Here’s a little something special for you! A free desktop wallpaper featuring all six of our Smitten Kittens. You can download the file right HERE.

Make sure to check out our newest collection of designs: Smitten for Kittens!

Enjoy!

-Susie & Heidi

We are so excited to share with you our new collection for spring called Smitten for Kittens! Last fall, when we were working on new ideas for our line, Heidi came to me with a sketch of an adorable orange kitten with a heart shaped nose. At the time, she thought that it would be a one-off design that would adorn just a mug and that’s it. Well, I fell in love, and by the next afternoon I had made a half a dozen variations on her original kitten and this colorful group was born!

In January, we debuted these designs at the New York International Gift Fair to our wholesale buyers. Our booth featured a display of our kitten products right on the aisle to lure buyers in. Who can resist an adorable kitten, right?

We made a bunch of faux yarn balls to use in the display with the kittens. The yarn became the accent material to our entire booth display!

Heidi came up with the idea of making some cookie packs to give out to buyers to promote the Smitten for Kittens collection. Trader Joe’s market carries these yummy graham cracker cookies calls “Cats Cookies” and we bagged those up with our custom packaging. The only problem is that some people thought the cookies were FOR cats NOT people! It definitely made for some laughs!

Please be sure to check out the entire collection of kitten designs on our site. Which one is your favorite?

In celebration of the release of our Smitten for Kittens collection we designed a little freebie for you. Take a look HERE!

-Susie

Today is 3/14, which has come to be known as “Pi Day”. It’s kind of silly, but we think it’s just a great reason to have some pie!  Cupcakes get lots of crafty love on the blogosphere. You can find so many great cupcake toppers and wrappers to dress them up with. Pie, however, doesn’t need much adornment. We think these cute flags are the perfect thing to make your pie a bit more celebratory.

We created a free download with 6 pie flags for you!  Just print, cut out and glue to a toothpick.

Happy Pi Day!

- Heidi and Susie

Just a little note to send a little love your way! Hope you have something fun planned with friends, family and love ones! Here are a few links of things we’re loving right now!

This recipe for a melty chocolate peanut butter cake!

These fun date night ideas!

This amazing video on designer, Irving Harper’s paper sculptures. He’s been making these just for himself for more than 5 decades!

This confetti made from outdated Pantone swatches on the Plenty of Colour Blog!

Loving all the mint green we’re seeing. Like these Hasbeens clogs!

We’ve had a lot of fun pinning for Valentine’s day our love of everything hearts. Check out our All About Hearts board on pinterest.

XO

-Susie & Heidi

We whole-heartedly believe in giving multiple love notes, One card is just never enough!

With Valentine’s Day just a couple of days away, we thought that you might need a quick card at the last minute. Here is a free downloadable Valentine’s Day card that you can print at home. Why not leave one sitting out on your sweetie’s computer for them to find in the morning?

You can download the PDF file right HERE.

Happy Valentine’s Day!

-Susie & Heidi

Our design process often begins with looking at an actual 3-dimensional object.  We then translate it into an illustration done in our unique style.  This sometimes works out well when things like this happen:

Susie:    ”Hey, we should do a card design with ice cream cones on it?”

Heidi:    ”Ok! Let’s go get some ice cream cones to ’study’ them?”

The other day I was looking at our Halloween card collection and I had the reverse thought pattern.  I looked at our super cute Devil card and thought “He would make a great cake!”.  I’m not sure why this popped into my head except that maybe the details around his eyes reminded me of sugar sprinkles.

I’m an avid baker but in all my years of making cakes, I’ve never once attempted to use fondant.  I keep meaning to try it but somehow always opt for more traditional frostings. This devil cake seemed like the perfect opportunity to try my hand at it.

I printed out a large version of our artwork to use as reference and set about building the cake, creating the colors and shapes as I went along.  Working with fondant was so much fun! As I worked, I realized how similar it was to the way that we illustrate.  We tend to use simple, clean shapes and colors that we layer on top of each other to bring an illustration to life…just like with the fondant!

And here he is, brought to life, from card to cake….

I have to say, I’m pretty proud of it!  I brought the cake  with me to the studio this morning so everyone here could see it.  We all agreed that it looked so much like the actual card.  After we fawned over it for a while, there came the inevitable request:  ”Can we eat it now?”.  I came prepared with a knife. As awesome as it looks, cakes are meant to be eaten.  And inside?  Red Velvet of course!

Making this cake was a really fun experience and I can’t wait to play with fondant again.

Any suggestions of which Rock Scissor Paper design I should turn into a cake next?

- Heidi

If you are like us, you love the idea of decorating with carved pumpkins, but your cutting skills don’t match up to your creative vision! Here are a few ideas for crafting pumpkin decorations - no carving involved! Get digging in your craft supply stash and get inspired. Anything goes!

Washi Tape Pumpkin - Get out that tape stash and go crazy. It doesn’t matter that the colors of tape are Spring-like…..everything looks good with orange!

Candy Sprinkles Pumpkin - A little white glue and candy sprinkles from the pantry make a ghoulishly cute pumpkin. Don’t forget the Skittles for eyes!

Tissue Paper Pumpkin - Scraps of colored tissue paper and some Mod Podge make for an artistic and modern pumpkin!

Bonus: These pumpkins will last a lot longer than their carved counterparts, so you can enjoy them for several weeks, if not months!

Have fun!

-Susie & Heidi

October is National Roller Skating month…who knew? Growing up, we loved roller skating so much, we practically slept in them! We had a large square concrete area in our yard and we would plan & execute elaborate routines all summer long.

Last year, I created this birthday card to honor Heidi’s favorite birthday present as a kid (yellow pom-poms and all). So in honor of Roller Skating month, I created a couple of fun iphone wallpapers for all of you! You can download them for free for your own personal use in 3 sizes: for the new iphone 5 HERE, iphone 4 HERE and all other iphone models HERE.

Enjoy!

-Susie

A quick post to say hello to one of our favorite months. October is here!

On our minds right now:

• Pumpkin desserts! Pumpkin biscotti, pumpkin squares, pancakes and pie!
• Fall clothes! Been to Anthropologie lately? Their stores look amazing and their sweater collection is drool-worthy!
• Fall gardening! Hoping for the weather to cool down a bit so we can get back to the garden. Love these fall container gardens!

Enjoy!

-Susie & Heidi

We are going on a much needed vacation next week, just for a few days. By happenstance, I came across these vintage posters that are part of a series designed for the New York Times celebrating books. I truly could not be more charmed by these! But more important, the headlines of these posters, illustrate perfectly how I feel about books and their place in a vacation. I guess I’m old fashioned, but I do not need to bring an e-reader full of selections with me on my retreat. When we leave next week, I’ll be choosing a book from the “to-be-read” stack next to my bed. That book will be my vacation companion for a few days. I will savor my time spent reading it. There is no hurry. The weight of it in my tote bag a reminder of the relaxation to come. It’s paper pages experiencing the physical moments with me. The book may even endure some spills and splashes along the way, but that’s OK.

Poster illustrations TOP & BOTTOM by Rudi Bass.

Other posters by Bill Sokol. Here is another awesome poster in the series by Mr Sokol, as well.

via Stickers & Stuff blog

Hope you have some relaxing moments planned for yourself too!

-Susie