Arrival of Spring, an original artwork

Her Moo Minicards

I found Rebecca via Design for Mankind (she did the banner!), and I’ve been waiting to see her put some stuff up at her Etsy shop since forever!

Her linework is intricate and wonderfully organic, and the good news is there’s TWO ONE original for sale at her shop, and both are equally lovely. Here’s hoping she’ll keep up with the momentum and fill up her shop up to the brim pretty soon! 🙂

Read her fantastic blog, browse through her Flickr and make a stop at her shop.

The rumble goes through her softly,
in her sleepy head she thinks rain.
A quiet rumble again,
peering out the window slat just a little bit
Eyes wide now but no eyes could take in all that gigantic softness
Her breath catches and they pass huge and gentle.
One looks her way she ducks when she looks again
they have gone.

~ From Karen Preston’s Traveling print description

See more poignant poems and illustrations in her shop.

Images from bluecalico.exblog.jp

I must confess that I’ve never been a philatelic fella. My mom collects them, and they’re upstairs tucked away under my sis’ bed where it hasn’t seen the light of day since 1990.

But ever since I saw a book about matchbox designs on DesignSponge’s Guest Blog by Amy Ruppel called Cesky Filumenisticky Design: Czech Matchbook Labels I started to stumble onto websites that had a lot of other thumbnail inspirations — small, but packed to the brim with ideas on how to use color effectively, and how to deal with composition and layouts.

I discovered this website that’s mainly in Japanese, but has a collection of wonderful stamp images (as you can see above). This was discovered on Nebo Peklo’s post.

And a visit to Grain Edit’s Mid Century Modern – Sticker, Label + Stamp Club will definitely put you in the mood to pick up some color pencils, if you haven’t already!