My Sugar is So Refined

Miami will never never see a shortage of Cuban coffee--it will never happen.

I'm sure it depends on the neighborhood, but we happen to live in a largely Hispanic area, so we get our fill of the good stuff by way of those little, outdoor counters, where they shovel out the sugar, cigars and espresso.

The other day we took the boys to El Rinconcito Latino (on Coral Way and 67th Avenue) for some Cuban take-out. The food is pretty good for the price and quantity, and the service and experience are both great.

While we waited on our order, the boys sat at these neat mosaic and concrete tables, and when that got boring (after 1 minute), they served themselves some water from the requisite cooler--which are a standard, apparently, in this kind of operation.

The Bigger They Are

We're happy to announce that we've added two, bigger print sizes for all prints in our shop. In addition to 4" x 6", 5" x 7", 8" x 10" and 11" x 14", we now offer:

12" x 16"

and

13" x 19"

We've been getting some requests for larger prints and so we are quite excited about it.

Please feel free to contact us if you have any questions.

New Prints!

This week we've come up with a few new prints. Hope you like them:

To Sir With Love...

We've recently added another 5" x 7" (12.5 cm x 17.8 cm) size option for the prints in our shop.

Happily, we've already received some orders for some of our designs in the new size and we just added a new one titled, "I Heart Love".

She's Like a Rainbow

We've recently added some color options for some of our prints.

Feel free to contact us and we'll be more than happy to create a custom print for you in the size and color of your choice.

Hope you like them:

"Good Friends, Good Food, Good Life"

"Hello, I Love You"

Instant Karma!

How nice.

Jimmy got to work from home yesterday. He had to stay hidden away from Jude, otherwise baby would demand a round or two of Elmo's World on the computer.

Still, it was good to have Big Daddy so close to us. His new job is certainly awesome and very rewarding.

I've been busy trying to come up with some new designs--although I suppose I've been slacking a bit, mainly trying to adjust to my guy's new schedule.

I did finish the second illustration in the "Birds of a Feather" series (which is available in our store). This time around featuring a New World Quail--ta da--with a wee youngin' at her side.

I'm always thinking of my little ones and try to incorporate them into my work, even if it's in some abstract manner.

So what's next? I need a little inspiration...where will I find it?

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.