off to cupcake heaven

at an estate sale i came across this whole box full of vintage grannie stuff. the older couple was moving to a retirement home and this stuff was from her mother and grandmother! lovely hand embroidery and crochet work. i dug out aprons, doilies, hankies, old scissors, lace, trims, tablecloths, pillowcases and these amazing crotchet potholders. i picked out my favorite pieces, but looking back i should have just bought the whole box! i sent these potholders off to jenny to live in vintage cupcake heaven. they just seemed to want to go there. i hope she really uses them. i can't even imagine when women spent that much time making potholders but i adore the idea of them making everyday things beautiful.



these little posies i made for each of the moms that came to our moms and muffins day at school. so tiny and sweet. the flowers are tucked into a little wet square of floral oasis and wrapped in colored cellophane. i mist the blossoms and store them in the fridge until i give them away.
it is a day for flowers and thinking about loved ones. enjoy, julie

the luckiest girl

feeling like the luckiest girl here on the first day of summer vacation. i love having the whole summer off with my kids. we went out to ginger's cafe yesterday for lunch to celebrate and made a list of things we want to do this summer. i am so looking forward to time in my studio every day. i organized all my new treasures from an amazing day shopping with Laurie in Berkeley last week. still working on taking some photos of the cool junk!
for my special summer treat i am counting down the days until i get to go to the Artnest retreat in June. . .26 days to go!

quite a lot of pink. . .

there is quite a bit of pink going on right now, must be because everything is blooming pink outside today. this is the beautiful flower that adorned the box cassondra sent her spring secrets books in. inside were five boxes shaped like books that fit inside the main box. so charming!

the size of the tiny pages was absolutely so fun! here are a couple of the little pages i made. they look a bit like tall ATC cards, very fun to make and satisfying to flip through.


melissa tagged me with 7 random things. i have just laughed at a few of these, so here it goes:

1. i love to cook. i make zuccini feta pancakes with sour cream mint sauce, cinnamon rolls with pecans and cream cheese frosting, sweet corn tomales with green chile tomatillo sauce, and hand dipped apricot amarreto chocolates but i have never made a decent roast. i keep trying.

2. i drive like a new yorker. i lived just outside new york city for a year as a nanny and every weekend i would drive a VW bus into the city. i learned in a hurry if you miss the only exit to the bridge you are in big trouble. i even successfully navigated a miniature rental car around the eleven lane round about in paris at the Arc de Triomphe.

3. i am not afraid of bugs. i actually have a wonderful collection of them. one day out running i came across a particularly big beetle crossing the road and i put him in a paper coke cup, folded down the top and tucked the cup in my shorts and finished my run. i have found beside the road dragonfly wings, little nests soaked with rain, seed pods poking through the fence, and acorns of every size. i am worse than my kids at packing things home.

4. i listen to very loud rock and roll music when i clean the house thus making me an easy target for a sneak attack if you come up behind me when i am singing and vacuuming in my own little world.

5. i have a collection of tiny bottles filled with sand from all the places i have been. dark grainy sand from the oregon shore, soft, fine sand from florida, bright white coral sand from belize, pale grey chalky sand from the coast of france, and dark orange powdery sand from southern utah. it is a reminder of all our journeys together.

6. i am a sucker for vintage office supplies. i never pass up a box of dennisons gummed labels or stars. love the little worn cardboard boxes.

7. i can't sleep in. curses! i try, but it seems my eyes just open at 5:30am after 18 years of getting up to go running in the morning. i actually love the quiet of my house before anyone else is awake.

oh and i tag candice (post something for the sparrow), batgirl, sherri, candace the crotchet girl, and girl kris.

May has all the sweetest flowers

may is always like this, a rollercoaster ride that just keeps picking up speed right up to the last day. then i find myself at the end of the ride just sitting there in the car after the metal restraint has lifted wondering what to do next.
i only have two teaching days left of school so i have been checking things off one by one. last night to celebrate the end of a huge week i stayed up late cutting and gluing. wonderful. i can't wait to spend some time out in the garden. the late lilacs are blooming and my rose bushes are fairly bursting with buds.

for lilia here are my thinking blogger nominations. easy since they are all links on the side of my blog.
nina's blog is the first one i started to read after taking a class with her. she is connected to nature, has a warm heart, and writes about real feelings. her art work is always stunning. kari has such a fun blog. she is happily creating there in minnesota every day. i can always find a new post when i stop by. i am hoping to actually catch one of her etsy items before they sell out! charlotte's blog i just came accross a bit ago and then i connected her to her beautiful books. i adore her style. how fun to find her blog! the sweetest mohair teddy bears on the planet. i could stop by to visit misty's blog just for her lovely art, but she also writes about balancing life and trusting yourself. i can't wait for her to come to the artnest. jenny's blog is as sweet as she is. always a dose of cupcakes, aprons, and vintage yumminess. and she likes the same pale blue i do. melissa has a fabulous color sense and creates wonderful collages. her blog is daily dose of creative inspiration for me. she does such an amazing job putting together swaps and the erraticus zine.


time to frost the cake for the birthday party. there will be nine thirteen year old girls running around in just a few hours from now. . .

international quilt market

yesterday was a fabulous day spent up in salt lake at the international quilt market. this is the CHA for the fabric world. booth after booth of fabric, wool, quilts, threads, silks, and every other beautiful thing to sew with. i was very surprised that so many booths offered things for sale off the floor. glad i came prepared, came home with a pile of stuff.
here are my favorites. . .
the coolest booth vintage quilts and fabrics from Mary Koval. she introduced a new line of fabrics based on quilting patterns. gorgeous!


when i got home i found the lastest issue of erraticus by melissa waiting for me. check out the colors, definitely on the same vibe. very cool art work by Richard Russell.


the best give away was this tape measure from Bohin, a french needle and scissor company. serious eye candy!


my favorite threads hand dyed from Romania by Valdani


the coolest hand dyed wools were by Mary Flanagan Woolens in Wisconsin



so many wonderful vintage inspired apron patterns and quilt designs. check out these adorable designs by japanese company kokka co.



A new designer that has a very amy butler feel is Joel Dewberry, he was the nicest guy, love his new line.


more about Anna Maria, Erin McMorris, Heather Bailey, and Amy Butler fabric lines tomorrow.

promise of spring

i hope the view out your window is as lovely as mine is today. every new green leaf is shimmering with raindrops, everything seems to have burst into bloom all at once. we usually get a long winter, a few moments of spring, then the summer weather hits with a dry heat that reminds me i live in a desert. it is so incredibly beautiful.

today i can sit and watch the raindrops running down my window blurring the clouds and trees outside while i try to remember how to breath without thinking about it.

yesterday i sent off my spring secrets book to Kari. i'm so excited for this project! it took a whole day to finish putting my book together but i am very happy with it. can't even imagine how exciting it will be to have it back with four new pages of art from dear friends!


the nest on the right hand side is a stamp i carved then added shredded book paper to the nest. the egg book opens to share what my nest is made out of and things i keep in my nest.

this garden is the sign in page for each artist to make a flower and tuck in the pocket after they work in my book.

the tiny painted canves is only 2 inches square. so fun i finally found a place for it. i hand painted details around the frame and on the wallpaper background.

oh, and here is a bit of a secret. . . . .four sweet kittens were born at our house over the weekend. i tried to line them all up for a photo and they kept wiggling all over each other. pet photography is insane, remember my baby chick photo shoot!

the art nest

its up!! the art nest website designed by my incredibly talented niece rachelle is up and running today. there is still a bit more tweaking to do. i never realized how much work went into starting a new business and launching a website! candice and i will be hosting our first art retreat at a cabin in the mountains of park city, utah June 20-24th. we are so thrilled to have three amazing artists coming to teach.

if you haven't seen misty mawns gorgeous paintings check out her blog. such lovely work and an amazing person. nina bagley first introduced me to misty at the last art and soul retreat in portland. i am so excited misty has started teaching and can't wait to take her 'spontaneous art' class.

sally jean alexander just published a beautiful book 'pretty little things'. she will be teaching collaging and soldering in her class 'the gothic pendant'. sally jean will also be the guest artist at a trunk show at one of my favorite stores dear lizzie in highland while she is here in utah. i can't wait to see in person more of her lovely, sparkling work.


kristin steiner is the third artist that will be teaching at the retreat. she is a fabric artist that has been working in mixed media art for the past 6 years. i adored 32 artful playthings that was on the cover of cloth, paper, scissors in spring 2006. she will be teaching the class 'i am a woman who' a fabric book that incorporates dying, stamping, layering and collaging with fabric.

you can see more of what is happening with the art nest here.
leave a comment, i would love to know what you think of the website!

spring secrets

i am working on a spring secrets round robin book exchange with four other artists, lilia, melissa, kari , and cassondra . our books will travel around to each artist to work in, then return home at the end of june. my inspiration came all in one day when i found the carved book box from italy (see earlier post for the before picture) and a lovely book called 'a bouquet of flowers'. i picked up both for $1.00. inspiration comes in small packages sometimes. to get us started before we start sending our books out we did a little spring trade. here is a close-up of what i am sending out to the gals.

this darling little art-to-go portfolio was made by the piggy story. i am making a little covered book to go with the crayon folio for my little artist. she can't wait to get her hands on those brand new crayons. magic.

art night

it was art night on thursday, such a fabulous evening! we met at amandas house. this is a picture of her studio right inside the front door. gorgeous high ceilings with shelves that go all the way up. the amazing blue desk was rescued from outside where it was a carpentry bench. amanda painted and distressed it. the giant idea board takes up most of the wall and has so many cool things to look at.
amanda put together the little buckets full of goodies for each of us.

of course dinner was so delicious! the husbands are wondering if we are really getting together for the food and not the art.
these cupcakes from dear lizzie were scrumptious. nothing like a dark chocolate cupcake with creamy chocolate frosting.
love the sweet wrappings and little egg nests on top.

the pictures i took of us at midnight were really terrible. why don't i just get one of all of us in the beginning when we still look cute? so here is rena, the only picture of any of us that looks great.

two new art gals came this week, cathy and jacqueline. that makes nine of us. i wrote in my blog only last year how much i wished for an art group like this. well if you are out there and want an art group in your area start one! we started out small and needed a little boost but here we are. we are actually hosting our own art retreat in june, more details later but wowie, the teachers are going to knock your socks off.
cathy brought her line of milk paint to demo for us and i think we bought everything she had. the powdered paint is so cool, i am planning to paint over my italy box for the spring secrets RR i am working on. you can mix it to any consistency and even use it with pva glue. can't wait to play. check out her site at Vintage Paint Works. she has some very cool online tutorials for working with milk paint on many surfaces, plus some great free downloads of vintage ephemera.


i am totally busy working on the art retreat website and blog, can't wait to post everything. J.

fun mail

it has been so fun to open the boxes and packages that have come from Klutz in the mail the past couple of weeks. when i work on a book i can't really post anything about the projects i have designed until the book is published. then when the book arrives months later i am always so surprised and pleased at how everything turned out!

i had fun working on the scoubidou book, such funky colors and projects it looks like a bubblegum rainbow. the lacing stuff is much cooler than the old flat lanyard plastic that people used to make keychains out of. Karen Phillips did a wonderful job putting this book together.

paper purses is a darling little book i worked on for tiny girls. ready to decorate little paper purses with all the sparkly stuff to glue on. i loved the punch outs to go inside the purses illustrated by Nancy Wolff-money, stamps, lipstick, keys, sunglasses, and cards.
very sweet.



then for the big surprise, here is the wendy's kids meal toy that will be out some time this month based on my rescue trucks book. the little cars for the kids meal are magnets that move around on a little track. i guess we will be headed out to wendy's for frostys and kids meals!

easter chicks

i have chicks on the brain.

every year i bring home a little batch of chicks to raise, then when they are jumping out of their box we send them to live at the farm.
chicks do not like their pictures taken. peep, peep, where are the other chicks? i finally set him in this little rasberry basket so he would hold still for a minute. i found a whole stack of these vintage berry baskets at a yard sale last week.

these chicks were at borders for 2.99 for the dozen. so very cute and tiny.

i stuck one in stacies basket. a little thank you for saving the day on monday. the pink bunny looks a bit demented.


after the big princess party livi fell asleep on the couch with her crown still on. she looks like an angel when she is sleeping.

my favorite find yesterday for 50 cents was this carved book box from italy. the cover is wired on and opens to an opening just waiting for a handmade book.

just hatched

just hatched these tiny chicks. i cut out an even half dozen, still working on the other two. they kept me busy this weekend while i was sick. i also finished these eggs, one for each of my children. now i have to think of something wonderful to put inside.

i found these vintage egg shaped salt and pepper shakers at the antique store and filled them up with more of my glass glitter collection. the three tiered vintage jewelry box i thought would be a good home for my vintage necklaces and flocked japanese silk scarfs.


so i rescued this piece from the trash, bat girl hates it. i love the colors and the weather/mood spectrum. if you live with a teenager i am sure you can relate!!