hello

Today is one of those days where in search of creative inspiration, I find myself having spent the past 3+ hours lost in my own virtual world of handmade art utopia. The Internet and I have become good buddies over the past three months with my TV-Free-Summer still going strong. It's not that I watched that much television before (The Office, 30 Rock, and the occasional Scrubs rerun), but having totally eliminated TV from my day has awakened parts of me that have been sluggishly dormant for far too long.

I've been on a big creative fix the past few weeks: filling pages of my sketchbook, browsing design books at the bookstore, scheming up what I'd do to the exterior of this house should we ever decide to buy it... The list goes on and on. And speaking of lists, I've already compiled 2 different lists of holiday gift ideas to make this year. For the past few years, there has been so much commotion that I hadn't really made an effort to find my inner artist. It feels good to have rediscovered this part of my life, to get a new start to old things.

My friend Chris recently recorded a CD and asked me to design the CD and case for him. I'd never done this type of thing before, and I really enjoyed collaborating with him on it. He wanted to incorporate an old-fashioned microphone into the CD and merch items as part of his brand extension. Below is the final product:

Front:

Back:


His CD release show is coming up August 14th in Knoxville. You can check out his music site at http://myspace.com/chrisperkins.

And not to selfishly hoard my Web surfing discoveries, here is one of my recent cool finds from local artist Jennifer Simpson at www.happyphotography.blogspot.com:







I'll post more later, so until then.......

Ashley.


"We don't see things as they are--we see things as we are." -Anais Nin