If You Find Yourself Caught in Love

Jimmy just started a new job as an Interactive Developer--which is great, but it's been a little tough getting used to his new schedule.

So, here I am listening to Belle and Sebastian and typing away when what I should be doing is working on some new prints.

Fickle thing, that creative process is. It so often needs to be coaxed out of its shell (sigh).

I'm working on a new series of prints, titled "Of a Feather", dedicated to the lovely birds native to my favorite neighborhood swamp, the Everglades.

The first print from the series features the northern cardinal, and the second one--which I hope to have out in the next day or so, features the new world quail--because really, they're cute and I'm just a girl, after all!

Okay, I suppose that's enough for now, it's back to work for me--at least while the 21 month old boss sleeps!

Best wishes, to all!

Prints and Prints

We've come up with a few new prints since our last blog post:

Follow Me	I'm Sew Very Happy
We're Sew Very Lucky	Good Company
Owl Patterns	Our Place

For more info about these prints, feel free to visit our Etsy store here.

Limited Edition

Wow, we can't believe our limited edition print, "Bamboo" is almost sold out!

It's a very limited run of only 20, and we just sold our 19th today!

Looks like we'll have get to work on some new prints...

Sundays and Tulips

Hi guys! I wanted to show you all our newest print, "You're Lovely".

We've had a lot going on this weekend, including an interview we're working on with Sarah from Apothecary Fox--it's an amazing blog, so we're really excited about it! We'll keep you posted.

Hope everyone is having a fantastic weekend!

Owl Patterns

I added this new 8x10 print, "Owl Patterns", to our store yesterday.

I have all of these really fantastic, vintage dress patterns that I have been using in art projects for several years now

(I'll have to get some pictures of my old projects up).

At any rate, I had scanned a few sheets to play around with and came up with these delightful, little birdies.

Hope you like it!

You're So Easy to Love

Happy Friday to you all!

I just wanted to show you guys our latest print, "You're So Easy to Love".

It was inspired by my three favorite guys!

Hope you like it!

Have a great weekend! xoxo

Cut and Paint

We're so happy! Jimmy and I finished our first painting today for Love Sugar, which is for sale in our shop here.

It was so much fun to create it together.

I've included a few pictures to illustrate the process of stencil painting--which is kind of a tricky and lengthy endeavor, but luckily Jimmy has had years of practice.

The first step is to choose or create your image. I chose a design I had previously made in Photoshop, and then I converted the image to b&w using the hue/saturation panel and printed it out on a sheet of transparency film. My design was pretty straight forward, so I didn't have to worry about too may technical details when creating my stencil.

The next part is the least fun, really, and that is to cut your stencil out. We find that using a glass mat makes for the best surface against a very sharp X-acto knife.

After everything was carefully cut out, Jimmy helped me pick a color palette. I was originally thinking of going with a range of browns, but he felt that a light blue, off white and red would be the way to go. I'm really happy with the way this combination turned out.

Jimmy then masks everything off and the painting process begins.

Check out this very short video tutorial on stencil painting:

How To: Stencil Graffiti Art 101 - Watch more top selected videos about: Art, Stencil, Graffiti, Paint, Cut, Adobe_Photoshop, Klaus_Nielsen

Love Sugar Newsletter

I just wanted to let everyone know that we will be launching our newsletter soon. How exciting!

We're giving our subscribers special offers like discounts, freebies and more on prints and such--we'll definitely come up with something special to show our customers just how much we appreciate them!

Click here if you'd like to sign up.

New Projects

I'm really excited because Jimmy and I are planning some very cool collaborations starting this weekend.

We plan on making some stencil paintings on wooden art boards and canvases, so, we'll hopefully have at least a couple of new paintings in our LoveSugar shop by this weekend.

Jimmy has produced some amazing stencil work through the years, so I am so incredibly happy to get to work with him on some new projects together!

This is a picture from our back porch where he has set up his outdoor studio. We're going to pass by Utrecht and see what their Montana paint selection looks like.

Good times, indeed.

Le Rêve et L'amour

We're off to Hollywood today to go and pack up a few things from our storage facility up there.

It's good to be back in Miami and I'm happy that life has brought my dear family back down to our home-town.

Miami isn't exactly a cozy, little city, but it's always been home to us.

Although we spent over 4 years up there, it seems as though we never left--like it was all a dream sometimes. It's funny, really.

Our latest print is all about dreams and love. It's called, "Le Rêve et L'amour".

It was inspired by a quote from Anna de Noailles:

"Il n'est rien de réel que le rêve et l'amour."

Translated it reads: "Nothing is real but dreams and love."

On the Town - Lunch Date

This afternoon, Jimmy and I left the boys with his folks and we went out to have ourselves a relaxing lunch date. Oooh la la!

We both agreed that sushi would be a satisfying choice and headed over to Sushi-Ko over on Bird Road. The food is mostly average, and perfectly reliable. They don't have the most outstanding sushi or fare, in general, but the friendly staff and laid-back atmosphere make it comfortable. I should note that I am also a sucker for a bento-box lunch, and at $8.95, you really can't go wrong.

Jimmy ordered the sushi lunch--he said the fish was fresh and tasty, and I ordered the bento with chicken terriyaki and yasai itame. Yum.

Let's Get Lost

Any Chet Baker fans out there?

I have absolutely adored his rendition of "Let's Get Lost" for a number of years now. The lyrics are fun and playful and yet somehow manage to capture that frenzy of infatuation rather well.

"Let's Get Lost", 8 x 10 archival quality print
Available in our Etsy store.

Café

Perhaps I drink a little too much coffee. It's really my only vice (well, that and the iPhone).

One of the many things I love about living in Miami is the infinite offering of Cuban coffee walk-up counters. I wonder if there is an official name for this caffeinated service, but you get the idea.

No need to walk into the restaurant or bakery, instead you can simply linger, informally outside, while you sip your colada or café con leche (my personal favorite, the colada is too hard-core for me).

I took this picture at the La Carreta counter on Bird and 87th Avenue. This particular location is one of the most thriving counters I have ever seen--you'll always see a mob of cops and bikers and everyone in between (like me).

All About Packaging

We thought it would be a good idea to show everyone how we do our packaging, here at Love Sugar Design:

1.) Each of our prints are wrapped in a protective polypropylene bag.	2.) Prints are then secured between two sheets of durable, cardboard padding.
3.) The print is then packed in a stay-flat mailer and sent to you, our dear customers.

Become a Fan

Finally! I just created a page for us on Facebook. I've been meaning to do so for a while now. It seems that these are the things you need to do to get traffic and get your work noticed. That's all fine with me, because it's just another creative outlet and it beats working in an office for 9 hours a day (sorry, Jimmy).

www.facebook.com/LoveSuarDesignStudio looooong address...