IndieFixx.com

I’m going to be off today running errands, but before I leave I want to leave you with some inspiration from the Indie Fixx Flickr group. You are all are some talented folks, I must say and I love nothing better than browsing your submissions to the group. Keep ‘em coming & if you haven’t joined yet, why not?!

by Hindsvik

by Saídos da Concha

by * a n a *

by the green gal

by knitalatte11

by seamsoflife

by thatischarming

by *Vintage Fairytale*

by *Vintage Fairytale*

by thatischarming

by niccoco

by dsgndbyrj

by rikizarris

by rikizarris

by cherry blossom tattoo

by the green gal

Here’s the second installment in my tablescaping series. You can see last week’s post here and stay tuned for some more tablescaping ideas perfect for summer entertaining next week.

The first theme is fruit as decoration...

Fruit 1: Frolic!

Fruit 2: Project Wedding

Fruit 3: Style Me Pretty

Fruit 4: Once Wed

The second theme is vegetables as decoration…

Vegetables 1: JL Designs

Vegetables 2: 100 Layer Cake

Vegetables 3: Martha Stewart

Vegetables 4: Bizzaro Maria

Patty pan, patty pan.
Cooker, Jen.
Cook me up, eat me up.
Just as fast as you can.

That’s the little ditty I sung to myself, while I was cooking up my patty pan squash The other night (I like to make up songs while I cook, I entertain myself). Aren’t they pretty? I love patty pan squash. They taste good and they are just so darn cute!

I do have copious amounts of them though, so I am looking for some fresh ideas on how to use them. What do you do with your patty pan or yellow squash?

I met Briana Feola and Jason Synder of Brainstorm Print and Design like 2 years ago at a craft show I did back when I was running the Indie Fixx Shop (sigh, I miss the shop, even though it sucked up all my time). They were sort of just getting started with their business at the time, but I saw such promise in their work (even bought a couple prints) and wasn’t surprised to see them take off after that. I also found them to be lovely, lovely people and really enjoyed sitting next to them at the show.

Fast forward a couple of years, and the pair and their work have been featured all over the blogosphere, including this blog as well as biggies like Design*Sponge. That’s why I thought it might be time to interview them for my Wednesday Indie Artist Fixx interview series and to share some of their prints and as well as some of their custom design work.

Where did your shop name come from?

The name Brainstorm Print and Design came about when we starting working together on projects in college. We felt it would be a fun fit as our company name since every project we work on is a collaborative piece. Every print we create has passed through both our hands before completion. We also encourage collaboration with our clients as well. When a new project comes along, we work with you on a very personal level to create something you’ll absolutely love. Brainstorming is our favorite part of the creative process!

Who are 3 of your favorite artists of all time?

J: I’m a big fan of Picasso, Jasper Johns, Delauney, Rauschenberg, Thiebaud.

B: Alphonse Mucha, William Morris, Henri Matisse, Milton Glaser. Etc. Can’t pick just three!

What have you recently been reading, watching and listening to?

J: Most of my reading, watching, and listening comes from the Internet. Design/News blogs, Hulu, Netflix, Pandora, XM. It’s all so much easier to stream it in on demand.

B: I’ve been reading blogs and too many emails. Watching Lie to Me. Listening to Dutch, The Black Keys, Sea Wolf, Curtis Mayfield.

What’s your favorite comfort food and why?

J: Anything involving seafood makes me feel pretty comfortable.

B: Annie’s Mac-n-Cheese.   Cheese from the box. Guilty pleasure? I suppose it is junk food, but quick to make so I don’t have to cook my day away. That’s pretty comforting.

What’s something you’ve learned as an adult that you wish you knew as a kid?

B: I wish I knew to take more chances and be less fearful. Don’t take things at face value. Most adults don’t tell the whole truth. When you go to college, there will be a ton of money to pay back…so be ready.

J:  I want to say I wish I knew to work harder to set myself up for a better future, but I also want to say that you’re only a kid once so you definitely should NOT work harder. Being an adult kinda sucks because you have to answer questions like that. Haha!

What’s better all the money in the world or all the free time?

J: I’d like to think all the money in the world would allow me to have all the free time I wanted. Even though I’d probably just keep working.

B: Me too.

What does indie mean to you? You can give a literal definition, choose to be a little esoteric or a combination of both.

J: Indie to me always brings up people doing what they want to do, for them. Whether recording your own music and releasing it or creating artwork and selling it or owning your own business of any kind. Indie is just free from big corporations making decisions that make you unhappy.

B: I agree with that too. Indie is a generation of people trying to find more substance in a world filled with garbage. Better music. Wilder art. Reviving old school techniques that are fading with time. Indie strives to revive, reinvent, and re-purpose the world we live in.

What’s been your biggest accomplishment so far?

B+J: Being able to bring together fine art and graphic design, turn it into a business, and live off it. Basically being our own boss.

What’s new or in works?

B+J: After our recent move to Philadelphia, it’s on our agenda to get creative in our new space and new city. We really want to put out a bunch of new editions of art prints and perhaps the possibility of creating a limited edition shirt line. We shall see!

I love to read and I usually always have at least a dozen books on my to read pile, but there are those times that I run out of books and I haven’t heard about anything on NPR that I want to read,  nothing jumps out at me from the shelves of my local used bookstore and I just don’t have the time to devote to Booklist, alibris, New York Review of Books and the other places I find out about titles I want to read. That’s why I thought it might be fun to start a new feature called Indie Fixx Book Club and we can share books and authors with each other. It will be my version of the Oprah Book Club, but instead of discussing just one title, we help each other discover new books to read.

I thought a fun way to kick off the Book Club would be to share what’s on my reading pile right now.  Some I’ve read, some are still in the queue.

There’s several titles by Charles Bukowski, who I adore. He is gritty, raw & real and his alter-ego Henry Chinaski is fascinating &  disturbing, but is endearing in some way. He features real people with real problems, but not in phony way, just in a here-it-is kind of way. There’s also a Philip K. Dick book, he is another favorite author.  Some Hunter S. Thompson. Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and The Rum Diary, which is fiction and being made into a movie with Johnny Depp. On the Road, which I haven’t read in ages, so I thought it was time to read it again. A book called This is the Beat Generation, which is non-fiction and about all the beats. Are you seeing a theme, here? I read a lot of beat era books and authors. There’s also American Gods, by Neil Gaiman. I know it’s difficult to believe, but I’ve not actually read any Neil Gaiman…I just haven’t gotten around to it yet.

Another one of my favorite authors is Jeffrey Eugenides. Middlesex and The Virgin Suicides are brilliant and it really is time for him to come out with another novel. I’m rereading The Virgin Suicides…it’s so lyrical that it’s almost like poetry.  He also had a story in a recent The New Yorker I’ve been meaning to read (it can be found here). I also have one of those Larsson The Girl With… books. People keep telling me that they are good, doesn’t really seem like my my usual thing, but I got it for $1 at the bookstore so I thought I’d give it try.  So, that’s about it. There are a few other books there I picked up at the used bookstore, as well as some non-fiction crafty type books (not-pictured) that I’ve been sent to review and which I will talk about later.

What’s on your reading pile?

What do you recommend to me and other Indie Fixx readers? What don’t you recommend? Who are your favorite authors? I’d love it if you took a picture of your to-read pile or your bookshelves and share it on the Indie Fixx Flickr Group. I think it would be fun to share other peep’s books as well as my own for this feature.

I’d also really like to make this a pretty regular feature. At least once a month, maybe twice a month if it’s popular. I would also like to have some guest bloggers as well, so email me if you are interested. You could do a book review, share your 10 fave authors,  list what books you read on your summer vacation or whatever fits with the book club theme.

The mister and I watched the season opener of Mad Men  last night (we watch on iTunes, so we are a little behind) and I was a little underwhelmed. The pacing was way off,  I thought. One of the things that I love about Mad Men is that each episode flows like it’s a little poem or a panting. Although, I did like the ending, last night’s episode was not poetry for me. I don’t want to spoil it for anyone, so that’s all I will say, but I do hope that this is a tiny hiccup in an otherwise riveting season.

Whatever my thoughts on the content of Mad Mean, the styling was utterly deliciousness. The costumes, the sets, the hair & make-up…gorgeous.  It got me all excited to put together another post in my Mad Men series (here’s a link to last year’s Mad Men posts, if you are interested)

For this post, I decided to share ads for women’s fashions from 60’s magazines that I discovered on flickr. It makes sense to me, since the show is about advertising after all. Looking through all these ads made me realize that advertising for women hasn’t changed much. They are still trying to sell us on the image of how we want to see ourselves, rather than who we actually are.

From Seventeen, July 1961 by sugarpie honeybunch

by april-mo

by sugarpie honeybunch

From Seventeen, January 1961 by sugarpie honeybunch

by myvintagevogue

by sugarpie honeybunch

by rchappo2002

by rchappo2002

by sugarpie honeybunch From Mademoiselle, July 1965

by april-mo

I must fess up that I am a bit voyeuristic when it comes to wedding photos. I love to get lost in other people’s wedding photos and I can often be found checking out flickr and pro photog’s sites for wedding photos. This interest on my part is rather bizarre to me, because I myself did not have a big wedding shindig and neither did I want one. The mister and I chose to get married by a justice of the peace and have a BBQ type get together at my grandparent’s afterward. It was very low key.  It was so low key that I was barefoot most of the day….although, I was 8 months pregnant and it was about 150 degrees that long ago August afternoon.

I digress…other people’s weddings. So, fast forward to today and I love to look at wedding photographs of strangers.  I love the poignancy of those captured memories and the creativity I find in the little details of the weddings and the photographers who record them. One of the photographers that I follow is Laura Dye (Blog & Flickr) We sort of met on twitter, or was it facebook, and since she is headquartered in Salisbury and I’m in Delaware, we met in person at an Ignite event where Laura did a presentation sharing some of her photos…I’ve been checking out her blog and flickr ever since.  Laura does  individual and family portraits, but it’s the weddings that get me.

Laura is actually one of the contributors for the 1st issue of my new online mag called Joie, which is debuting next month.

Here are some of Laura’s wedding photos.

It’s Monday and that means it’s time for another Feed Your Soul: the free art project free printable.

Liz Adams- Liz is a freelance illustrator living in Los Angeles. Much of her inspiration comes from childhood, the desert, and animals. See more on her website and in her Esty Shop.

Download Liz’s print HERE!

I love a good art project, I started Feed Your Soul: the free art project after all. I’m not sure if you’ve heard of this one or not, but it’s truly wonderful so I just had to share. It’s really the perfect thing for a summer Friday too, when I know so many of you are stuck at the office just waiting to get out for the weekend. So anyway, the project is called Advice to Sink in Slowly and it’s an ongoing series of posters designed by graduates for the purpose of passing on advice and inspiration to first year students. An advice poster is given  to every student starting a course at participating Universities when they 1st  enroll.

It looks like it’s only a UK project, but what a fabulous idea. We should so totally have something like this all over the world!

Some of the advice is hilarious and fun, while some advice is so spectacularly stated that it makes me want to wallpaper my office with advice posters. Some of the art is totally amazing as well.  And, many of the posters are for sale for really reasonable prices in the  Advice to Sink in Slowly SHOP….one could really wallpaper their office with these them!

I’ve shared some of what I think is the best advice below.  What about you? What do you think is the best advice? What advice do you have to give? My advice would be “Don’t forget what it felt like to be a kid”.

let go of what you think you know by david plant

debt is not your friend by richard dinnis

don’t be afraid to ask questions by yee ting kuit

to create ideas is a gift, but to choose wisely is a skill by ryan morgan

take a camera everywhere by carolyn alexander

be yourself by jane laurie

you learn from your mistakes. make as many as possible by jo peel

Remember how I’ve been talking about starting my own online magazine? Well, it’s finally here! Or at least it will be here. It’s scheduled to debut next month and right now, I’m hard at work putting the finishing touches on it and making it just perfect, but I know you are wondering what it’s all about, what it’s called & more.

So, my new online mag is called Joie

and it’s all about the art of joyful living. It’s a lifestyle mag and will cover a lot of same topics as Indie Fixx: art, craft, living, design, fashion, etc. but will allow for expanded coverage as well as LOTS more eye candy. It will be a quarterly mag to start off and if it prove popular (and humanly possible) I may be putting it out more frequently. Does this sound up your alley? Of course, it does. You are reading this blog, after all.

The magazine will be free to read, but will contain advertising…a girl has got to be paid for all her hard work somehow, and there are actually 2 ways to advertise in the mag right now 1) in the classified section and 2) with a full page ad. I’m offering introductory rates that are SUPER affordable and start at only $15!

Click HERE or email for more details about how to become an advertiser. I’d love to have you!

Stay tuned for details on the release of Joie. It’s going to be the most amazing magazine you will ever read.

I’ve always loved reading periodicals from outside my own region. In high school, I read British mags during my Anglophile phase, and in my 20’s I read in the locally produced newspaper from the Pine Ridge and Rosebud Lakota Sioux reservations in South Dakota (I had it mailed to Delaware).

Lately, I’ve been reading Sunset, a magazine whose tagline is ‘how to live in the west’, and it really makes me dream about moving to the west. The Mr. and I are kinda kicking the idea around for when Indie Fixx Jr. is done with college.  The Pacific Northwest, the Southwest, Southern Cali and the Bay Area seem really appealing for different reasons. We are throwing Austin, Tempe, Portland around, and anywhere in California we think we could afford…which isn’t much.  The natural beauty and cultural aspects of these places make them really appealing and reading Sunset and looking at all the photos makes me long for them in a totally fantastical what-if kind of way. I’m not sure that I could actually do it, move away from my family, but the more I read Sunset the more I want to take some vacations and explore the idea.

What about you, are you dreaming of moving? Is it a reality? Is it something that you will relegate to your wishful thinking world?

Vintage love from the  Summertime Indie Fixx Galleria.

1. Excely Jewelry
2. Found Studio
3. F&C Factory

4. Vintage by Alex Keller
5.  The White Mole
6. From My Bookshelf
7. Test of Time

Artists, crafters, designers, boutiques (both handmade & vintage) apply now for the Fall Indie Galleria. The Galleria is an online showcase of handmade, indie-made & vintage goods. Think of it as an ‘indie mall’ featuring a mix of designers & boutiques to provide a curated shopping experience.  The Fall edition is scheduled from September 6th to November 4th and only costs $25 to participate.

The Galleria is juried & has a limited number of spots, so you do need to apply. To do so, just send your url or 2-3 small images to apply. The deadline to apply is September 3rd.

Nina from Swanky Swell sent me some fabric samples to play around with a while ago and I finally got around to doing something with them. I used the Pompon Dahlia Pebbles pattern to make a gift for a friend. I framed one of the flowers in an embroidery hoop and then added some embroidery embellishments for a little more color. I just love gray and yellow together, don’t you?

I only wish my embroidery skillz were better…I can’t make a French Knot to save my life!

P.S. Wednesday Indie Artist Fixx will return next week.

I’ve been wanting to share a tablescape post with you for a while now, especially since it’s summertime and summer means entertaining to me. The weather is nice, it stays light until 9pm, there’s fresh flowers + foods to highlight and all sorts of reasons to get family & friends together for indoor and al fresco dinner parties.

Now to be honest, most of the time I have company, I throw the food out on the bar buffet-style with plastic cups and paper napkins, but there are those times that call for a little more finesse.  So, I’ve put together (along with Lucy the intern’s help) a series of posts on tablescaping ideas. We will be presenting a bunch of themes and sharing a collection of images for each theme as inspiration for your (& my) dinner parties.

The first theme is burlap…

Burlap 1: Jodie Miller Photography

Burlap 2: Snippet & Ink

Burlap 3: Sunday Suppers

Burlap 4: The Sweetest Occasion

The 2nd theme is Kraft paper…

Paper 1: 100 Layer Cake

Paper 2: Green Wedding Shoes

Paper 3: Sunday Suppers

Paper 4: Emerson Made (via Ruffled)

Stay tuned, in upcoming weeks since I will be sharing more tablescaping ideas.

So, I’m thinking about planning a tweet-up for early fall and I want to know if you are interested or not.  This would be for folks in the Philly/Baltimore/DC areas and I’m thinking of holding the tweet-up in northern Delaware, which is where I am located and also sort of  in the middle.  My idea is that this could be a fantastic way for us indie crafters/designers/artists and bloggers to get together & learn, share & socialize with each other.  Maybe have a few people make some presentations, do some networking and hang out for a bit. How does that sound?

So, here is what I need. Either leave a comment or send me an email with your interest and any comments/suggestions you have about a tweet-up. I need to know if there’s enough people interested in the idea before I start planning this.

It’s Katya the Intern again with another part 3 of my Eco-home tips & tutorials series (here’s part 1 & part 2) This round is for recycled, re-purposed and reused decor to pretty up your house. Recycling  household trash and clutter  into decor is is definitely a simple way to reduce waste gong into a landfill. Most things just need a simple cleaning or a new coat of paint and others, like the glass bottle frames, can pretty much be used as is. Of course, you can get about as complex as you want and end up with some pretty fabulous design that no one would ever guess was once something as humble as a milk jug.

1. Glass Bottle and Jar Frames by Design*Sponge 2. Scrap Fabric Rag Rug by Vintage Chica 3. Toilet Paper Tube Art by Design*Sponge 4. Men’s Plaid Shirt Pillows by Kelly and Olive 5. Vintage Spool Vases by LushLee 6. iIbbon Spool Cubbies by Paper n Stitch 7. Recycled Yarn Branch by Leethal 8. Crayon Initial by Frugal Life Project 9. Broken Whiteboard to Magnetic Chalk Board by Made by Nicole 10. Recycled Milk Jug Fixture by Dan Goldwater of Instructables 11. Lightbulb Terrarium by The Hipster Home 12. Bike Chainring Clock by The Hipster Home

Congratulations to Jessica from Utah for winning the Foxy Friends poster from INK+WIT.  Lucky girl! Don’t forget to enter to win a winner’s choice apron from Fisk and Fern as well. Enter by July 27th at 11:59pm EST.

With the start of a new season of Mad Men next Sunday comes the start of a whole new season drooling over the styling of the show. Don’t get me wrong, I love the story and the acting, but I’m in love with the look of the show and I know I’m not the only one. One of my secret fantasies (not so secret now) is to be a costumer, set dresser, prop master, costume buyer or the like on  Mad Men. Or to just be fly on the wall…

So, periodically over the season you will see plenty of Mad Men inspired posts. I did this last season as well and you can see all of last year’s posts HERE.

This 1st set of Mad Men inspiration is from flickr and features folks showing off their own early 60’s style for magazine shoots, parties, the Mad Men walk-on contest + more.

by Bobbins and Bombshells

by The Kingdom | Full Service Advertising Agency

by Natasha Bailie Vintage Clothing Company

by hannah karina

by hannah karina

by Andrea Marzagalli

by Merci New York

by kellyelle

by La Collectionneuse

by La Collectionneuse

by Matt Carman

Hey there, and happy Monday to you dear readers. I hope you all had a wonderfully steamy July weekend  (at least folks in the northern hemisphere anyway). I didn’t do a lot or get  a lot accomplished myself and I’m actually glad the weekend is over….ever have one of those weekends? Ii know you know what I mean. Sometimes,  you just need a reset button and what’s a better way than to reset with the start of another work week. I’m ready to get busy!

But first, I need to share the latest Feed Your Soul: the free art project free printable with you. All you Boston Terrier people out there enjoy.  I need to get some artists to do some kitty art for us kitty people….any takers on that challenge??? Email me!

Donna McKenzie – Donna is a freelance artist/illustrator inspired by fabrics, wallpaper, art from any era, children’s books and any shape or color seen in nature.  She loves to draw and do custom commissions and collaborations. You can see more of her work on her Blog, and in her & Esty Shop.

Download Donna’s print HERE!

I’ve featured the screenprinted paper & households goods company Fisk and Fern before on Indie Fixx (here). I 1st discovered them at an indie craft show in Baltimore and was drawn to their quirky illustrations. So, when Laura from Fisk and Fern sent me an email about her new monster aprons and offered one up for a giveaway, I jumped at the chance.

Their are 5 designs avalable—pancake monster, BACON monster, octo-pie, cupcake, and chubby monkey—and you could win your choice of one! These are also good for guys and girls.

Win a Fisk and Fern monster apron.

Leave a comment on this post with your favorite Fisk and Fern monster apron design and why it’s your favorite.  I will choose one random commenter to win their choice. This giveaway will end Tuesday, July 27th at 11:59pm EST.

P.S. I’m still waiting to hear back from the INK + WIT poster winner. Please check your email if you entered!!!!