DAMN WRIGHT.

Spent a large part of this weekend with good friends, taking photos and eating prop cheese. Then the rest chained to my laptop. The end result? Falcowright's shop is now live! Check out the lookbook on our new website for more pictures! YEAH.

This is the first time I've ever helped plan a photo shoot of any kind, and it turned out way better than Danielle and I had imagined. All thanks to Tim's expert camera wrangling and Shayna's whole being a knockout thing, of course. Hot damn!

That last photo up there of Danielle and I only begins to illustrate how happy we are to have made it through the weekend without any major setbacks. Big ups to my partner in crime - you're the best.

LATELY.

After the ridiculously wordy last post, here are a few quiet pictures from this week: printed some packaging for Falconwright, picked up some wool to attempt a scarf (black, of course), and begun setting up my home studio.

NOTES ON A NEW YEAR.

Welcome to day 5 of 2012. I'm typically slow to digest time in general. And the whole hype surrounding the end of the year (sorting through the best and worst moments of our lives, ranking and listing them in order, etc) always leaves me feeling a little weird. But I will attempt to embrace that sort of business this year with the awesome power of LISTS! Incredibly wordy lists.

Cool Stuff From 2011:

1. Kept myself busy with Deadweight. Took on design jobs (City Of Craft, album art, etc), did a series of illustrations for my first national publication (The Walrus), sent cards to some cool shops and Etsy orders all over the place (hitting the 100+ sales milestone in my shop!), started a line of leather goods with a good pal (Falconwright), and generally become more focused and comfortable with my design style. Thank you so much to everyone who has supported me this past year - it means a lot!

2. Challenged myself to try to be less reserved (attempting to tweet and blog more, however lame, was part of this exercise). A happy bonus of this attempt was meeting some really cool new pals. I also joined Facebook this year, one million years after everybody else in the world, and guess what? I don't hate it!

3. Upped my spice tolerance in foods (ha). I will continue this mission by using the ridiculously hot (but totally delicious) sauce my friend Shayna gave me for Christmas.

4. Went camping for the first time and loved it. Can't wait to go again. #bears

5. Started a savings account. The important word being started. It's truly embarrassing how little I have in there, but it's a start.

6. Did something fun for Halloween. Finally.

10 Goals For 2012:

1. Be less distracted by the Internet/TV/my phone and more focused on the company of the people around me and the tasks at hand. Sometimes I see people hanging out together and someone is on their phone and I'm like "ewww," but then I realize I am just as guilty of doing that exact same thing.

2. Build onto my current tattoo, then add another to the mix. Frivolous and fun.

3. Don't dwell on sad feelings. To anyone who reads this blog, I likely appear to be a pretty happy person, and I am, but I also struggle with a pervasive sense of sadness that always seems to lurk around me at all times (oh, and I tend to be a bit dramatic at times - can you tell?!!). I don't really plan to start airing that business out around here, but it can be a struggle. Life feels long and hard to me a lot of the time, despite all the great/wonderful/exciting/inspiring things all around me. I'd like to spend more time focusing on all of that good stuff, and wasting much less time on the other stuff. But I'd also like to use this as a bigger source of inspiration for my work - make more meaningful illustration/print stuff and less greeting cards! How did I even begin making greeting cards? It's a mystery....

4. Cook more! Sounds simple enough, but it's hard to execute when you tend to busy yourself to a point of ridiculousness. I hope to make time for cooking, like I make time for everything else. I've started with this soup, a recommendation of Danielle's, and it's impressive. If you make it, you will not be unhappy about it.

5. Continue learning new things. I start a ceramics class this month and I can't wait. Other things I'd like to learn: how to use illustrator, how to use a sewing machine, how to knit, flexibility, everything.

6. Seriously consider a new career path. I have a day job on top of this design stuff. It's not realistic for me to quit my job and do this full time, but on the other hand it's not desirable for me to continue spending 8 hours a day doing something that isn't challenging or inspiring me. That being said, part two of this goal is to take my day job for what it is at the time being - a very reliable way to pay my bills and put food on my table - and stop feeling so entitled about deserving anything else. It takes time to figure out where you want to be in life, right? So many people have a job they don't like, and so many of them likely do not complain about them endlessly (and those people might have kids, or responsibilities that are much larger than my own). I think it's good to remind myself that things aren't half bad and nobody really likes the sound of an alarm clock in the morning.

7. Make more music. My first artistic love/pursuit/hobby was making music. I went to college for music production, and I moved to Toronto to work in a post production studio. Until I almost immediately quit because talking about gear bores me beyond belief (as did recording voice overs for commercials and the shitty starting salary/work hours). I was also 22 when I up and quit that job - so I certainly wasn't thinking clearly. I still make music with my band, and we do plan to release some music this year (which I'm pretty pumped about!), but I don't put nearly as much time into it as I would have liked to last year. Home recording 2012.....bring it on.

8. Be a better friend/partner/person. I have a really wonderful network of excellent people all around me. And a dude that always makes sure I have full glasses of water and cheesies. For someone with very little family in her life, my friends are invaluable to me, and I want to let them know that ALL THE TIME. But not too much, because that would be annoying to them. "Alright, alright, we get it!"

9. Plan a trip. Somewhere, anywhere.

10. Hit a home run. Mark my words - this is the year!

Honourable Mentions: win the lottery and buy a cottage and move there forever, learn to tolerate cilantro so I can go out for more Mexican food, draw people more often, collaborate with Caitlyn, build a better backyard garden and DO NOT let the tomatoes take over again, enjoy salad (jokes!), spend time with more dogs, go to more Jays games, curb my mild ocd tendencies by learning to trust ovens and alarm clocks and door locks, buy more records.

Ok, that was all terribly indulgent! But I guess my friends can now say "Sandi, you are totally letting your tomatoes take over - I thought you said you wouldn't let that happen again? Liar!!!"

I'm looking forward to 2012. I hope you are too. Let the games begin.

ART CRUSH: STACEY ROZICH

My friend Tim got me this incredible Stacey Rozich print for Christmas. So good. Rozich is a Seattle based illustrator/designer and all of her work is excellent. Lots of angles, shapes, colours, and dark horned characters. She also animated characters for The Shrine/An Argument video by Fleet Foxes. If you haven't seen it already, it's definitely worth a viewing. The visuals really compliment the song - the whole thing feels very haunting and rich.

The Shrine / An Argument from Sean Pecknold on Vimeo.

GRAB BAG.

Christmas snuck up on me again. It always does! Back in November I made a vow to get all my Christmas stuff done (mainly shopping) by December first. Yeah right, Falconer. But now these dudes are hanging out on our clashing, slightly crooked Christmas tree and the holiday magic is happening. Man, did Dennis ever hit a home run when he got these guys last year!

I recently did a few design elements for Yule Britannia. Elizabeth makes delicious treats: figgy pudding, sticky caramel sauce, ginger cookies, spiced sweet nuts, etc! She delivered some treats to me at City of Craft this year (sweetheart) and it was all incredible. Available at The Mercantile on Roncesvalles.

Scenes From The Basement: 1. New rolls of leather to cut and print - dark grey, smokey grey, black, mint, plum, and cream! 2. Making peachy messes. 3. Compiling test sheets full of various patterns and colours (for future Falconwright wrapping?). I love the way these test sheets are layering up, all chaotic but still kinda pretty. Maybe the kind of pretty that only a mother could love, but still.

And speaking of Falconwright, you could win all 3 of these items by leaving a comment on this blog post by Friday December the 23rd at midnight. A winner will be drawn on Saturday the 24th!

THE WALRUS.

Cover = not by me. Just posting a photo to show you what the current issue looks like!

Fun News Alert: I've got some illustrations in the new issue of The Walrus! The special winter double issue is out now. #whoa This assignment was really awesome to work on. The digital output enabled me to experiment with my illustration style a bit, and it was a big honour to be involved with such an A+ publication! Thanks, Jen. And thanks to Shayna for excitedly picking me up a copy (pro friend). These are a few pics of the actual magazine & a few bigger originals that are also in there for a different view. 10 years ago, I would have laughed for hours if someone told me that I'd be masquerading as an illustrator/designer (in my spare time) at this point in my life. What. The. Heck. Life is truly full of adventures.

Feeling pretty weird about constantly writing "look what I did!" or "look what I made!" or "look at meeee!" all the time. But this is an accurate look at what my life has been like lately. Making stuff, doing things, printing away. I've bought a lot of cool stuff lately, from awesome artists, that I'd love to tell you about - but a bunch of those beautiful things are Christmas presents, and I don't want to go ruining the surprise, right? Maybe it's time for a little things-I've-had-my-eye-on post soon. There's never a lack of things I don't need, but totally want, to talk about. I'm sure you can relate.

DEAR DIARY: CITY OF CRAFT.

All photos by Celine Kim.

I had a really great time at City of Craft this past weekend! The weeks leading up to this event were a little hectic (to say the least), but sooo worth the effort. Big ups to my continuously supportive and helpful pals. A lot of work goes into a weekend like this, and it's inspiring to see so many people coming together to make something happen. The vendors were excellent, of course, and it's heartwarming to see a roomful of people supporting their community in this way.

Danielle and I were blown away by the positive reaction to Falconwright. We definitely have less stock left over than we imagined we might, so we've decided to create a new collection of items and release it (blacks! greys!) in mid-January. We're feeling very pumped for future pouches/purses/etc. Stay tuned...

Celine was there taking lots of beautiful photos. She even managed to get one of me not clowning it up or giving the camera a weird face as per usual. For a full tour of the weekend, check out the full collection of photos she took here. In the second last photo up there, you can even spot a couple of my favourite ladies from The Concord Learning Annex (ha!) shopping away.

And now a peek at a few of the treasures I adopted...

Black braided chunky headband by goodnight, day. This is a seriously comfortable piece of knitted head wear. Full ear coverage and totally comfortable. Check out all of Tara-Lynn's stuff here (such great styling too!).

Shannon Gerard's book Unspent Love or, Things I Wish I Told You.

And a slew of excellent greeting cards from the always charming Petra C (individually packaged cards? what!), and a new local fave Gezellig Studio.

THIS WEEKEND: CITY OF CRAFT.

City Of Craft is this weekend. THIS WEEKEND.

Above is my poster design for the event! Though I had no part in organizing this annual shindig, selecting vendors, or doing any of the administrative voodoo that Becky has to deal with, I have been involved in the design year round (one small element), and feel like this weekend is wrapping up something that's been on my mind in one way or another for quite some time. Feelings! I can't believe how much positive feedback I've gotten about the design this year, and I am so happy that so many of you have enjoyed it. Sweethearts all over the place.

It's been a predictably crazy week around these parts and all of my attempts to get on this blog and sound off about last weekends amazing Handmade Holiday event, all the Falconwright printing I've been doing, the amazing screen printed version of this poster that Kid Icarus printed, or the beauty tote bags that Shannon, Roisin, Becky and I printed up have gone unwritten. But in lieu of these GHOST POSTS, I can tell you that Danielle and I will have more Falconwright change purses and pouches available (including some metallic GOLD printing and 4 very special large GREY clutches!) just in time for the weekend.

There's also a large chance that I'll be bankrupt after this weekend because there are so many amazing things available that I'd like to pick up for myself. Seriously, the sheer volume of talented people who will be at City Of Craft this weekend is ridiculous. Hope to see you there!

MILK & COFFEE & LEATHER.

2 new small prints: milk & coffee! I personally prefer cream in my coffee, but cream print doesn't quite have the same ring to it. And this marks the end of my holiday fair screen printing marathon. Still lots of organizing to do, but tonight I celebrate by eating a truly ridiculous number of dumplings!

Also, check out the headbands and bangles Danielle & I added to our small army of Falconwright goods! Maybe my zigzag headband will help conquer my fear of going bang-less in public?

ODDS & SODS.

My printing muscles have been getting a workout lately. I've also been posting a lot lately - I'll probably never blog as much as I will/have this past couple of weeks, ha. The time before Holiday shows can be a grind, but they definitely motivate me to make new things. And I really need that push, ya know? For you Toronto folks looking for handmade goods - A Handmade Holiday is Saturday Decemeber 3rd (this weekend!) and City of Craft runs December 10th and 11th! There will be a ton of excellent craftspeople in attendence at both of these events, and I'm definitely looking forward to picking up a few things I've had my eyes on...

I wanted to thank you for the kind, enthusiastic response to Danielle and I's new project: Falconwright. Thank you to Lemonade, Where The Lovely Things Are, Kylin Untitled, and The Shiny Squirrel for posting about it. And thank you for all the kind comments and interest regarding an eventual shop launch (we're so pleasantly surprised). I've been busy making us tags and bags and business cards, while Danielle has been making our stock of headbands and a few bangles (photos to come!).

Speaking of business cards, to ease up on some of my screen printing load I decided to get business cards printed up. These feature bits and pieces of an illustration (from a series) that you'll soon see in The Walrus (yeah!).

In other news, my band is currently recording new songs and making a couple of videos. But in the meantime, you can download (or stream) the album we put out last year via Bandcamp or Facebook for FREE. If you're not ready for Christmas carols, and you've been itching for some nervous, dramatic rock music in your life - look no further? Mostly loud jams on here, but there are a few quieter tracks too. Thanks to NXeW and our twittering Wavelength pals for helping to spread the word. For all the record lovers in the house, we still have this guy available on vinyl too.

Speaking of rabbit's feet - Charlotte sent me this lucky little foot in honour of the above mentioned album. Sweetheart, right?

And lastly, I finally cleaned up the backyard garden that I greatly neglected at the end of the season. Planted some garlic and and shut it down. I will treat you better next year, garden. We will spend more time together. I swear.

SPACE JAM.

A while back, my friend Shayna suggested that I make a larger print version of my Over The Moon card. That is what I originally sat down to do with this, but then it turned into something else entirely! A bit symbolic, a bit spacey, a bit geometric, and maybe a bit influenced by my recent viewing of Melancholia(?). It measures 9X12! Yup, the eleventh hour pre Holiday craft fair frenzy is in full effect.

TAKE ME BACK.

My very favourite moment of 2011 (so far) was hanging out on a rock with my pals while camping, watching the sun set, beer in hand, fantasizing about how amazing it would be to see something like this every night. No, I don't really get out of the city very often, ha.

I decided to try my hand at some cmyk screen printing to recreate this moment. I made this one specifically for those friends (hi Rob/Tim/Lee - surprise?!!) but I will have a few extra copies at upcoming holiday fairs for any other sappy sunset-on-the-water lovers in the house. I'm sure any trained pro in this type of printing would see a bunch of flaws (I was totally flying by the seat of my pants here!), but I really enjoy the way it looks. And though it's outside of my usual style, I definitely look forward to more photo printing experiments in the future.

IT'S A WRAP.

Despite what these unseasonal temperature fluctuations might have us believe, Christmas is approaching. This year, I've decided to try my hand at some wrapping paper! It's roughly 16X22inches on brown kraft stock. Maybe you'd like to disguise your books, jewellery boxes, sweaters, tins of treats, or lumps of coal in black and green trees with rustic jute twine? If so, I will have a small supply of these at A Handmade Holiday & City Of Craft!

Last night, I wrapped a whack of twine while watching Beginners. Enjoyable movie! After this Holiday madness is over, I am going to watch/catch up on an incredible number of movies. It's gonna be awesome.