STYLING // FASHION

Styling photos based around color, patterns and products is one of my favorite things to do! I totally just do it for fun. For me, it's making art with my clothes :) I really want to do this more so I will be posting more regularly and also adding the color palettes I used because color is huge for me in everything I do. 

Lots of new fashion color photos coming soon.

Happy Thursday :)

-Sara

DOLL HOUSE : PART 1

I've shared photos of my home for many years since I purchased it back in 2008. I didn't have a blog or website to really document the things I did so I used my Flickr to share photos as my home progressed. I spend a lot of time in my house and wanted to make it someplace I wanted to be, someplace that made me happy. I've always loved interior design and love to decorate with things I've collected over the years. Here are some photos of the front rooms of my home the living room and dining room. I've always wanted one huge wall that I could display my toy collection on and my dining room just became the place to do that and have it visible but not too intrusive. I collect a lot of things but I also get claustrophobic easily so I have to organize everything! 

There are more photos on my Flickr if you want to check them out. The photos here and on Flickr are unfortunately a few years old and things have moved and changed, so I will be taking some new photos soon to share. I will also be adding more detailed photos that share who all the artists are in each photo. 

In 2011 I did a little interview for Apartment Therapy that you can see here if interested as well as one for Etsy. 

Thanks for looking!

Have a great day!

-Sara

ETSY SHOP UPDATES

I currently have one last boston terrier plush/pillow up in my Etsy shop. I will be making more when I have some time but I'm not sure when that will be so if you've been needing a new friend, go grab him! :D

Have a great Tuesday! 

-Sara

LIFE AFTER // ONE YEAR DOWN

I want to first say that this is something extremely personal to me and to anyone who gets sad easily, you may want to navigate away to something cute and happy before reading on. Please be kind if you leave a comment as this is really difficult for me still and I'm sharing this in order to keep moving forward in my life.

One year ago yesterday, I received the news no one should have to hear. My partner of 13 years, since the age of 19, had passed away peacefully in his sleep. In less than two months after he would have been 34 years old. Way too young to leave the world. We met in college and quickly realized we had a lot in common. We shared our social awkwardness and drive to create art in all different forms. He was the most intelligent person I have ever met in my life and was able to do things my brain will never have the capacity to do. But like a lot of people with very high IQs, there's often mental disorders as well.

Life was going well until eight years ago when our world completely changed and never went back. His disorders he had became severe and disabling and no amount of doctors or treatments were helping him to get a life back. I became his full time care giver when I was not at work and made the unfortunate decision that I could no longer focus on me and did everything to figure out how to help him get better. Eight years go by, and when you're in a situation like that you're not aware of what it's doing to you mentally and physically. I started to deteriorate along with him and was faced with making some very difficult decisions. Unfortunately on July 27th, 2013 his heart just was unable to take the stress his brain was causing him. Now he has the peace he so much deserves.

Until yesterday I have been unable to go through anything I still had of his. I really wanted to share some artwork from when we were in school, so I pulled myself together and went through some boxes. Not many people ever got a chance to see much that he created but he wrote many books, scripts for movies, created and illustrated multiple comic books, created all the music for multiple albums, had designed and created at least 4 website before it was common for everyone to have a website, and so much more. In such a short time he accomplished more than most. He had so much more to give but now its up to me to keep moving forward and have the life I was never able to have. The life he would have wanted me to have.

Yesterday I kept to myself. Days can always be hard when you're surrounded by memories but it was important to me that I celebrated his life. I take photos and make art to help me get through hard situations so I took some photos to share.

Rest in peace Jason.

WORK FROM MY ETSY DAYS

Back in June of 2007 I opened an Esty shop as a way to keep creating my own work while I worked as a greeting card designer. I've been a long time supporter of handmade items and my fellow artists. Opening my shop just felt like the right direction for me to go in at that time. I loved getting to know a lot of other sellers and met lots of people who's work I still follow today. It's been amazing to see the directions their work has taken throughout the years.

Unfortunately around the end of 2011 I had to close my shop, something that was quite difficult for me to do but I had to make some important decisions in my life and having the time to create my own art just was not possible anymore. I meant for it to only be a short time but it ended up being a few years that went by. I was never certain that I would ever open it back up and sell my work again but that has started to slowly change as my life has been changing over the past year.

I wanted to share a few pieces of art that I had created back then for my shop. I was doing a lot of searching to figure out who I was as an illustrator. For my day job I had to illustrate in a lot of different styles and I felt like I was losing who I was and this helped me stay a bit more focused on myself. 

MY ETSY SHOP

Thank you for looking! I'm not sure if I'll ever be selling any of these as prints again because I'm really excited to make new art but you never know, some may show up in my shop one day if there is interest. 

Have a great Sunday!

-Sara

THE 3 REASONS I'M ALWAYS COVERED IN HAIR

I would like to introduce you to my co workers/furry children/the reason I'm always covered in hair. I have two cats, Alice, a long haired siamese and probably something else but all my animals were adopted so I'm not so sure what her mix is, and Kuma my first cat living away from my parents. She's a black calico that is now around 13 years old. I also had a black long haired cat, Ronin, that was a part of my life for about 14 years but unfortunately passed away last November. I've always been a crazy cat lady but about 4 years ago I adopted my dog Ashley (Ash for short). She a Siberian Husky mix but I'm not sure of her background. She much larger than all the other huskies I've see. I've had a few people think she was part wolf but I have no clue how accurate that is. She's the sweetest dog I've ever known and helped me to overcome my fear of large dogs I've had since I was a wee little child. I don't know what I would do without her in my life. She's gotten me through quite a lot. They will be appearing a lot here on my blog because, well, I work from home and if you're like me and have a lot of pets, you take a lot of photos of them. Here are some of my favorites from the past year.

Happy Thursday. I hope everyone has a great rest of your day!

-Sara

WHAT I WORE // HAPPY BATMAN DAY

For anyone who follows me on Instagram or on Pinterest, I post my outfits pretty often. I've always loved fashion and love sharing my style with others. So here is my very first outfit post on here and what better way to start it off then on Batman Day celebrating the Dark Knights 75th anniversary! Batman has always been my favorite comic and although I may have a bit of a larger love for Joker, Batman is a close second.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY BATMAN!

SHIRT : DC Comic Batman shirt, not sure where from but I see them all over the place.

SHORTS : Valcom

SHOES : Converse boots

ARTIST // MARY BLAIR

A few weeks ago I was California visiting my boyfriend and after three attempts to see The Walt Disney Family Museum in San Francisco (we didn't plan so well and they are not open on Tuesday which was a bit random I thought) we finally made it on a Thursday. We purchased tickets for the museum and the Mary Blair exhibit they currently have right now that goes until September 7th if anyone is interested in visiting. If you're wanting to see the museum and any of the artist exhibits, give yourself about 4 hours to go through everything if you're like me and want to take lots of photos and see all the rooms. The museum itself is quite wonderful but for me, my favorite part and the reason I wanted to go, was to see the Mary Blair exhibit.

If you are not familiar with Mary, she was an artist for Walt Disney from around 1940 to the 1960's creating amazing concept art, character design, and art direction for many films including Alice in Wonderland, Peter Pan and Cinderella, along with many other projects as well as children books. If you would like to read more info about her and her life the Magic of Mary Blair site is a good one. 

For me and many other artists and designers, she has been a huge source of inspiration throughout my life with her amazing use of color and design. I did my best to get some good photos of the exhibit to post but unfortunately due to really low light in the museum most of my photos came out really blurry (insert sad face). Here are a few that were somewhat good enough to post. 

Be sure to check out her work on line to see a better representation of her use of color and design. I may pull some of my favorites to post that didn't come out in photos very well.

Have a wonderful Wednesday!

-Sara

(Image of Mary Blair and exhibit show info banner from The Walt Disney Family Museum.)