my mom's portfolio

My mom is an artist. Since selling her company in 2005, she's gotten into painting again. She's really gotten into painting. She's painted for fun, made paintings as gifts, entered paintings in competitions, and tried to get small painting commissions. She took photos of her work and kept them in a portfolio book to show people, but she didn't have a website.

I told her repeatedly that she needed one, and that if she didn't exist on the internet as an artist, it's like she didn't exist at all. I slowly realized that she'd never get an online portfolio unless I created one for her.

I created a header/logotype, got images of most of her pieces (I'm still waiting for the pretty one of a big ocean wave.), wrote up a short bio, did some (very, very basic) editing of a Cargo template (I'm no website developer.), and gave the website and her business card design to her for Christmas.

Go get 'em, Mom!

karensharpfoster.com

calming antibiotics / calming photographs

I've been sick far too long for my liking. Two weeks. Last night, while watching our billionth episode of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, Josh suggested that maybe I had a sinus infection. I made him press pause while I looked up the symptoms and realized that I had every single one. This morning, I went to see a doctor and was super excited about it, because I wanted to stop feeling crummy. Also, I love my antibiotics, because they stop my head from feeling like it's going to explode when I stand up or bend over.
_ _ _

These photos make me feel calm, especially since I just made a bunch of changes to a file in Photoshop, and it crashed before I'd saved it. As Julie aptly stated, "Swear words are appropriate."

Photos from here, here, here, here, and here.

to all a good night

Scamp ornament made Josh's and my friend, Megan.

clason 2011 greeting card

I'm an admirer of Amanda Jones' design work, and her 2010 Christmas card inspired me to create my own infographic card edition.

The numbers in my charts and graphs show absolutely zero correlation, causation, or statistical significance (I only know those terms from my Stats 221 class, which I passed, thank you very much), except to show that we did some stuff and watched a lot of TV shows.

I had an enjoyable time Google mapping trips we took to determine miles traversed and determining which categories to add to the charts. (A few that didn't make the cut: vehicles bought, sold, or built; amount of Mexican restaurants patronized; and number of wedding thank-you cards mailed.) 

I didn't send out many cards in the mail, so if you want a version emailed to you, leave a comment with your email address or email me directly at the address on the blog sidebar.

Check out my website to see a few more photos.

Oh yeah, and MERRY CHRISTMAS!

ice sculpting festivities

"Spiffy Ice has the ability to supply whatever ice demands you may require."

Complete with chewy cookies for all, reindeers to admire, and our very own Neil Diamond impersonator.

the great dinosaur mystery

Pondering life at the Natural History Museum of Utah.

history of feet

history of feet at the Natural History Museum of Utah

christmas chili / christmas cranes

Cranes by Nattles.

das leben der anderen

Josh has been sick all week, and I was sick (oddly, with something different than Josh) Wednesday night and all of yesterday. Our apartment is a mess, because we've been too busy and too sick to feel like cleaning. BUT, we watched Das Leben Der Anderen (The Lives of Others) last night, and it was such a good choice (though I was skeptical at first).

It has the best ending of any film I've seen in a long time.

This isn't the ending, but it's a really good clip:



"Dedicated to HGW XX/7, in gratitude."

spinnin' around funnin' around

Last Friday, this guy turned a year older. It was a really good day.

5:40 AM Sleepy Conversations

Me: "I'm having bad dreams."
You: "Of what?"
Me: "They laid everyone off at work."
You: "At Costco?"
Me: "What? Costco...?"
You: "Yeah."
Me: "Costco? What are you talking about?
You: "You're sooo serious all the time."

I was trying so hard to figure out if I'd dreamt about Costco, and he was trying so hard to figure out how getting laid off at Costco could be considered a bad dream.

maze making

When I was a kid, I got through church by drawing dogs and mazes.

More from my seventh grade art folder.

Mom's house as a storage unit is now off-limits to me. I had a good run.

"Everyone is on ACID in their adolescence.  ACIDOLESENCE." - Jason

state your name

"You didn't take any business classes because you were busy being interesting." - Kenny

Seventh Grade Art Folder

The period of time when Mom allows me to use her house as a free storage unit has passed.

he's a star

Over Thanksgiving, we watched some home videos from when Josh was a little tyke living in Bitburg, Germany. The whole video was narrated by Josh's late father, who also began the video with handwritten credits such as the one below. I was loving it.

it's hard to smile with a cold face

Last week. 

Only fell twice, didn't cry once, skied through the trees a lot.

Those things equal a good ski day for this gal. 

Happy December!

joujou at the grand, trois

Monster animation wall. 

Retro Games. 

Giant cardboard dragons.

Art books. 

Robots. Lots of robots. 

Out of my system now.

joujou at the grand, part deux

Green shag carpet. Toadstools. Creatures peeking out from holes in the wall.

JouJou

portfolio updates

Check out the updates for my portfolio by clicking here.

I decided it was time to add some blog graphics I've made,
animated gifs (which only made me want to make new and better ones),

 some more captions, a couple new logos, and to tidy the place up a bit.

joujou at the grand

Last night, Josh and I went to check out JouJou, the new toy store at The Grand America Hotel. I had been waiting for a month for it to open, and I was so delighted the entire time. So delighted. There is a candy organ that makes sounds when you step on it, and it lights up below your feet.

I doubly love JouJou because StruckAxiom did all of the marketing, branding, in-store displays, and even some of the packaging and product design of the place. I couldn't really be bothered about StruckAxiom (I was against agency work after I quit my job in NYC) until last year when I saw the billboards for La Bonne Vie  that Struck created. When we were in the store we ran into one of the JouJou partners who is also an owner/creative director at StruckAxiom. It was like meeting a celebrity—I was excited and nervously sweating.

I'll likely post more about this tomorrow.

up and coming

Guys, Magna is not as unfun as you might think. It has The Pizza Stop (yum!) (the west side's version of Este) and Intermountain R/C Raceway (you know, where males hang out and race all sorts of expensive remote control cars). Magna even has cute white lights on a bunch of trees downtown. I'm a sucker for cute white lights. There might be some hoodlums walking on the sidewalk under those cute white lights, but they're most likely harmless.

Josh predicts that in 15 or 20 years, Magna will be the up-and-coming spot in the Salt Lake Valley.  TBD.

Also, I love this short, imagined monologue by Comic Sans.

change is good

It was getting much too unwieldy.

like crazy

I thought I understood it, that I could grasp it, but I didn’t, not really.
Only the smudgeness of it; the pink-slippered, all-containered, semi-precious eagerness of it.
I didn’t realize it would sometimes be more than whole, that the wholeness was a rather luxurious idea. 
Because it’s the halves that halve you in half.
I didn’t know, don’t know, about the in-between bits; the gory bits of you, and the gory bits of me.

Like Crazy was pretty good, even though I didn't like the ending. I liked the film better than Josh did, and I loved the poem Anna read (above). There were some truthful moments, and although my 22-year-old self would have gotten super emotionally involved, I didn't as much as I'd expected I might.

I liked when I found out that it was shot entirely on a Canon 7D (the camera that Josh films with) and that the script was improvised. Felicity Jones, who played Anna, said this about the film's improvisation:

It's all improvised and we had something called a scriptment which reads something like a short story. It had the characters and some of their backstory and described what happened in each scene, sometimes with some dialogue hints. From that template we found the dialogue and kept changing the scene until it felt truthful and worked.



P.S. I've created some signage for Rubi's two-day hairstyling workshop in Park City, Utah in January. Check it out on her blog. 

on the same side

I want someone who is fierce and will love me until death and know that love is as strong as death, and be on my side for ever and ever. I want someone who will destroy and be destroyed by me. There are many forms of love and affection, some people can spend their whole lives together without knowing each other’s names. Naming is a difficult and time consuming process; it concerns essences, and it means power. But on the wild nights who can call you home? Only the one who knows your name. Romantic love has been diluted into paperback form and has sold thousands and millions of copies. Somewhere it is still in the original, written on tablets of stone.

- Jeanette Winterson, Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit

"I'll always be on your side."



Photo by Alina Valitova

mini date

Whether it's a drive to 7-Eleven for some drinks,
off to Smith's for a half-gallon of ice cream,
or a walk around the neighborhood,
I'm always up for it.

she lets her hair down

I'm really excited about this. I'm going to be designing graphics for my friend, Rubi's, hair website, She Lets Her Hair Down, which has great tips for people like me who aren't too sure what to do with or how to take of their hair.

Earlier this year, Rubi gave me the best haircut ever, so I'm quite sad that she lives all the way in Paris, because I can't keep her as my hair stylist.

Her latest post tackles the winter hair blues. Check it out here.

Here's my design for the post:

smell like the sea

I will live my life as a lobsterman's wife on an island in the blue bay. He will take care of me; he will smell like the sea; and close to my heart he'll always stay.

-Ingrid Michaelson, Far Away

Photo by Maddie Joyce

la esquina, soho

In the space between yes and no, there’s a lifetime. It’s the difference between the path you walk and the one you leave behind; it’s the gap between who you thought you could be and who you really are.

- Jodi Picoult, Change of Heart

Photo by Zack Schrock

you are the rock, you are the rake

Christina and I were chatting online today and this video came up (which I'm almost positive I've shared on this blog sometime in the past). We were both super into the song version, but we were especially into Sebastian's cute face at 0:12-0:14. Love love love.



Below is part of Christina's and my gchat convo a little over four years ago when we were both in New York City. Let's live in the same city again someday, Seung Jung.

me: i love the rake song btw. on repeat on my computer
Christina: yeah. it's really cute with the little kid. i listen to that everyday to make me happy
me: i love when he smiles at the person who's videoing him
Christina: i know! adorable. is it me or the recording the little boy is singing too sound different from the one off the album?
me: it's a diff version
Christina: ah. it's the greenpoint version. i don't think i have that one. it's prettier
Christina: okay. i'm outtie. see you 730 at Indian Tanpura?
me: yes.
Christina: cool
me: i'm out too. bye

phantogram friday

I'm blogging a lot of music this week, and I'm loving it. I don't post music on my blog to teach you all what to listen to (I'm not ever first on that scene anyway), but I post it because I like it and want to post it. And when I feel like posting a certain thing I can't stop myself (as you might have learned from all my little Becca journal posts, my gifs, or my lovey posts about Josh.). Sometimes I try to make blog drafts to post later in an effort to spread out some of my posts, but then I get too excited and post them all anyway.

I've been listening to this EP over and over again today. Enjoy.





I'm not your drinking problem
A hole is in the sky
It's not your heart that you've been thinking of
Just the feeling like you're gonna die
...
Don't you know you're alive
Burning in the sky

little dragon - ritual union

I'd like to see Little Dragon in concert.

I was wonderin' how the white dress, and the mistress, and his spirit are holdin' my hand.

connecting long-distance lovers

Such a good idea!!

Pillow Talk is a project aiming to connect long distance lovers. Each person has a ring sensor they wear to bed at night, and a flat fabric panel which slots inside their pillowcase. The ring wirelessly communicates with the other person’s pillow; when one person goes to bed, their lover’s pillow begins to glow softly to indicate their presence. Placing your head on the pillow allows you to hear the real-time heartbeat of your loved one.

Created by Little Riot. Seen on A Cup of Jo.

midnight city and we own the sky

How can I not listen to this all day long?

While I'm at it, this older one too:

family halloweening

My mom planned some awesome Halloween activities for us this year (and she awarded prizes!).

My pumpkin was the prettiest, obviously. 

I'd been singing Elvis all night. I don't know. 

Miranda's had the best detail.

Danny was into it for a while. Also, the pumpkin on the right was actually that grey/green color.

Jared's anime pal

Steph wants everything to be tie-dyed.

She was making too much of a mess and got relegated to the art room.

Hahaha. Josh was super excited for the photoshoot.

His pumpkin was the creepiest.

FrankenMindy

Jake's hair guy and the Deathly Hallows haunted house he made with Mindy. 

When we were finished with our haunted houses we doorbell ditched the Jensens and left the houses on their porch.

jack-o-pizza

Josh was gone from Wednesday to Saturday last week, and after I picked him up from the airport we ate this pizza and watched a very good game of football. Perfect.

spooky dinner costumes

I loved Jenna's and Allison's costumes once I figured out what the Wii game, Just Dance, was.