

I don’t know about you but when you have 3 kids it’s sometimes hard to find something to do on the weekend that does not cost an arm and a leg. If we go to a matinee and lunch we are usually looking at spending at least $75. I was pretty excited to see...

New Collection

We’ve been really busy the last couple of weeks getting new collections designed in time for Surtex in May. Surtex is a big licensing show in New York that we attend with our agent every year. It is next door to the Stationery Show also a fun and inspiring show...

Spring is in the air!

It is starting to warm up around here. We are supposed to hit the 70’s this week. I always find it hard to transition from winter to spring. It is still cold in the morning and evening but warmer in the afternoon. My main issue is what to wear on my feet so they...

Simon+Kabuki Multi-Modern Collection

Our new collection, Multi-Modern Monograms is now available on Frecklebox.com. We got a lot of requests for a design that could be used with monograms and that could also be for both kids and adults. We thought this was a great collection for tweens and it also makes...

Exploring your Neighborhood

We love going to the beach whenever we have a free day. Our kids all have wetsuits and boogie boards and can spend the whole day in the surf. Since we had President’s Day off we did a spur of the moment overnight with cousins at the beach. We spent the day going...