Urban Expressions feature

 Hello there! I'm a little behind announcing this, but Montreal's Urban Expressions publication featured an interview with me last week! And yes, that is a new photo! I thought the old one - with me in the scarf and the fall background - was getting a little overused. You can read the interview here. Thanks so much to Jenn Nachshen for the opportunity to be interviewed!

Cabane à Sucre

Mitya and I spent Saturday at a cabane à sucre in the Eastern Townships. It's the start of the sugaring season, so they're tapping the maple trees for sap and then boiling it into maple syrup and other maple products. The tradition is to look at the sap collecting in tin buckets, go for a horse and/or tractor ride, and sit down to a huge Quebecois meal (beans, tourtieres, eggs and ham, pea soup, meatballs, sausages) where everything is slathered in maple syrup. Fortunately, our cabane was considerate and left the maple syrup on the side!

You can read more about our experience on Colors of Montreal and see pictures here.

Winter 2012 line now available

I just released my winter 2012 line. I've been working on most of these cards for the last week. It's been painstaking, agonizing work, peppered with many moments of indecision (which is probably obvious from the multiple themes!). You can see the entire collection here (along with more of my mom's new cards), but I've included some of our new creations below for your viewing pleasure:

When it rains, it pours

Product development is now over! Here are the other cards I came up with during this productive (no pun intended) period:



I love you more than poutine. Poutine is a Quebecois dish that consists of french fries, cheese curds, and gravy. I'm not a huge fan of it, so saying that I love someone more than poutine is a pretty low threshold. But this is probably not true for others, especially in Quebec.



хлеб соль (pronounced 'hleb sol' - literally, bread salt) is part of a Russian wedding tradition. A special bread is made for the occasion, and a small dish of salt sits on top. The newlyweds dip the bread in salt and feed each other - much like the wedding cake tradition in the US.



This new birthday card is based on the Wonder Wheel at Coney Island.

New father's day card: showing his child how to fly a kite.

Another father's day card: flipping pancakes!

North Carolina's state motto is "first in flight" (airplane flight), and this card plays with the meaning of 'first in flight' with the pterodactyl.