Pre-Order The Escape Manual for Introverts

I have something exciting to share! 🎉My third book, THE ESCAPE MANUAL FOR INTROVERTS, is coming August 6th from Andrews McMeel Publishing and you can pre-order it now!

A blend of humor and inspiration, THE ESCAPE MANUAL FOR INTROVERTS is a funny, sometimes absurd guide to escaping the painfully awkward situations of everyday life as an introvert. The book guides readers through a range of social scenarios that introverts dread, such as being trapped on an airplane with a chatterbox or hosting a dinner party with people who just won’t leave, and offers escapes and tips for each situation. From the silly to the sincere, these clever, hilarious escape plans and bizarre excuses speak to the introvert in all of us.

I'm really excited about this book because being an introvert is something that I think really defines me and has my whole life. I enjoyed so much getting to create a funny book about my interpretation of the introvert experience. 😃

Find all the links on where to order here.

New Etsy Products!

Springtime is here and that means wedding season is upon us! I've added some new congrats cards to my Etsy shop like these ones here:

In addition to wedding cards, here is a peek at some other new designs in the shop:

Sometimes I make pretty websites

Along with working on adding more products to my Etsy shop, I've also been busy lately with some freelance work. I recently finished working on a blog website for a makeup artist in New York City. You can see it here. This time, I played developer rather than designer.

I have been taking on more web design projects lately where I do both the design and development of the site, but normally my usual role would be to design the visual aspects of a site and work with a developer who would make it work by writing code and all. I typically just make things pretty, so this time it was a fun change to be the one to make the website come alive. It was made on WordPress (so is my blog), and I think I'm totally on my way to becoming a master of it (how long that journey may be is still in question).

One thing I particularly like about developing sites is the different type of creativity required. With web development, it feels like how math class used to feel for me in school. It's all like a formula that is sometimes agonizing to figure out, and I often feel as if I could punch my computer in the face if it had one during that part, but then it's seriously so exciting once I do figure out everything and know how to make things function. I realized that I have a bad habit of celebrating with some sort of chocolate confection or cookie-like treat when I figure out really tough things by myself. I do hope that urge to reward myself with sugar passes as I become more of a web master.

But anyways, after working on a web development project, it does feel nice to be working on making things pretty again. I'm working on adding new cards to the shop, and have some exciting custom projects coming soon that I will most definitely share with you. They are going to involve lots of pretty hand drawn things.

Spring Preview

Welcome to my newest home on the Internet! I've wanted to make a blog like this for a long time now, and then I FINALLY did it. And I am so excited you are here! I always love getting a peek into the personalities and daily lives of other artists that inspire me, so here I'll share mine with you. This is the main place where all of my thoughts, creativity, baking adventures, and daily life bits will be combined. I used to have just a food blog, but then I realized I wanted a place where I could combine just about everything. There will still be plenty of recipes for baked treats and sweets, but I'm also going to show more about my design work and creativity, as well as little bits and pieces of normal day-to-day things (expect LOTS of cat and food things). Anyways, welcome again and I hope you come back often! So on with the blogging! For the last few weeks I've been busy with freelance projects, and have been itching to get back to creating more products for my Etsy shop. Valentine's season felt very successful and motivating for being my first, and I've been looking forward to creating a Spring collection of cards and 8x10 prints next. So here's a little peek into what will be showing up in my shop soon!

With Spring so close, I feel myself longing for everything colorful and bright. See my new favorite nail polish color? I recently bought a purse of the same color. While I am in love with this minty blue-ish green right now, I remind myself to put it in more design work than wardrobe pieces now that my hands and bag coordinate.

I've also been in the mood to be more hands on with drawing on materials lately. My process usually involves drawing everything by hand, and then moving to the computer to refine and add color. But recently it's been satisfying to practice some hand lettering right on my Etsy packaging materials that I mail to my customers. Right now, most of the envelopes that I use are made of recycled cardboard, and using colored pencils to add color to the ink drawings looks really fun with that natural texture and color of the paper. For me, the feeling is similar to having coloring books when I was little. Actually, I don't see why those are limited to children. Everyone should be given coloring books regularly, right?