Happy Spring!

I can't resist making a quick post to share the latest version of the Screaming Mimis ad, due out in April, starring one of my all time favorite Spring color combos, melon-y pink and dusty mint!

Joyeux Anniversaire!

Jeff and I rang in our 10th anniversary last month with a quick visit to one of our all time favorite and most sorely missed places of all time, Palm Springs!

Since our anniversary falls on the same week as Thanksgiving (Yes, I was originally wooed with leftover mashed potatoes!) we usually tend to stick close to home to avoid the nightmare of holiday travel, but this occasion seemed way too momentous not to celebrate properly, plus we've both been down with a touch of the sads this early winter and kind of needed a getaway, so we decided to scrape some pennies together and head for the suuun! Yes, we did end up on perpetually delayed flights full of screaming children, and got to spend the night in the SF airport on the way home, but it was absolutely worth it!

We were luckily able to snap up some really great off season rates, and spent our first night at the ridiculously cute Jonathan Adler designed Parker Palm Springs where we were upgraded to a patio room, and accidentally greeted with the cute dessert platter and champagne on ice arranged for the rooms previous occupants, so we were off to a pretty good start! We booked the Glutton's Delight, which was utterly silly and absolutely amazing all at once, basically a race to fit in as many super decadent meals as possible to make sure we used every last shred of our food credit over the course of 24 hours, which we managed to do, and then some, just under the wire! We had an absurd amount of food, including dinner at the super fabulous Mr Parker's (Where they also make a mean Old Fashioned!) surrounded by twinkly low lights and an amazing in-house art collection, a super fancy early morning coffee service for two and an extra extravagant mimosa soaked and candied fruit bedecked room service brunch on our sun-drenched mini patio just before check out time!

Here are a few snapshots from our stay, mostly via my beloved Instagram:
And a few slightly more epic vistas via the Parker website:
We spent the next couple of nights at the slightly more budget conscious (Thank you Booking.com!) but equally adorable Ace Hotel & Swim Club where we pretty much instantly fell into full relaxation mode (and possibly slightly delayed food comas), lounging by the saltwater pool with our morning coffees, watching the crazy pink sun rise over the mountains, swanning to and from the hot tub in their cult-y robes and napping by the cute patio fireplace at dusk. Sooo perfect!
We also went on a ton of mini nature adventures around Palm Springs, like hopping the Aerial Tram up into the snowy mountaintops at sunset, hiking up to the Indian Canyons palm tree oasis, and visiting one of my new favorite places in all of Southern California, the Moorten Botanical Garden and Cactarium, where I took so, so many photos of super rare cacti and succulents that it led to a mass exodus of my Instagram followers! Little do they know, I actually took a few hundred more on another camera, so here are a few of those too: And of course we had to run through practically every antique store in town, leading to a) maybe a new picker job spotting cute NW specific goods for one of the cutest shops in town, and b) my new all out obsession with the Ib Arborg Parrot Chair:
On our way out of town, we stopped in at the Palm Springs Art Museum for their awesome 60s and 70s Geometric Abstraction show, including my all time favorite early Judy Chicago, Rainbow Picket, a great Helen Frankenthaler (See below!) and a piece from one of Jeff's recent faves, Piero Dorazio. The museum itself, designed by Palm Springs architect E. Stewart Williams (See here for an adorable story about a jaunty sailor cap adorned Frank Sinatra commissioning his fancy new abode from him whilst enjoying an ice cream cone!) is an absolute mid-century modern gem (This blog has some great interior shots, including the perfectly 1974 tangerine orange restrooms!) and totally worthy of a visit all on it's own, complete with the original decor including the Panton-esque tangerine and olive carpets and a majestic poured concrete grand stairwell with what could only be the largest Sputnik Starburst chandelier all of the land: This stop kicked off the agenda for the rest of our trip, which mostly involved seeing as many of the Pacific Standard Time shows as humanly possible over the course of a few short days in a crazy whirlwind of nonstop art! I think I've discussed my obsession with Postwar California art movements here before, and the Pacific Standard Time initiative, spearheaded by the Getty Foundation, with the participation of 120+ other museums and galleries all across Southern California, just so happened to be a totally unprecedented convergence of absolutely all of my favorite art of all time, and most of the shows we had been dying to see just so happened to coincide with our trip, so we definitely couldn't pass up this possibly once in a lifetime opportunity to see it all in person! If you happen to be in, or are going to be in Southern California anytime soon, I would definitely, definitely recommend it! Here are a few of the highlights from the rest of our trip, in no particular order:

The flagship Crosscurrents in L.A. Painting and Sculpture, 1950–1970 exhibition, amazing Greetings from LA, Artists and Publics, 1950-1980 ephemera show, and De Wain Valentine's Gray Column at the Getty! Here are our reflections in Gray Column as shot by Jeff, and a few of the smaller companion pieces in the show: Sage Organic Vegan Bistro cashew alfredo spinach basil raviolis, KindKreme honey chai / salted caramel raw brownie sundaes, telekinetic teen movie slumber parties and apple / champagne cocktails with one of our oldest and bestest mutual friends!

Discovering new favorite artists like Helen Pashgian, whose impossibly luminous resin pieces were on show both at the Ace Gallery Beverly Hills (Along with some early De Wain Valentine's!) and represented by a piece or two in most of the major museum shows; and new super fave Terry O'Shea at Cardwell Jimmerson whose dark, organic, and extra-smartassy work, despite also being cast resin based, was in a league all its own compared to the super glossy and super serious work of his contemporaries (Don't miss the story about how he "donated" a requested piece to LACMA by chucking it over the fence into the tar pits!)

Daily smoothies and a free Thanksgiving lunch buffet alongside Weird Al and tons of cute LA raw foodies at Cafe Gratitude, followed by chasing peacocks at the LA Arboretum and amazing vegan Chinese Thanksgiving dinner out in the Valley, via an unexpectedly awesome Yelp recommendation!

Basically the entirety of Phenomenal, the epic Light and Spaaace show at the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, including tons of mind-bending James Turrell light wells, Robert Irwin, John McCracken, and my favorite Craig Kauffman, followed by fresh caught cute surf shack lobster chimichangas in La Jolla and a long drive up the coast at sunset!

The amazing ASCO retrospective (Imagine the Cockettes meets super tough proto-punk bubblegum performance art troupe meets renegade Echo Park urban planning committee!), the California Design show (Including a full scale replica of the Eames House living room!), and the Broad Contemporary at LACMA!

Kenneth Anger Icons and Under the Big Black Sun at MOCA!

Golden State of Craft at the Craft and Folk Art Museum, mostly featuring works from the Pasadena Art Museum's California Design exhibitions, whose catalogs are some of the most prized books in my collection! Here we are defying the strict no photos rule (Sorry guys!) to sneak a quick shot next to Pamela Weir-Quiton's Georgie Girl, which is not only probably my favorite piece in the entire California Design series, but one of my favorite things ever made in general: Finding the softest, slouchiest vintage Russian sailor shirt to end all vintage Russian sailor shirts at the impeccably curated Mohawk General Store, super extra discounted United Bamboo cat calendars at Opening Ceremony, and a super thematically appropriate mini collection of amateur resin art from our favorite semi-overpriced but always amazing LA antique mall on our way to the airport!

All in all, basically the best anniversary ever!

Here's to many, many more!
❤

Go For Baroque!

This is ever-so-slightly belated, but probably one of my faves, which makes it kinda worth posting a month or two late:

Hello Spring/Summer-ish Screaming Mimis ad!

Probably one of the things I love the about fashion illustration in general and the Screaming Mimis ads in particular is creating cute imaginary locales for cute imaginary kids to live in, and when in doubt I tend to go for Baroque, thus the French Provincial by way of the 1970s teenage bedroom, which is probably just about what my dream office would look like, given a) a house of my very own to wallpaper to death b) a teeny-tiny budget and c) a couple of summertime weeks of decor scouting roadtrippery!

First on the my wishlist would be this altogether perfect pink and green velveteen number, found whilst scouring the internets for the perfect furniture to draw for this very ad, but sadly already sold for a song:


I also love love love how the ad fit right in with this super adorable editorial which just so happened to be in the very same issue of Paper Magazine:

Styled by super cute Los Angeles based Wardrobe Stylist Shirley Kurata and shot at one of my all time favorite places in the history of the world, the Madonna Inn!

Which was also one of our all time favorite photoshoot locales when we lived in LA, as seen in these outtakes from a Gravy Train!!!! album cover shoot from oh-so-many years ago, which also involved smuggling in a carload of stuffed poodles, googly eyed plastic bunnies, big eyed kids and giant furry gonks from ye olde prop library:


If you've never been, I highly recommend you pay a visit to the Madonna Inn immédiatement, if only for a quick slice of Pink Champagne Cake and a mug of pink sugared coffee on your way up or down the California Coast, but one look at the magical rooms and pink vinyl boothed and gold bedecked steakhouse and you'll pretty much have to stay the night:


PS. On a semi-tangentially somewhat related note, see that hair, way back up there, in the ad? That's basically my summer dream hair & any tips on how to achieve such a look would be greatly appreciated! I'm desperately in need of some Spring/Summer hairstyles as I seem to have sprouted a spectacularly unruly and extravagantly overgrown mane of waist length Manson girl hair over the Winter months and need all the help I can get!

❤ Fawn

In Other News...

Here's a little sneak peek at one of the early drafts for the new Screaming Mimis website:

which has since gone live, complete with a mini online shoppe and cuter than cute new blog!

Yay!

Oh, Deer...

In the midst of the seemingly endless task of inspiration image sorting and filing, I stumbled on a long forgotten but no less magical 'Girls & Deer' folder, home to gems such as this all time flickr favorite, not to mention possibly one of the cutest photos ever taken in the history of the world:

Via Von Canon

And...

Last but not least!

Audrey Hepburn & her pet deer Pippin...

Taken by Bob Willoughby

And Tennessee Bunny Thomas of The Like...

Via 10 Magazine

Tales of Owls and Flowers...

A few more scans from the vintage archives:

This set of 1966 mini posters screen printed on heavy gold card is one of my very favorite finds by this artist, soon to be properly framed and displayed along with a million other cute ephemeral odds and ends (my very first resolution for 2010!)

Have a Verrie Merrie...

Happy Holidays Everyone!
Here are a few scans from my previously semi-secret archives of 60s ephemera:


I've been organizing like crazy for the past few weeks, in advance of a couple of impending super exciting life changes which I can't wait to share! One of the super exciting announcements semi-tangentially involves all of these boxes of cute cards, notes, stationery and paper goods that I've been hauling from coast to coast all of these years, so expect lots more scans from the archives soon!!!
Here's to starting 2010 off with a bang!
xo Fawn

Lost in the Forest...

Sorry for the lack of posts here lately, I've been swept up in a flurry of Fall leaves, ringing in the season so far by picnic-ing at dusk with Vaux’s Swifts, racing around the Oregon countryside meeting cute alpacas, and starting to hibernate just a little, which will hopefully mean lots of progress on lots of projects soon...
For now, here's a mini preview of my latest ad for Screaming Mimis, due out any day now:

This one was so, so, so fun to draw, partly because I got to create the imaginary forest backdrop of my dreams, and partly because all I needed in the way of inspiration was to take a quick peek into my own closet:

which has been kind of an explosion of plaids and tweeds and woolens as of late and admittedly kind of out of control (as in, how many brown tweed blazers does one girl need?) but have I mentioned all of the cute vintage Pendleton still kicking around thrift stores all over the Pacific Northwest? It's kind of impossible to resist. As much as I can't wait to wear every single one of these coats, the mustard plaid medieval toggle coat that got me through last winter has already fallen back into heavy rotation and will probably always be my favorite:

Kind of hard to top that, right?

PS. Drawing this ad also got me re-acquainted with my semi-dormant ceramic mushroom obsession. Oops. Here are a few possible candidates for new additions to the collection:

Recent Acquisitions...

The One That Got Away...

I lost the most amazing 60s deco revival papier-mâché bust on eBay a few months ago and am still kicking myself for not bidding just a teeny tiny bit more...

The combination of dusky grass green and just ever-so-slightly day-glo pink with the deep avocado green of her hair is nothing short of absolutely perfect!

Past Tents...

It's practically sweater weather now in Portland, and though I'll be super excited to access the 99.9% of my wardrobe that is made up of tweeds and heavy wool and sweater vests, I will be sad to see our weekly outdoor expeditions fall by the wayside until next year. I was kind of just getting the hang of this nature thing again! Last weekend we went on an epic stroll in the Columbia River Gorge that should have led to a super secret swimming hole which we never quite found. Along the way we were menaced by a tiny hissy silver snake, and, at one point, I could be found quite comically clinging to a mossy rock for dear life in knee deep rapids... But, the trail through old growth redwoods was insanely beautiful and dotted with a couple of cute little campsites tucked into the foliage that we swore to pay another visit to before the rains start for a couple of nights around a fire with toasted marshmallows and owl calls...

But first, the task of figuring out how and where to acquire the makings of a cute camp!

As someone who is both secretly mortified of modern day sporting gear and not so secretly a fan of historic re-enactments, I'm kind of hooked on the idea of strictly vintage camping gear, and actually have a folder full of reference photos and ebay searches but absolutely no idea where to start! Wandervogel lutes and a cute 60s campstove, anyone?

I do know exaaactly where I would acquire my very first tent if I could so afford it, however!

For as long as I've had the internet, I've been obsessed with Past Tents, home of ridiculously adorable historically accurate vintage reproduction stripey tents; medieval, napoleonic, civil war, tudor and yes, even teepees, if you so desire!

My imaginary shopping cart is forever full of the pavilion tent in all sizes, in every combination of every sherbet-y shade in the book:



This is basically the campsite of my dreams:

By Etrusia UK via Flickr.

Oh hello camping dreamland! It really doesn't get much more picturesque than candy colored tents set up inside crumbling castle walls, which is what I imagine it would have looked like if I had made it to Tapestry Goes West last year, which fell on both my birthday and the super cosmic date of 08/08/08, was going to be held in the deer park of a castle in Wales, with Circulus headlining, but was sadly semi-cancelled at the last minute! Not that I had cobbled together quite enough pocket change to get there anyway... maybe next time?

David Hockney goes to Malibu...

I've been slowly but surely posting a few more of the dreamy summer dresses, flapper revival sailor sweaters and perfect summer suits that didn't quite work out in my wardrobe to Ebay for the past few weeks:

And so far, this has been the hardest thing to part with. I was hoping to channel something of a "David Hockney goes to Malibu" look for the summer, and this candy colored seersucker suit, which has been languishing at the back of the closet waiting for its day in the sun, would have been absolutely perfect, if only it wouldn't have needed to be tailored half to death in order to fit me quite right! I'll be pretty sad to see it go, but know that it would probably love to be taken out for a stroll!

On a tangentially related note, I think I may be newly obsessed with these Madras and raw silk bow ties by heritage haberdasher J. Press:



Brought to my attention by preeminent menswear blog A Continuous Lean.

Hello Dolly...

Still in the throes of Spring cleaning, I've been trying to round up another batch of clothing to eBay, but seem to have narrowed the selection down to a closetful of things that I may never ever wear, but just can't bear to part with. Oops.

The perfect example of this phenomenon is this extravagant puffball of a mini that I found a few years ago to wear to an abandoned 1920s mansion garden party/photoshoot that I ended up not attending after all, which has been languishing at the back of the closet waiting for the perfect occasion ever since:


My obsession with dresses like this basically knows no bounds, despite their being absolutely wrong for me, and I've been eyeing this perfect trifecta of the 60s/70s novelty print, multicolored smocking and mock-Edwardian high collar for months on end:

By way of Vintage-A-Peel, one of my favorite vintage sellers of all time.

The very epitome of the dollygirl look, from the dolliest corner of the British Boutique Movement set, is, of course, probably Dollyrockers by Sambo, the king of perfectly puffed bishop sleeves, just the right bits of velvet, ruffles and bows, Liberty florals, crocheted bibs and tiny candy buttons. These dresses still turn up every so often, and are usually insanely reasonable which always makes them all the more tempting. I still regret passing up this absolutely perfect Dollyrockers frock from Iron horse Vintage, even though it was probably over a year ago:

Yeah, I still can't get over it!

Just making this post has me thinking that a garden party might be just the thing to kick off our first real Portland Spring... croquet and tiny sandwiches, anyone?

Spring Forward...

Happy maybe almost hopefully Spring everyone!

I've been absolutely preoccupied with creating new Spring color palettes lately, with the very first sample of my dusky mauve, banana yellow, salmon, and muddy chartreuse obsession seeing print just this week, in my latest ad for Screaming Mimis out now in the March issue of Paper Magazine!

Here's a sneak peek:


The weather here has been teetering wildly between sunshiny and mini snow flurries, and I've been trying to dash out into every temporary sun shower for a tiny bike ride. I'm so excited to finally break my beloved rickety French bikes out of their winter deep freeze for good, and I can't stop peeking at cute bike blogs for vicarious adventures in the meantime. I love love LOVE this cute girls on bikes photo story that one of my current favorite photographers Gemma Booth shot for the always adorable and art filled Amelia's Magazine!


Little bits and pieces of the Spring palettes of my dreams have also been creeping into my Winter wardrobe, with my all time favorite so far being the lavender, tangerine and strawberry pinkish red that two of my most cherished vintage finds of all time just happen to have in common!

Odds and Ends...

We finally found a vintage vanity for the bathroom and I've already taken it over...


with 60s neon pink eyed bunny cotton ball dispensers, Madonna Inn soap cakes and pop pastoral Bo Peep figurines.

Perfect Rooms 101

Peter Max...

via the ever amazing LIFE photo archive.

Banana yellow has been cropping up as the dominant color in my little studio nook as of late, so these images are especially inspiring...
I'm also kind of obsessed with the lines of that couch!

Hello Dolly...

This is probably the cutest fashion show invite I've ever seen in my life.
From the 60s, of course, via ebay, and sadly, not mine...
I gave up when the bids hit fifty dollars!