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 To all my fellow spring time lovers -- happy MAY DAY!!!!!!!!

I've been collecting May Day imagery and am excited to share some with you here today. Also in keeping with the spring time celebratory mood I am going to list my favorite floral 11:11 prints available as passport holders, cardholders  and notebooks etc! I also got curious to learn more about the history of May Day and May pole dancing and so of course i turn to my fav, wikipedia.. 

"The earliest May Day celebrations appeared in pre-Christian times, with the festival of Flora, the Roman goddess of flowers, and the Walpurgis Night celebrations of the Germanic countries. It is also associated with the Gaelic Beltane. Many pagan celebrations were abandoned or Christianized during the process of conversion in Europe. A more secular version of May Day continues to be observed in Europe and America. In this form, May Day may be best known for its tradition of dancing the maypole dance and crowning of the Queen of the May."

Ohhh the Queen of May... how totally romantic right?!

Guinevere as the May Queen... anddd she nails it..

So get this , May Pole dancing is so ancient that no one agrees on what its all about. Some say its a symbolic representation of our world continually turning and weaving as the seasons and years go by.. and every spring time the people are so overjoyed that the flowers and trees are coming to life again that they do a dance to symbolize the turning axis of the earth and its eternal spin through space and time! Sounds pretty righteous to me!

And for some charming May Pole Dancing illustrations..

So now here are some celebratory florals for ya.. would make great Mothers Day gifts! Just sayin...

The NEW Rose Plants Passport Holder! 

Also available as a Cardholder , Checkbook Cover, Small and Medium Moleskine Notebook!

The Darling Rose Cardholder! 

This is an old fav, so sweet and charming. A perfect gift for mom if you put a Spa gift card inside it!

The American Wildflowers Checkbook Cover !

Super sweet for any flower and spring time lover..

The Cactus Flower Passport Holder !

For a more southwest spring time flair...

And finally.. a May Day Parade! The sweetest thing I've ever seen!  

"The May Queen rules amid the blossoming hills and dales of the West. She holds high court before a joyous people in a shining fragrant realm. It is the eager bud-time of the year and all the world belongs to youth.."

Love to you.. Happy May and thanks for reading (and shopping)!

xo

Today I want to tell you about this absolutely best selling item we call the Orange Bird Map Passport Holder. I feel so fortunate that I was able to take this little passion I have for vintage graphic design and turn it into a business. This passport holder is an example of a design that I created from a vintage book rather than something that I created from scratch. 

I used to have a very old book on birds and it was the coolest because it had maps beside a line drawing of each bird showing the natural habitat of each bird. This design is a digital collage that I created in photoshop that features a Frigate bird silhouette. The map behind it shows all the locations in the world that the Frigate bird lives! I changed all the colors around to make it my own, as well as moving the bird to be on top of it's map rather than beside it. I just did a little research on the Frigate bird and found out some interesting things. For example, this bird can stay in the air flying for up to a week at a time! They also have the largest wingspan to weight ratio of any bird and can not swim or even walk very well. They were made to fly and that they do and do well! Very cool.

Frigate birds are also known some times as Pirate birds because they some times steal food right from another birds mouth! what!? Thats crazy right. This is a quote from Wikipedia: 

Frigatebirds will rob other seabirds such as boobies, tropicbirds, and shearwaters of their catch, using their speed and manoeuvrability to outrun and harass their victims until they regurgitate their stomach contents. Although frigatebirds are renowned for their kleptoparasitic feeding behaviour, kleptoparasitism is not thought to play a significant part of the diet of any species, and is instead a supplement to food obtained by hunting. A study of Great Frigatebirds stealing from Masked Boobies estimated that the frigatebirds could at most obtain 40% of the food they needed, and on average obtained only 5%.

That's some bird drama right?! And the names are fabulous too right! Masked Boobies. Ha.

So thats the story of my Orange Bird Map passport holder! Also available as a Cardholder and Small Moleskine Notebooks !

Thanks for reading,

 Ganesh is a hindu God and is known as the "Remover of Obstacles". You know how you just feel connected to certain streams of energy? Ganesha is an energy field of great power and for me he's all about MAKING IT HAPPEN ! I've had to muster up a lot of courage and resilience to create and maintain a small creative business for 10 years. Ganesh (and a whole 11:11 team of angels!)  always comes through.  I created this collage with a lot of devotion at a time when I really needed some obstacles removed. It has since become a best selling passport holder design ! We also have this Ganesha collage available as a cardholder and small moleskine notebook. 

The elements of this piece are significant to my story. The sunshine illuminating Ganesha's crown is from a picture I took after a very challenging weekend in Austin at a craft show. It was one of those times Ganesh was definitely rooting for me. The nature in the background on the lower right side and the back is a picture I took while on a hike with my parents in the High Sierras in California. I'm not a hiker. We were were wearing 50 lb packs and hiking up and down mountains with no trail for 5 days. It was CRAZY. It was beyond beautiful and it was the sheer perfection of the pristine nature that gave me the energy to keep going. That and I had no choice haha. Ganesh was there too! 

I went to wikipedia though to see what everyone else has to say about him. I mean, I know my experience but whats the official story?  This is some of what i found. Interesting stuff! 

"Ganesha is widely revered as the Remover of Obstacles and more generally as Lord of Beginnings and Lord of Obstacles,patron of arts and sciences, and the deva of intellect and wisdom. He is honoured at the beginning of rituals and ceremonies and invoked as Patron of Letters during writing sessions. 

Ganesha is worshipped on many religious and secular occasions; especially at the beginning of ventures such as buying a vehicle or starting a business. K.N. Somayaji says, "there can hardly be a Hindu home in India which does not house an idol of Ganapati. Ganapati, being the most popular deity in India, is worshipped by almost all castes and in all parts of the country". Devotees believe that if Ganesha is propitiated, he grants success, prosperity and protection against adversity."

Pretty good stuff right!?! I also read about how he also places obstacles in peoples paths as well as removes them... very interesting right! The karma wheel and all the lessons we are here to learn... It makes sense that even our obstacles are divinely placed. They force us to grow after all! I know I have..

Anyways, as always, thanks for reading !

This Bingo Passpost Holder  is one of the first 11:11patterns and still a best selling design! Bingo is a classic game so it's no wonder.. There is so much to love.. and the graphic design of the cards are just perfect. So clearly this is one design I can't exactly take credit for-- but there is a fun back story that I'd like to share with you. 

I went to college in Savannah, Georgia ( SCAD! HOLLA!!) and spring break senior year a bunch of girl friends and I went on a little road trip to visit legendary folk artist Howard Finster's Paradise Garden. That place was one of the coolest most inspiring wonderlands of creativity I ever saw. Howard was a Baptist preacher from Alabama that became extremely inspired by the Lord and had a very original and prolific way of expressing his devotion. He painted over 10,000 pieces in his life time and created a 4 acre sculture garden all expressing his love for his creator and the bible. Totally nutty and TOTALLY awesome. I highly recommend doing a google image search with his name. 

So on the way home from this adventure we stopped in Altanta and played bingo in this totally old school bingo hall. This wasn't a bar that just had bingo, or even a church that did bingo night. This was a BINGO HALL!!! As in , the whole building and every one in it are there for one thing and one thing only!!! BINGO!!! It was straight up rollers in the air , grannys in polka dots,with like 15 bingo cards laid out in front of them. They had holsters for their dabbers. It was so serious. and so awesome. We went and got our cards and our dabbers and got to it. Even though none of us won that night I still feel like it was one of the most profitable nights of my life! After the games ended for the night I went around and picked up everyone's used bingo cards. I left with a huge stack of them. I knew I was going to use them with some kind of collage project but I had no idea that I'd have the success from them that I did! This design above comes from a scan of a bingo card I got that night! GOOD TIMES!! Thanks ladies!

And thanks for reading my bingo  story.. so many of these designs have a really personal tale behind them and it makes me so happy to share it with you... 11:11 is a labor of love and I could not do it without customers and readers like you!

xo

i did not take this pic.. random ladies from the internets.. but its a pretty good approximation..

ok I had to post some Howard Finster pics here! This guy was so great..

his art is RAD!

I want to fearlessly paint my walls like him some day..

our best selling Travel Stamps Passport Holder - the backstory!

My husband and I went on a Carnival cruise to Mexico a few years ago with his folks. It was a 3 day booze cruise out of Long Beach to Ensenada. It was like a floating mid level Vegas casino and I loved every minute of it. It was such a total escape from my life at a time when I really needed it. Some times cheese is just what the doctor ordered. And fresh ocean air!!!!! 

.. Anyhow when we were walking around Ensenada we came upon a dusty old shop filled with case containing thousands of old stamps all grouped by theme. This was like an oasis of inspiration in a town filled with viagra pharmacies and typical tourist shops. It was like discovering a treasure chest of possibility... I knew these stamps would translate into amazing passport holder patterns especially. The hard part was choosing which stamps to buy. If I could go back there I would have gotten so many more. The shopkeeper told me they were all hand steamed off of old letters in Mexico City. They were grouped into subjects and sold in packs. There were SO MANY AMAZING ONES! Also I was surprised because they were actually kind of expensive, but when you consider the work it takes to steam each stamp off... I don't know anything about stamp collecting per se.. but I know good design when I see it and each of these stamps are truly miniature works of art with their own stories to tell. 

My father in law was totally skeptical when he saw me spending good money on old stamps.. but I told him I was going to make some best selling passport holder designs with them... and I am so happy that I was right! I actually made two other bestsellers from this stamp haul. This dog stamps passport holder here and this dog stamps passport holder here! You can literally not go wrong with any design featuring dogs. or cats. Just saying. I also took this snapshot off the bow of the ship and it turned it into this Sea Gull passport holder !!! I took that pic with a little touristy point and shoot camera. Lucky!!! Man! I need to go on more cruises! 

So, now you have an idea of how I come up with these designs.. They all have a story and I'm so happy to share my stories and designs with you. 

Thanks for reading :)