Design Provides

There's so much cute stuff out there and so little time (so little room, so little money...). The other day, I was horribly tempted by "Happy Hermits" stationery by Apak. I saw it at Uwajimaya - wonderfully dangerous place, that store. I was drawn to the warm pretty colors, and cute, slightly sinister characters. They reminded me of the sort of thing I sketch in the margins of notebooks. Lately, I've been lusting after stationery in general, which is odd because I don't often write letters. Perhaps having nifty stationery would provide an excuse? I was standing in the store, asking myself who I'd write to, imagining how fun it would be to send letters written on this stationery, picturing the reactions of friends. In the end, I was fiscally responsible and walked away.


Instead of buying stationery (for now), I came home and made some of my own. The graphics are from a recent design piece I created for school. I really loved the palette of neutrals, for which I blame Alison (I used to think blue and gray and taupe sounded boring - what on earth was I thinking?). The next step is to get some envelopes from Art Media in the same colors and call it a set. Maybe transfer some of the houses and trees onto sticker paper - ooh, my own stickers!

I really enjoy playing with Illustrator - crisp, clean scalable graphics that look so cute when they are designed slightly askew. For the things I like to do, it's a better program than Photoshop. That said, one of my favorite things to do is to combine vector graphics with photography. The contrast makes me happy.