fair morning blue giveaway on The Bright Side Project!

Hi there and Happy Wednesday. School is out and we are home from a road trip to visit family. The girls and I have been sleeping in, reading good books and spending lots of quality time at the pool. I have something to tell you: Fair Morning Blue is the featured artist on The Bright Side Project today! I've been a fan of the Bright Side Project for a long time now. They have a lovely, cheerful blog - and they host frequent giveaways from amazingly talented artists. The artists get exposure to a wider audience, and lucky blog readers get a chance to win pretty things - a win/win situation if I ever saw one.

So, The Bright Side Project put together a sweet Sunshine Post about Fair Morning Blue here - and Fair Morning Blue is giving away the 3 boxed sets of cards shown above here - to enter, just leave a comment letting Bright Side Project readers know what you want to be when you grow up (or what dreams you've always wanted to pursue). The contest is open until June 18. I hope you win. :-)

xo, Tracy

let's bring gatherings magazine to print!

Dearest friends, 

For over a year now, I have been very proud & honored to be a contributor to Gatherings Magazine. Until now, Gatherings has existed as an online publication - as a place for kindred spirits to gather and enjoy inspiring articles about crafting, vintage, food, interiors & styling. 

I am thrilled to tell you that Gatherings is growing. We have become one of the leading digital lifestyle magazines, and have received overwhelmingly positive feedback from our growing audience. Under the direction of founder and editor-in-chief Heather Spriggs, we now have the chance to move to print publication! Eeeeep!!!! Friends, this is an amazing opportunity. 

A brand new Gatherings Magazine website is in the works, with its own blog. And - the magazine will be available in print, which will make it available to a larger group of readers. I am so excited to think about holding a printed copy of the magazine in my hands and flipping through it on a Saturday morning with my cup of coffee and my kitty cat curled at my feet. 

It makes me so, so happy to help build a strong community of women who keep each other company, who encourage each other, who give each other permission to take time to find and to create beauty in the every day world! I would like to invite you to be a part of this community as well by contributing to our kickstarter project. For as little as a $20 pledge, you will receive a first edition print copy of the fall issue of Gatherings.

There are only 25 days left to contribute! I would sincerely appreciate your support - and also your help spreading the word about Gatherings. For more information, please check out this video that Heather put together.

With gratitude, Tracy xo 

Gatherings Magazine Kickstart from Heather Spriggs on Vimeo.

new drawings & patterns

Hey there, dear friends. I hope things have been going well for you. May is my favorite month. This weekend, we celebrated Mother's Day with waffles, coffee, and a family bike ride. Eli and the girls also gave me the gift of doing lots of the chores around the house and giving me some free time to just play around with drawing and patterns. Here are 2 of my favorites. 

Today, Eli and I celebrate our 14th wedding anniversary. Wow - time really does fly when you're having a good time, doesn't it? I am so lucky to be married to such a creative, brilliant, generous and kind man. Eli is such a great dad, he's always ready for an adventure - and he always encourages me to push myself and be gentle with myself in equal measure. He even makes the tedious days bearable - the ones we spend cleaning the garage or figuring out the taxes. I love you, Eli!!!

wedding guest books

Just wanted to show you the kraft paper guest books I made for Mockingbird Domestic's new wedding registry.  They are having a big launch party tonight in their lovely shop from 6- 8. I hope to see you there!

For the guest books, I designed rubber stamps for the calligraphy and a few of the starts. Then, I bound the books with black linen bookbinders thread. For the inside, I used a very delicate Crane 100% cotton paper. It feels soooo good! I may never go back to regular paper.

xo, Tracy

New Hand-Stamped Sundry Bag

I have been making little sundry bags again. I am thinking about the things I would like to display at West Elm for the Etsy Pop-Up Shop. And, as an experiment, I started carving little stamps out of erasers - like we did at the Krank Press workshop I attended last fall. I have been stamping little patterns on canvas. They are not sophisticated. In fact, they are kind of sloppy. But I realized that I actually love their imperfections. Here is my first sundry bag from my hand stamped canvas. I lined it with some muslin that I dip dyed with Rit Dye fuchsia last fall.  I added a shiny metal zipper - and just for fun a little pom pom. Such fun!

etsy pop-up at west elm

Hi there. I am so excited to be participating in this Etsy pop-up at West Elm here in Austin in a few weeks. It's on April 6. If you are in town, I do hope you will come say hi. Yummy snacks will be served :) RSVP to the event on Facebook here, and share the invitation with your friends. 

Many thanks to Camille Styles for curating the event. I am just giddy about it. I've been stocking up on ink, paper & envelopes and now I'm busy cutting and folding cards. I'm even going to break out the sewing mating this weekend. 

Now, if I can just figure out what to wear...

Fair Morning Blue 2013 Wholesale Catalog

I put together a Fair Morning Blue catalog! Take a look: