Project Selvage

Project Selvage

Yesterday marked the deadline for Project Selvage, a joint collaboration between Spoonflower and Michael Miller fabrics to find Michael Millers’ next licensed fabric designer. The required entry was an original baby boy print, and the grand prize is a contract with Michael Miller and a trip to the International Quilt Market in the Fall(!!!). If any contest in the world ever had me written all over it, it was this! Not only do I have years of experience designing prints, but I’ve spent years designing baby boy’s prints while at babystyle! (I still haven’t finished my print portfolio yet, but I have hundreds of prints to sift through! I did design the print of the background of this website though, to give you an idea) And a dream of mine is to have my own print line à la Anna Maria Horner and Amy Butler. The primary reason why I’ve taken up sewing and quilting is to specifically understand the way that a print is utilized as an end product! It’s an interesting thing to consider. I want to work out of my own home studio, and have (more) little ones crawling around; I just don’t see the need to work anywhere besides my home with the line of work I do, especially while I have children under 5!

A few sketches of foxes I did for the print.

Admittedly, I knew about the contest for about a month but I had so many other things going on that I didn’t get to work on it as much as I would have liked–I only had about a day. Really, I shouldn’t need more than a day, but I would have liked some more time to finesse the repeat. Repeats can be SO tricky, especially with conversational prints like this. Also, I totally understand why MM chose a baby boy print specifically to find their next designer; the most difficult prints I have ever worked on have always been the baby boy layette prints. You’d think they’d be so easy! But they can’t be too sweet or they become “girly” and they can’t be not sweet enough, because then it is no longer “baby”. There is such a fine line! I did know I wanted to do a fox print, and I knew I also wanted to incorporate foxtails (the plant). I enjoy the play on words and the wispy wheat-like motif they add. I think I did well with what I came up with, it certainly makes me smiley and happy and I even giggled a few times when I was drawing them in Illustrator (always a good sign).

Foxtail Print

Close up! :D

Isn’t he so cute? He would make a great plush! I wish I could share the cute plush I’ve been designing lately, but I will have to wait till they hit the stores, I think. :) Anyway, of course I have my reservations about what I’ve submitted now, and I wish I could revise a few (or many!) things, but alas, contest is over. I just have to hope I make the first cut to the 75 prints they choose for the contest, and then the second round to the 10 semi-finalists. Then I will design 5 coordinating prints which would be SO much fun and I already have tons of ideas! And, the winner gets to design a GIRLS line too! That would be ah-mazing. So if you don’t here about this contest again, it means I didn’t make the cut, and oh well, I’ll move on to developing my own line of prints for development. But if I do, be prepared to endure some shameless self promotion in asking for your vote! (I apologize already, but this is the quilt market we’re talking about!)  xoxo

Here it is over at Spoonflower.

Hutch featured on Centsational Girl!

Hutch featured on Centsational Girl!

Firstly, I would like to welcome all the people coming over from Centsational Girl! How exciting! When I emailed Kate about my before and after, I was totally expecting my email to get lost in the crowd, but I figured, “what the hey”, and it doesn’t hurt to give things a shot. :) She featured it last night, and it increased readership exponentially. What’s funny is, when I saw that hutch on craigslist I thought to myself (and later out-loud to my hubs) “this would be such a great blog post!“. It’s so awesome to know that other people like doing and seeing these sorts of things as much as I do. When I see an old dingy piece of furniture, I always see it for its potential, and I’m excited to meet others who feel the same way!

For those of you not familiar with Kate and her work over at Centsational Girl, let me explain why this hutch makeover is so up her alley; she features lots of furniture revamps (usually thrift store & craigslist finds), and is a sheer force in the world of DIY home improvements. I think we share that “seeing a piece of furniture for it’s potential” thing I just mentioned. She’s also not afraid of power tools, finds great uses for molding, and probably uses her garage more than her husband (as I assume I will, once we have a garage … *dreams off wistfully into space*). Here just a few of some of my favorite revamps of hers:

(Her logo is Aphrodite Pro; a favorite font of mine, I couldn’t help but use it here too!) Make your way over to her project gallery to find more great makeovers, and a bevy of information, tutorials, and tips; from “how to paint laminate” to “10 lessons I learned building a kitchen”. And thanks again to Kate for featuring my hutch, and for helping the world realize the potential of the “junk” left on the corner of the street, and to all those who came over from Centsational Girl! xoxo

*all photos are credited to Centsational Girl*

China Hutch Makeover

China Hutch Makeover


After a lot of hard work and a few moments of indecision, I finally finished the hutch late last week!  This piece needed a lot of work, and I probably could have spent a lot more time stripping and sanding, but as I knew it was going to take a few days, and we were due for rain, this had to be an inside project and I couldn’t spend days sanding and striping (and potentially ruining our floors). Just look at that peeling varnish!

“Before” hutch details; many scratches, broken and missing knobs, horrible peeling, marker, and a missing glass pane.

I took the door with the missing window to a glass shop, and started hunting down hardware. Some of it I knew I could salvage, and some I knew I would have to toss. I had (and still have) my heart set on anthropologie’s color swatch knob, but it seems to be completely sold out! (The bottom shelf of the hutch will house my fabric, and I always thought those knobs would pull the colors of the fabric so well… :). I decided to get a move on with the things I knew I was going to go with; turning that center window that was drilled shut into an operating door with a hing and a magnetic closure, and installing the lights. I went to Lowe’s and bought some furniture door hinges and a closure. They had to be the kind that you could attach to the outside so I could have the door centered over the opening just right. Just drill, drill and drill, easy peasy! Now we have a functioning door.

Attaching the interior lights and the hardware to turn the window into a door.

I went to IKEA and bought some LACK spotlights and installed them above the top shelf. I actually bought 2 sets as I intended to light both shelves, but one set was making a strange buzzing noise and we decided they need to be returned. I decided not to drill through the top of the hutch for the time being… I figured the wires are so thin it won’t be so noticeable. We’ll see if it drives me nuts or not!

I’m kinda really into shelf liner paper. I’m very specific about the way it accents the furniture that I makeover… I love the surprise when you open a drawer or a cabinet! It just helps everything to feel more put together. I found this awesome Con-Tact shelf liner on ebay for $2.99 a roll! A pretty gold and white, almost chevron print, but not quite, which makes me love it more for some reason… It was an instinct purchase, and when I was having trouble picking a fabric for the back, my husband said “I thought that was what the Con-Tact paper was for”, and I immediately was like “No!!! It’s for the drawers!”; but then, nothing else seemed to work quite as well as this, especially since I knew how busy it was going to look with the fabric in it, I was really leaning towards a two color print. It was such an easy fix, and SO CHEAP! I ended up using all three rolls, but it was worth it. :)

Pretty gold and white Con-Tact paper. Awesome eBay score! Also, always use a credit card to help you smooth the paper along the way!

At first I really did think I was going to paint it black w/ the ebony stain, and the turquoise interior, but I really fell for all of those light hutches with the wallpaper backings… And while I didn’t want to paint it black, I also didn’t want to paint it white, so I ended up mixing the bit of paint I had left over from the office/nursery with the paint we used in our bedroom, and a little off white, which made this color. The gold accents (I used model paint!) seemed to come organically, perhaps inspired by the existing antique brass hardware, but I’m sure it was also influenced by the contact paper. I don’t know which idea fueled the other, really. :)

In case you are wondering if that is an upside down birdcage attached to a ceiling, you are right; that is an upside down birdcage-turned chandelier. Maybe one day I’ll do a quick post about it. :) Anyway, I went with some knobs that were totally on sale at Anthro (and match a pair of teacups I have), but I can’t find the name of them anywhere… I only used two, despite having turned the middle window into a door because; 1) I thought it was more balanced this way, 2) there were only 2 of these knobs left, and 3) I’m still holding out for the color swatch knobs (/shakes fist!!!). My only regret is not installing a push-open magnetic closure on that middle door so it would be easier to open. Put that on the to-do list! The  cabinet pulls I used were the new ripe melon pulls, which I love as they instantly remind me of the Edland furniture set I love from IKEA, and I’m sure something else that I can’t think  of right now which is what probably inspired IKEA’s designer to use them in the first place. Check out the flickr photostream I have if you’d like to see more photos.

A China Hutch’s Makeover Begins

A China Hutch’s Makeover Begins


We finally bought a hutch! We’ve been thinking about buying one for a long time, but we always seemed to have a reason not to, mainly money, but also that there were more important furniture needs going on around the house. But with the inheritance of my grandmother’s sewing supplies and some china, and Laelia hitting the age where she clears out any shelf she can reach we were in desperate need of a large storage piece. We finally couldn’t take it when we realized that it had been over a month since we took in my grandmother’s things and our dining room table still looked like this:With the hubs officially on board, I stalked craigslist for days (I even subscribed to some RSS feeds),  and probably contacted 20 different people, many who had “just sold”, and a few who didn’t reply. Our budget was $100, if it hit all our requirements and didn’t need a lot of work. This piece was 60$, and needs a TON of work, but it hits all my needs and it was still available day after day of me trying to figure just how to move the darn thing. We ended up paying a delivery guy more than 2x the amount of the actual purchase, and he delivered a day later than we expected, but oh well. We FINALLY have it. And now I get to play around with inspiration:At first I was thinking I would just paint it martha’s bull dog black w/ espresso stain over it (with the interior of the hutch painted the aqua color from the office/nursery) like the dining room table and all of the bedroom furniture, but I’ve been feeling much more ready to expand out of my all black furniture phase (I still think its a good idea when you just need a quick piece and a quick fix, because black furniture really can work in so many ways). So, I’ve been playing around with it in photoshop, but I still haven’t really settled on anything yet… we’ll see! Check out my pinterest board, hutch ideas!

1-Year Anniversary of Visual Vocabulary!

1-Year Anniversary of Visual Vocabulary!

Today marks 1 year since my first post. This was before Laelia was born, and I was documenting the different things I was making for her before her arrival. She didn’t even have a name yet! This blog had a totally different look;I had designed it in photoshop, but most of it never actually made it to the web. Part of the fun of being married to a programmer is that I can have pretty much whatever sort of website I want, but really that’s only in theory (or in “hypothesis”–the way people misunderstand the word “theory” really bothers me!). Tyler is busy building bigger and better things, and it’s hard to ask someone who does something for a living to come home and do it all night too. Besides, we usually end up arguing about design functionality vs. design aesthetics. (It’s not hard to guess who’s at which end of the argument). I usually end up recognizing that Tyler knows way more about web stuff than I do, and coming from a fine arts/product/apparel design background, I should defer to his judgment when it comes to the web. But then, I always find what he makes lacking in decoration, albeit, he does superb minimalist design. And while I don’t like clutter, I’m no minimalist. So I never really got into blogging regularly because (shock!) I wasn’t that into the way it was looking. I tried a few wordpress themes over time, but I never found anything I really liked until January.

A few things happened by the end of January that made me think about blogging on a regular basis; 1) In October, Tyler and I decided that if I didn’t start making progress with working at home by June 2011, I would start to look for a job. We both don’t want to put Laelia in daycare, and both of us believe that there is no reason for me to work out of the house with the sort of work that I can do. So this helps us to double our efforts; Tyler in being more supportive of taking over childcare when he gets home from work, giving me the time to really put my all into — whatever it is that I am doing. The thing was, that in October the holidays were right around the corner, so I couldn’t get my own stuff going strong until January. 2) Tyler bought me the Domino book for Christmas. Doesn’t sound like that big of a deal, but it was the catalyst that got me wanting to redo everything, and looking at people’s blogs and remembering “I can do this, I should do this“. 3) I stopped thinking about having Tyler build me a site, and finally found a simple WP theme and dove into figuring out how to customize it on my own (although, Tyler is good for small adjustments here and there, and now this theme hardly resembles what it used to). It’s weird, but sometimes the smallest things hold you back; having the blog look in a way I found “acceptable” allowed me to get really into it. Kinda like how when I bought my first car, I started going to the gym on a regular basis and lost 30lbs in 4 mos!

SO! That is why I didn’t start blogging regularly until January. And now I haven’t blogged in a week, and I really don’t want to get out of the habit of blogging. In my defense, since I have put my parts of my portfolio online, I have gotten a lot of inquiries about freelancing, and I have thus been busy with a few deadlines a week, contracts, and proposals, filling orders, and with Tyler working 13 hour days, and a teething baby, I’ve been lucky to get 4 hours of work in a day (which has been taken out of my sleep). Good news is my efforts have been paying off! Bad news is, we are still trying to juggle it all as a family. We’ll get there.

I have a lot of plans for this little bloggie, in both what I want it to look like, and some projects I want to share with you. Next week, I’ll be back to blogging as regularly scheduled, and I think this next year will be WAY bigger than last. :)

Welcome

Welcome to Visual Vocabularie! My name is Jesyka, and I am a designer, artist, mom to Laelia and Luca, wife to software engineer and UX designer Tyler, coffee lover, and all around enthused person. This is my blog; here I share my personal projects, whether it's a furniture makeover, a new painting, a birthday party, an invitation I designed, or a favorite outfit for my little. You’ll also catch a glimpse into our family life in Los Angeles.

Popular Tutorials

  • Pinwheel Tutorial

  • Tissue Tassel Garland

  • Triple Pinch Pleat Curtains

  • Ikea Mini Kitchen Makeover

 

Link with Love

You are free to pin to pinterest, or post my photos on your blog, but please give proper credit to my full name Jesyka D’Itri Marés (I know, I know, it's not the easiest name!), and you link back either the home page of this website, or the permalink of the original post (although, I'm sure your followers will thank you for the permalink!). I would LOVE to know if you enjoy my work enough to share it, so please don’t be shy and drop me an email!