Mint

Such a great idea! Made by Australian company Insitu.

via desire to inspire

Yes… remember Howdy Do It? Margot’s not here, but she’s been doing a few sporadic Howdy Do It posts of her own on Pitch. I was inspired to write this post today because I’ve been struggling a lot with my own product photography. I think I do an OK job with my West and Plum photos, but when it comes to photographing invitations for Hello Tenfold, I have a hard time getting an end product I’m proud of. I’d like to hire a photographer/stylist at some point, but right now it’s just not in the budget.

I started out with wood backgrounds, mostly because… well, we had just gotten married and there were a few fresh cutting boards lying around. The wood flattered some pieces, but not all of them, and I want consistency in my photos. After looking through a lot of invitation photography that I admired, I realized that many people photograph their work on top of fabric backgrounds. I’d tried this but I always had two big problems: (1) I don’t like ironing, and (2) I don’t have any great upholstered furniture, or even the right fabric scraps to make it work.

So, last week I went to a cheap fabric store and picked up half yards of five neutral linen fabrics. I ironed them and attached them to cardboard in the same way you’d stretch a canvas. I used 13×19″ cardboard cake boards for the base because I had them lying around, but you could also do this with wood and a staple gun. In case you haven’t stretched a canvas before, here are a few steps:

• stretch fabric across the longest side first
• put a staple in one side, then pull fabric taut and put another staple on the exact opposite end
• pull fabric taut and staple the third side
• pull tight (really tight!) and staple the fourth side
• once you have the first four staples, you just start going around and adding more staples. each time you add a staple, move across to the other side, pull taut, and add another staple. In other words, you should have an even number of staples. The more the better, I say! For the purposes of this project, nice and neat corners don’t matter so much. But if you have to have them and aren’t sure how to get them, I’d recommend watching this video.

Now I’ve got five neutrals to photograph with! I think I’ve finally figured out the best spot in the house and time of day to photograph with natural light, and my plan is to get some simple flowers to make the operation look more styled. Wish me luck! Here are some photos from the first attempt:

I think they look much better…

+ photography by Lesley A. Sico (above)

+ my dream bathroom

+ internet radio based on your mood

+ For those of you following Jag Nagra’s Alice in Wonderland invitations (here and here), Jag threw her party last weekend and has photos of the actual event on her blog.

+ chalk drawing murals via Black Eiffel

+ love this building, via Color Collective

+ make your own mango sorbet!

+ LOCAL STUFF: The “Best of the Triangle” Indy party is tonight at Golden Belt. Food samples/local bands/cash bar/free entry/6pm. // Movies in the park: “Hollywood History and Household Hints”, 8:45pm, free, Durham Central Park // Mandolin Orange plays tonight // Thao & Mirah play tonight // Color Balance: Paintings by Felrath Hines and Alma Thomas opened this week at the Nasher

Happy Father’s Day & have a great weekend!

Laura Trimmell is a graphic designer and crafter living in Portland, Oregon. She makes beautiful, tactile eco-friendly paper goods and has three new lines now available in her shop. Laura screen prints her paper goods with water based, solvent-free inks at The Pull, an independent screen printing shop.

Thanks Laura!

Shawn Smith was born in 1972 in Dallas, TX where he attended Arts Magnet High School and Brookhaven College before graduating from Washington University in St. Louis, MO with a BFA in Printmaking in 1995. Smith received his MFA in Sculpture from the California College of the Arts in San Francisco in 2005. He has received artist-in-residencies from the Kala Art Institute in Berkeley, CA and the Cite Internationale des Arts in Paris, France. In 1996, Smith was a recipient of the Clare Hart DeGolyer grant from the Dallas Museum of Art. In 2006, he was commissioned to create a monumental public sculpture in San Francisco, CA. Smith’s work has been exhibited throughout the United States and in France. Smith currently resides in Austin, Texas and is represented by Craighead Green Gallery in Dallas and d. berman gallery in Austin.

Everett

Double Dahl

Shrodinger’s Hat

photographs by Nicholas Haggard

From Publisher’s Weekly: Author and screenwriter Benioff follows up The 25th Hour with this hard-to-put-down novel based on his grandfather’s stories about surviving WWII in Russia. Having elected to stay in Leningrad during the siege, 17-year-old Lev Beniov is caught looting a German paratrooper’s corpse. The penalty for this infraction (and many others) is execution. But when Colonel Grechko confronts Lev and Kolya, a Russian army deserter also facing execution, he spares them on the condition that they acquire a dozen eggs for the colonel’s daughter’s wedding cake. Their mission exposes them to the most ghoulish acts of the starved populace and takes them behind enemy lines to the Russian countryside. There, Lev and Kolya take on an even more daring objective: to kill the commander of the local occupying German forces. A wry and sympathetic observer of the devastation around him, Lev is an engaging and self-deprecating narrator who finds unexpected reserves of courage at the crucial moment and forms an unlikely friendship with Kolya, a flamboyant ladies’ man who is coolly reckless in the face of danger. Benioff blends tense adventure, a bittersweet coming-of-age and an oddly touching buddy narrative to craft a smart crowd-pleaser.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Available for purchase on Amazon and Penguin.

{“Currently reading” is a place for me to share the books I’m reading right now and would recommend to someone else. If you’ve read this, or have a suggestion on what I should read next, do share! You can see other books I recommend here}.