The Best Thing I Ate: République

On Sunday, I finally got a chance to try République after weeks of seeing everyone's gorgeous photos on Instagram. And I can honestly say, the food tastes just as amazing as it looks.

Behold the Croque Madame, which is a Croque Monsieur with an egg on top. To some, a Croque Monsieur is just a glorified grilled ham & cheese sandwich. But I would argue that when it's done right, it's so much more. Being a lover of sandwiches, I'll order a Croque Monsieur or Croque Madame every chance I get. Luckily, in LA I've been able to get one at a handful of places.

Croque Madame

At République, the Croque Madame is served open-faced. The bread, perfect with crunchy crust and soft, chewy insides. The ham was something from another world. It was thinly sliced with an almost shredded appearance. It was tender and had the right balance of flavor. I never thought I could ever describe ham as being "melt-in-your-mouth". Prior to this experience, I associated ham with being tough and briny. Now I just want to hunt down that ham and make all sorts of sandwiches with it!

I love black sesame things and I think there's never enough goodies being made with black sesame. Like black sesame ice cream—YUM! But not a lot of places make/serve it. So when I saw a black sesame croissant, I HAD to have it! I couldn't even wait until after I took the photo to take a bite out of it.

Black Sesame Croissant

République had plenty more delicious pastries where that came from, but silly me; I was too in awe to bother to take a photo of their pastry case. And that's what second trips are for! I was hanging out with Keiko of Small Adventure, and she let me have a bite of her canelé and it was perfection. I have a feeling I'll be making another trip there soon, and this time I'll take a tip from Keiko and take home a whole box of pastries for myself!

Skipping Along

I released a new print this week & it's now in the shop!

This skipping CD player is for the upcoming 90s Nostalgia show hosted by A Little Known Shop. I will have a table at the event along with some great local artists. I hope to see you there!

In other news, I think I'm going to be shifting the focus of this blog to be more about my personal life and everyday things. For all art/work related things, please check out my Tumblr.

More Mini Paintings!

I've been adding some original mini paintings to the shop. The best thing about them is since they're small, they're also really affordable at $20 each. Here are the two in the shop right now. More are being added every week. Check them out in the shop!

Let's Be Teenagers Again

Today, while channel-surfing, I desperately landed on mtvU—a channel aimed towards college students. There were just playing a two hour block of music. Most of the time they'll play things I actually like. I left it on for a while…until this video came up.



I remember listening to American Football when I was in high school; in the early 2000s. This single was released in 1999. Their record company, Polyvinyl just released a deluxe edition of this album a couple of months ago. I don't know if it was their way of celebrating the 15th anniversary or not, but it sure made me feel old. It made me wonder, "Do college students actually listen to this stuff?"

FYI

Sometimes I wonder how many of you actually read this blog. I've been pondering and there's a possibility that I might stop blogging here. I haven't really decided yet but I've been spending more time on tumblr again. It just makes things easier sometimes. I might just leave this blog here and update it occasionally, but most new posts are over on tumblr.

New Burger Stuff!

Added some new stuff to the shop today! Meet Burger Dude, he's available as a 5x5 print or as a sticker!

Bunny Boy

I've been working on some new stuff for the upcoming Artist Walk at The Community in Anaheim. It's this Saturday, July 19th 6–9pm. Come by and say Hi! I'll have some prints & cards for sale and I'll also be doing some live drawing/painting.

One of the newer prints, that will be available on Saturday, is this Bunny Boy. For those of you not in the area, he's already up in the shop!

Upcoming Studio Sale!

Hey Peeps,

I’m not going to be at any of the Renegade Craft Summer shows this year. I decided to sit it out to save my energy for the Holiday shows. In the meantime, I’m going to have a quick little Studio Sale in the next week or so. I’m going to have some small, affordable originals for sale.

I was flirting with the idea of doing a flash sale on Instagram, but I like running it through a shop so people can shop at their convenience and also not have to wait on PayPal invoices. Now I’m just trying to decide if I want to have it on the main shop on bigcartel or if it’s going to run separately on storenvy. Chime in if you have a preference.

Revisiting Old Drawings & Working on New Stuff

A few months ago, I got really into drawing food with colored pencils. It's a really fun process for me and I've always been much stronger with dry media than wet (i.e. paint). Lately, I've been working on sorta figuring out my drawing style. It had been a really long time since I just drew what I like. So naturally, when I started drawing again, a lot of my stuff looked a little bit like the artists I admire. And I was obsessing too much about how I was drawing and what I was drawing. Being in the graphic design world for a little too long, I had forgotten what it's like to work loosely. 

Once I got back into the groove of things, I realized that the food I had drawn a few months earlier don't really fit the style of my work. They mostly looked like studies that you were draw for a drawing class. So I revisited them and found that all they really needed were faces. 

This week I had a breakthrough in how I draw people. For a while, I was obsessing over the texture of hair. Don't get me wrong, when I really focus I'm pretty darn good at drawing hair! But what I found was in my attempt to give hair shape, I was making it look really flat. So I thought, "If it's going to look flat anyways, I might as well make it a whole shape!" That then opened up my mind to the possibility of infinite shapes for hair. Everything from something natural to something that looks like it's from another dimension (or a dream!)

Something else I ended up liking from just playing around: working with just two colors. What I like about working this way is it's a constraint that makes me have to figure out how to make something work. So after a drew a few heads, I challenged myself to figure out how to make this work with a body.

As you can see, I'm slowing working my way up to doing full figure drawings and eventually whole scenes. This is also my way of prepping myself for the Art Walk I'm participating in next month at The Community in Anaheim. I'll be doing live drawing during the event.

Thanks for following along! I'll be posting more works in progress soon!

Changes

I've been talking about this for quite some time now, and at the end of this year it's going happen. On January 1st, 2015 I'm going to shut down my Etsy shop. That doesn't mean I'm going to stop knitting just yet. It just means the shop is moving off Etsy. I'm tired of a lot of the changes Etsy's been making to the site and also (as I mentioned before) their fees. Last December, my Etsy bill was nearly $300 for the month. And most months, my bill ranges from $20-60 depending on how much I sell. That's a pretty hefty chunk of money that could've been used to grow my business or pay bills. I only pay Big Cartel a flat rate of $9.95/month regardless of how much I sell. Since being featured by Frankie, I've been getting a decent number of orders through Big Cartel. That gave me the confidence I needed to grow my business without Etsy. Starting bookmarking it now, because soon the knits will only be available HERE.

Knitting isn't the only thing I'm doing for a living; I've been trying to focus on my illustration career. When I'm not knitting, I'm drawing. It's a much scarier path than graphic design, but it's so much more satisfying to me. I love the challenge & excitement of the unknown. I'm currently trying to work on new pieces and prints to get ready for Renegade Craft's Winter Shows. The application period starts in September and it's only open for a week this year. So I really got to get it together! In the meantime, you can see what's currently available HERE.

Kevin and I decided to skip the Summer shows this year because it's too much work & stress on me for very little profit. Every year, he has to go to Comic Con for work so it leaves me working alone on the Summer shows. It's just too much work on one person. So we've been changing up the shows we do as well as researching some smaller ones to try. I'll be participating in the July Art Walk at The Community in Anaheim. (more about that later). In a couple months, I'll announce the Holiday show schedule so you know where you can find me at a show near you! Til next time!