Easter Egg Experiment ~ Natural Dyes

The end result:  very natural looking!

Happy Easter! This year we decided to have a little bit of an experiment with using natural dyes right out of the frig and pantry. Having recently finished a handmade paper project dyed with food such as spinach and beets with my second graders, I was ready to move on to dying eggs. I came across an article on natural dyes for Easter Eggs here that intrigued me with the use of coffee grinds and red cabbage. So, my stepson (and partner in crime in all creative endeavors) and I chose coffee grounds, red cabbage, turmeric, & beets seen below:

Boiling for 15 minutes first to release the color; then add eggs for minimum 30 minutes or until desired color is achieved.

Boiling beets

 

 

Rubberband wrapped eggs

The biggest surprise was that the red cabbage actually turned the eggs a deep teal blue! What was also unexpected was that the beets only turned the eggs a pale peach with small spots of pink. I ended up leaving the eggs in the water all night because after 45 minutes of boiling, they still were very pale in color (although the red cabbage eggs were a lovely shade of a bright robin eggs blue at that time). In the morning, the coffee grounds did turn the shell a strong brown although the color seemed to flake off more easily than the other colors. All of the eggs seemed to have a crystallized finish to them.

Next year; silk-dyed tie eggs!

Sunday Love

Menswear Dog!

Sunday Love

Love Bites

Happy Easter

My good friend, Glo, made these beautiful Easter eggs for her family. I wish she lived here in Colorado instead of Atlanta so we could make things together. She's a talented graphic artist, seamstress, an incredible cook, and has been inspiration to me since I met her twenty-five years ago. Aren't the eggs gorgeous?

Clean Rusticity

This home was designed by the talented Russel Groves. Although filled with wood beams and stone, the simple furniture and the clean lines of the light fixtures make this home very livable without an overwhelming feel of "mountain" ~ very nice.

Colorful Obliteration

Brainchild of Yayoi Kusama for the Queensland Gallery of Modern Art, Obliteration Room is an colorful interactive children's project consisting of the spontaneous transformation of a completely white room with simple, colored stickers. The youngest patrons were given thousands of colored dot stickers to apply at will. The result is an amazing explosion of color!

The starting palette of pure white.

It begins . . . 

In progress.

Final result.

Even the piano was covered.
All photos via The Urban Peek.

Restaurant for Kids . . . and their Parents

Praq of the Netherlands envisioned a family friendly restaurant that was not only friendly to the children but to the parents as well. Praq was so successful that what started out as one restaurant grew to a chain in five years. I took a look at their menu and I think they were family friendly on the food front as well!

All images via S1ARCH.com

Branding, Logos & Identity Packages

Recently I've been organizing some of my recent work on Pinterest. Here are some of the logos and identity packages I've created for clients. Below are business card fronts and backs.


To update your identity, contact me!

Weekend Funnies

Chartruese!

Not quite green, not quite yellow but I love the splash of color.

All via Honestly . . . wtf