Sunshine Day...

The Screaming Mimis ad for Spring, inspired by art deco florals, dream bicycles and 1920s picnics, and informed, just for fun, by the Spring 2011 Pantone palette:

was dashed off to print back when there was still frost on the ground, but I've probably been obsessing about a proper garden ever since, and now that Spring has officially sprung here in the Pacific Northwest, we've been strolling the nursery aisles every chance we get, poring over seed catalogs, pricing arborvitae, and sourcing climbing roses for our chainlink fences with impossible visions of a rococo pastoral urban backyard:


I'll let you know how it goes!
Last image via Colkinikha.

I wish I could be in Los Angeles for the Space 15 Twenty "To Japan, From LA, With Love" art auction, raffle and pop-up shop this weekend:
.
So many friends and favorites have contributed amazing work to help raise funds for Japan, if you happen to be in town, you should definitely have a look!

There are a ton of fundraising efforts still taking place throughout Portland as well.
A few of my favorites are Scout Books:

who are donating 100% of the profits raised from the sale of these books to Mercy Corps, and W+K Studio:

who are donating 100% of profits raised from the sale of this poster to the Red Cross.

Of course you can click on the links to either of the organizations above to make a direct donation as well, and please don't forget the animals!

The Japan Earthquake Animal Rescue and Support group is a coalition of 3 different rescue groups who have banded together to rescue, shelter, and care for animals in crises, who still need all the help they can get!

Miss Candy Twist...

h hello there! I hope everyone had a magical Holiday and super festive New Years celebration! We spent the entire month of December on maybe the biggest project of our lives, knee deep in crumbling wallpaper, crackly tiles, enamel paints and sawdust, finally collapsing in a heap of exhaustion well before midnight on New Years Eve, but waking up on the very first day of 2011 to the sun streaming in the window of our brand new 1920s bungalow, which I shall have to save for it's very own post!

I was able to sneak in a few bits of drawing here and there, the Screaming Mimis Holiday Ad Spectacular, par exemple! The Holiday ads are always a favorite to draw, we went with a Candyland theme this year:

Inspired, of course, by the sweet shops of yore, and my own addiction to old fashioned hard candies of all stripes, particularly of the seasonal variety:

My confectionery allegiances generally lie with either taffy pulled by hand in a pink striped facade on the tiny main street of a forgotten Victorian seaside town or dusty boiled sweets via faux frosting topped vernacular English storybook cottage a la Santa's Village:

But I do also adore the modern day apothecary aesthetic, good old fashioned sugar craftsmanship and frequent art collaborations of modern day avant candy lab Papabubble. Here are some of their handmade spiral lollipops available at Bergdorf's:

A collaboration with Barcelona based designers Sebastien Cordоliani and Frank Fontana exploring traditional Murano glass techniques as applied to sugar:


And a pretty epic exhibition by Erica Browne, wherein participants were asked to grow their own sugar crystals and then bring them to display in the stores windows:


Having had 'candy as art' on my to-do list for the past, oh, decade or so, I am, of course, very much obsessed and always make a mental note when I spot someone else using sugar as a medium in their work. Garden of Delight by Marieke van der Bruggen made the blog rounds a few years back but definitely warrants another mention:


And, last but not least, Elsa Hedberg's candy and sugar icing baubles, on display at Beyond the Valley via Style Bubble:


Ps. Peppermint swirl type courtesy of Jessica Hische at Daily Drop Cap.

Faux Gâteaux

I suppose you can probably tell by my eternal obsession with dusty seaside taffy palettes and pâtisserie in the family that some of my favorite art is probably also sweet shop inspired...

From high school Pop Art obsessive faves Wayne Thiebaud:


And Claes Oldenburg:


To Thiebaud as interpreted by Sharon Core:

and pastry chef Caitlin Williams Freeman for the SF MOMA rooftop cafe:


To perennial faves Will Cotton:

whose pop-up bakery at Partners and Spade was surely a sight to behold:

and Laurie Simmons:

whose very proper tea and cakes service is still one of my very favorite things!

Farewell Miss Maybelle...

This is probably one of the saddest things I will ever write, about one of the saddest days I've ever had in my entire life. My dearly beloved constant companion, devoted sidekick, and be-whiskered best friend Maybelle passed away early last week. She had been going through a patch of ill-health since earlier this year, complete with weekly visits to her favorite vet and tons of cuddles, and we knew this day was coming, but it was still way, way, way more heartbreaking than I could ever have possibly imagined. She's been with me for so long that I can't even remember what life was like without her, but I know that it will never be the same.

We've been trying to cheer ourselves up by looking through a million photos, reminiscing about her antics and marveling at how she really was the cutest cat in the world, with her crazy big eyes, freckle face, cleopatra eyeliner and fluffy white boots. These are a few of the last pictures I got to take of her, about a week before she fell ill, when she decided to have a bed-in one day, purring like crazy all the while about the harmonic convergence of two of her all time favorite things, snuggly down blankets and basking in the sun:

She also got to enjoy a ton of her all time favorite thing in the world this year, the great outdoors! After years of being an apartment kitty, she was filled with wonder at all the birds and bees and flowers and trees that were to be found in our new backyard and demanded that we hang out there pretty much all of the time, which we gladly obliged:

As a firm believer in both ghost stories and cat magic, I'm still waiting (im)patiently to spot visions of her little lion face out of the corner of my eye or hear the pitterpat of tiny ghost paws on the floorboards, but in the meantime, rest in peace Miss Maybelle,
we ❤ you!

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

December Magic...

One more holiday favorite from the archives:

Also, a tiny query!
We have a semi-accidental Xmas tradition of tucking ourselves away for the holiday to feast on red velvet cakes and holiday themed horror films, but seem to have run out of un-previously viewed titles for this year... any suggestions?

The lineup so far consists 100% of this amaaazing 1979 Kate Bush Christmas Special:



Via all time faves the magical Miss Witch Mountain and Cat Party!

If You Go Down To The Woods Today...

ello everyone! Sorry it has been, as per usual, approximately one million years since my last post here. We've been pleasantly caught up in a whirl of tiny visits with faraway friends on the way to and from far-flung family fêtes, hibernating with mugs of cocoa and whipped cream, and most exciting of all, running away to the woods for a self guided fairy tale mushroom tour!

We decided to skip town late Thanksgiving eve for lack of anything better to do, eventually winding up in a perfectly beautifully ghostly deserted Astoria, dining on a Thanksgiving feast of convenience store wine, cheese and chocolate (Not having considered that everything would be closed!), thankfully finding room for the night at the cute new Commodore Hotel, and set out first thing in the a.m. for the magically silent woods, where I'm still beyond excited to have seen my very first amanitas in the wild!
We spotted these:

and so many more! I posted a few more cute mushroom clusters on my flickr and hope to capture oh so many more when we go back soon for a real Park Ranger guided tour, where we will also hopefully learn how to spot things that we can actually eat!

Ps. Magical letter H courtesy of Jessica Hische at Daily Drop Cap, my new favorite thing in the world!

Tiny Pierrettes...

A few quick shots of some recent works in progress, ten 10" x 10" pieces for an upcoming holiday show in Australia:

Full details and more updates soon, I promise!