funnelcoud studio | holiday happenings + SALE!

The holidays are just around the corner and I'll be doing my best to avoid shopping malls, big box stores, and mass-produced items in favor of handmade gifts.

If you're a like-minded shopper who likes to support artists and give unique gifts, here are a few places you can find my shop during the holidays (as well as scads of other talented artists and crafters):

HOLIDAY MARKETS

Funnelcloud Studio will be at three markets in December in Virginia and Maryland:

December 1 -   Merry Mart (Baltimore, MD)
December 7 -   GRUMP at Artisphere (Arlington, VA)
December 14 -  Richmond Craft Mafia Handmade Holiday (Richmond, VA)

OLD TOWN HOME'S HOLIDAY GIFT GUIDE

Check out the feature on my shop in Old Town Home's Holiday Gift Guide. Wendy and Alex have impeccable decorating taste, so it's an honor to be included in their round-up and among such other talented local artists.

ETSY + Black Friday and Beyond SALE
I hate having to fight for parking spots and deal with inconsiderate shoppers, so online shopping is my favorite thing. (Plus it can be done while wearing pajamas with my pups at my feet!) December is always a busy time for Funnelcloud Studio, too and now that I have my life-changing thermal postage printer I can get those orders out faster than ever!

I have three new prints plus a couple of holiday card designs in the shop:

And while I pretty much never have sales in my shop, everyone likes to save money at this time of year, so to celebrate shopping without leaving the comfort of your own house on Black Friday/Small Business Saturday/Cyber Monday I'm offering 10% off a $50 minimum order in my Etsy shop using coupon code SMALLBIZ. The sale is valid through Monday, December 2nd at 11:59 pm EST. Awesome, right? (And now is a good time to pick up Things That Are Awesome...a Christmas gift for your favorite awesome person...or perhaps for your awesome self?)

Happy Thanksgiving, friends! Spend it with your families and not at the mall!

DIY travel map

I love travel, I love maps, and I love keeping track of things, so it's no surprise that I've wanted a travel map for years. (Plus, Larry and I have a goal to visit all 50 states, and we're a tiny bit competitive about it.) It's lame that it took me so long to actually follow through with this project, though, especially since I searched and searched for years for an acceptable map and finally bought one in 2011. Yes, I've had this map rolled up in a tube for TWO YEARS. It's finally on the wall, though!

I wanted a map that was simple and modern and found this one on Amazon. It was $1.68 when I bought it two years ago. It's 24x36 and printed on a metallic silver paper. The map does have a few geographic inaccuracies, though. (Where are the Great Lakes? What happened to Michigan???) I'm not sure if this is because it was a $2 map or because it was printed in the U.K. (Evidently, Americans aren't the only ones who suck at geography!)

I had initially wanted to hang the map in a public area in our house, because I think it's a good conversation piece, however, there just weren't any good spots in our living or dining room, so I decided to hang it in our bedroom. This worked out for the better because the metallic paper shows every fingerprint (I wore cotton framer's gloves while framing), and I think our visitors would think it was pretty snotty if we had a "Please don't touch" sign next to it in our living room.

I really wanted the map to look like a frame-worthy piece of art, so I mounted it to adhesive-backed foam core and framed it in a walnut frame (without glass, obviously). I've seen maps mounted to corkboard using pushpins, but this looks wrinkly and sloppy to me, so mounting the map to foam core was important in achieving a smooth and professional appearance. Plus, the foam core works as a backer board for the map pins.

Orange pins | Places I've traveled
Blue pins | Places Larry's traveled
White pins | Places we've traveled together

(For the sake of clarity, I'm only putting one pin per state/country regardless of how many cities we've been to. I would like to get a larger U.S. map someday to pin all the cities we've visited.)


The map was a good reminder of how big the world is and how little of it I've seen. I haven't done anywhere near as much traveling as I'd like - I didn't grow up in a military family (or in a family that traveled anywhere besides New Jersey, really) and I've never had a job that sent me to any interesting places for business, so all of my traveling was for pleasure or school (I studied abroad twice). Larry, on the other hand, has done a lot of business travel and has been to some very interesting places in Asia and Europe, as well as a good amount of domestic travel. Of course, the best trips have been the ones we've taken together. We've done some amazing traveling together in the good ol' USA as well as a couple trips to the Caribbean, but we definitely need to add some white pins to international locations!


And while I wish we could stick pins all over South America, Asia, Australia, and Africa (some day?), I do feel very lucky that I've gotten to experience a (tiny) bit of the world outside of the United States. To put it in perspective, I recently heard that over 50% of Americans have never been outside the U.S.

It's a big big world! Let's go!

funnelcloud around the world

Sometimes really amazing things happen to Funnelcloud Studio. I never would have guessed that my art would end up in these locations around the world:

ONE | The other day, the president of Massachusetts-based Sundin, Inc. tweeted me a link to a blog post about their new conference room. They chose pieces for the room made by independent artists and furniture-makers, including a handmade reclaimed wood table and my Things That Are Awesome illustration. I LOVE when corporations support small businesses and I also love the non-corporate approach to the design of their meeting space. Wouldn't meetings be so much more fun if you were surrounded by interesting things to look at like artwork and suspended paper cranes?

Sundin, Inc. looks like a great place to work - well done and thank you! (Photo via Sundin, Inc.)

TWO | When the Surfcomber Miami-South Beach Hotel in Florida was being designed several years ago, the designer ordered 150 of my Embrace Messy Hair prints to display in the hotel. I never shared the photos of the prints on the wall in the hotel because I had to discontinue Embrace Messy Hair several years ago when the printing block finally wore out from over-use. (I still get e-mails and requests to print it, but sadly it just isn't possible.) But anyway, it's SO amazing to have my work on display in a hotel:

I hope to stay in this hotel in person one day...would it be weird if I requested to stay in the "Embrace Messy Hair" Room? (Photo via Surfcomber Miami-South Beach.)

THREE | This last one is a bit of surprise - I certainly never fancied myself a tattoo designer, but when U.K.-based tattoo artist Will Powell contacted me for permission to use my whale print as a tattoo, I said yes! Well, first I thought - HUH?! I was definitely blown away that someone wanted my design on THEIR SKIN, but the result is pretty freaking awesome:

I have to admit I was relieved that my whale ended up on this dude's calf and not as a tramp stamp - that would be awkward. (Photo via Will Powell/Indelible Tattoo Studio.)

So a big thanks to all the businesses, big and small, who have supported my small business. It's amazing to me that the work created in my tiny spare bedroom is now in corporate offices, hotels, and even walking around the streets of England!

music for your wednesday

I don't seem to have the energy to edit and post photos right now, so I thought I'd share what I've been listening to over and over and over again these past few weeks...

We've been huge fans of Ha Ha Tonka since Larry discovered them in 2011. Their album that year, Death of a Decade, was #9 on Larry's list of best music of the year. A couple weeks ago while Larry was on business in Wyoming, he texted me that Ha Ha Tonka had a new album, Lessons, and that it was really good. I started listening and it was one of those albums that I just loved immediately. I put it on repeat for several days straight and declared it one of my favorite albums of 2013.

And then a serendipitous moment - when I checked the band's website, I was delighted to discover that Ha Ha Tonka would be playing live here in DC the following week. What luck! Words can't even describe how awesome their show was at the Rock & Roll Hotel last weekend (and really, I'm no good at writing about music, so I won't even try), but it was definitely a Top Five musical experience for me. Such a high energy show - I kinda went into that zone where it was just me and the music (and my beer)! I'll be adding Ha Ha Tonka to our list of Must-See-Whenever-They're-In-Town bands. (And also Will-Travel-for-Concert bands! Perhaps Nashville? Or Asheville?)



Also, the opener was Samantha Crain, and boy what a voice! Not only does this girl have talent, but she was adorable on stage - the kind of person who would be fun to hang out with. I've had her song "For the Miner" on repeat ever since.



No doubt, Larry will mention Ha Ha Tonka in his end of the year review this year, and while I didn't mean to scoop him, I just couldn't keep this stuff to myself any longer. I'm obsessed and this won't be the last time you'll hear me mention these guys.

Happy listening!

hiking pipiwai trail

So, I still haven't shared all the photos from our second trip to Hawaii...in May. And now that it's November and the weather is getting cold here in Virginia, I thought it would be nice to relive some of our springtime adventures in Maui...

We stayed on the northern part of island at Tom Sewell's art estate in Haiku for the beginning of our trip. After three nights there, we took the road to Hana to wild and isolated eastern Maui. After surviving the narrow winding road (620 curves in 68 miles!), spending the evening resting and enjoying the view of Hana Bay from our balcony at the Bamboo Inn, and getting a great night's sleep listening to the ocean from our bed, we woke up relaxed and ready to hike and explore the rainforest.

(What wasn't relaxing was the terrifying drive to our hiking spot - wet curvy one-lane roads cut into the side of a cliff. There were several times when we had to back up to let another car pass and felt the wheels slipping off the road! Fortunately, Larry's expert driving skills and my pep talks got us there and back in one piece.)

Our hiking destination was the Pipiwai Trail in Haleakala National Park. The park has two entrances on opposite sides of the island that allow access to two very different ecosystems. A few days earlier, we had explored the volcanic landscape from Haleakala's western side. Now we were on the eastern side which consisted of waterfalls and tropical rainforest, accessed from the Kipahulu entrance.

The day of our hike it was pouring rain, but since we were hiking in a rainforest, we didn't let that stop us. Photography was a challenge, and by the end of the hike we were soaked (from the rain, sweat, and walking through a stream) and caked with mud. My camera came very close to a life-threatening tumble. But it was all worth it because along the 4 mile trek, we came across the coolest banyan tree in the world, hiked through a magical bamboo forest, and ended up at a 400 foot waterfall - Waimoku Falls.
















After our hike through the rainforest, we took a quick jaunt through some Dr. Seussian trees, to a series of natural pools, known as the Seven Sacred Pools at Oheo Gulch. During gentle weather, swimming is allowed in the pools. After a full day of rain however, it's hard to imagine this area being swimmable! Obviously, the treacherous conditions on the day we were there meant there was definitely no swimming, but the pools (which had turned into one big waterfall flowing into the Pacific) were pretty to look at.








After a long, exhausting, and dirty day, it was back to the inn for happy hour (AKA dinner - there are very few options for eating out in Hana) with a view on the balcony and a dip in the jacuzzi to soothe our aching muscles.

collections | november leaves

So, I've been sick all week. I went outside my house today for the first time since Tuesday...it was a brief trip to photograph fall leaves in my yard and a good reminder that there are tiny little works of art everywhere.

Happy weekend!