Essais

The Weekly Blogged Edition #4

2010-02-26T22:08:01Z

{Above:Pothole gardens as seen on Oh Joy!}

I know. Shut up. It's been like two weeks since a Weekly Blogged. I'm sorry. There's been TOO MUCH eye candy between fashion week and my regular reading and the Olympics and just... GUH. So here. Here's what overwhelmed me in the weeks gone by. Maybe next week I can get back to a more regularly scheduled posting schedule. Also, starting Illustration Friday. (JUST. SO. BUSY!)

Floralia and anthropology

It must be Spring, because flowers were all over the blogs this past week. Which is weird considering the week before was the Fall 2010 fashion week.

Cabinets of Curiosity on TeenAngster.

Gene Bauer's Botanical Serigraphs on CRAFT. Absolutely to die for.

DIY Test Tube Vase on Design*Sponge. Totally cute and super easy to do.

We Like It Wild: Daffodil Hill was one of like, five posts on daffodils I saw this week. I think Spring Fever has hit. Also on D*S.

Bright Bazaar teaches you about accessorize with flowers.

Non-floral fun and necessary reading

I didn't actually set out to write a post about all the floral blog happenings; it just happened! BUT! As I said before this is a major catch-all of the last two weeks. Here's some non-floral fun to get you through the weekend, if you're not into that.

IndieFixx is hosting a Logo Design Competition. How fun!

Decor8 gives us a nice round-up of photography product styling tips & tricks.

The Handmade Marketplace book launched, as seen on D*S and the Black Apple official insider blog.

gorgeous papercuts abound on Twig & Thistle. Oh, and you'll like these if you liked that: Paperleaf eyelashes on DesignCrush. WANT.

Fabulous art from Amber Albrecht spotted on Drawn!.

Cassia posted a gorgeous butterfly collection of photos. If you weren't convinced that bloggers are telling us Spring is coming, go here now.

And I have no more time to go through my shared items today. If you'd rather keep up with my readings over there, just add it to your feed reader. Enjoy!

Making it up

2010-02-24T21:18:51Z

I know it's been quiet on the blogging front this week; I've been head down into a lot of detailed design work at the day job and then — despite that I loathe NBC's Vancouverage — spending a lot of my evening watching the 2010 Olympic Games and trying to catch up on orders, slowly but surely. It's certainly not for a lack of things to post about, the least of which being new lotions in the Etsy shop. But...ah...where does one find time?

The nice thing about my day job right now is that it forces me to do a lot of the work I longed to do at other day jobs but couldn't; either for branding guidelines or general SLA political nonsense. I've never proclaimed to be an artist, by the way; sure, I can kind of draw manga and I can hack together artwork when needed (like the above), but I've always had kind of a chip on my shoulder about what is "art" and what is "design" and that I am squarely, surely, definitively, a designer. I don't know where this mentality came from.

Maybe it came from having so many friends in high school and college who actually paint or make models or did fantastic 3-D animation that put my manga comics to shame; or really, folks who did anything besides zines, book jackets, and publishing layouts (how I began my design days). Wherever it came from, I want it to go away.

For one, I want to get better at doing everything from the ground up; in this digital day and age it's so easy to turn to Illustrator and just hit "Live Trace" and call it our own. I miss the feel of ink on my fingers and the feel of a tangible piece of art I created. Oddly, I went in search of tangibility in perfume. But now I want my art back.

For two, I'm stuck at work most days with a Wacom tablet staring me in the face begging to be abused, and so I doubt I'll get much into the pen & ink art for awhile, but something has to give and I've got to quit being scared of this so-called art. I need to just give into temptation and make something. I will only get better if I begin. I will only get worse if I let go of it all.

I'll be on the hunt for inspiration and definitely looking for suggestions. Because art shouldn't be something that I do just because a client requested it; it should be a part of my daily routine. (Or if not daily, then perhaps every Friday.)

Filed under loving #3: Happy Mardis Gras!

2010-02-19T01:04:43Z

Time to get your masks on! To celebrate Mardi Gras (yeah, I know, I'm a day or two behind this year), here's a small round-up of awesome mask photos and mask-related items for you to feast on. Enjoy.

Above: Bunny Girl on Kingdom of Style.

Tuesday's Girl: Miki on sfgirlbybay.

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Nubian Masks on Flickr, by RudmerHK.

Scenes from a New Year's Eve wedding on Once Wed.

And Through the fog of masks, which reminds me so much of Labyrinth that I just fell head over heels in love. You need to see this.

In other news, it's almost Friday! How are you celebrating the weekend?

All the news fit to sniff #1: fragrance blogs & industry news round-up

2010-02-17T01:15:52Z

I've only seen one of these in my life, ever — in a tiny, absolutely to-be-forgotten gas station on I-5 North somewhere between Portland and Tacoma. I had gone down to Portland for an art class with Jill Bliss and to see some cousins one weekend when, upon stumbling home, I came across one of these in the dingiest no-good gas station bathroom ever (and I would know, but that's another story).

This particular quarter-prompted whiffer machine was supposedly dispensing Chanel no. 5 or CK One, depending on your choice of pull-lever. I popped in a quarter and chose CK One. I can't verify the efficacy of the fragrance because frankly, I couldn't smell much other than gas-station-bathroom after leaving. The above image, as seen on aromastiches' blog last week (I have mine translated into English by Google Reader, FYI), is much, much nicer than the I-5 North one.

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This is kind of a catch-up post since, well, I frankly haven't been paying attention to my perfumery blogs lately. (There's only so much time in a girl's day you know). But here are some things you should have read in the fragrance blog world lately (but don't worry if you didn't, I read them for you):

Scenes and more scenes from last week's NYFW. I am doing a really bad job of following along with Fashion Week (see end of post). How'd you do?

Relatedly, and humorously IMO, Bluefly.com spoiled the Project Runway finale on Facebook fan page on The Non Blonde. (No spoilers on The Non Blonde post, btw. And I don't think they ever mentioned the winner anyway.)

Brian Eno on perfumery on Olfactorama. His journey through perfumery and the way he discusses it is really engaging and a must-read. (Do I detect a Nose Words edition coming up? I do, I do!)

Pierre Guillaume speaks of Papyrus de Ciane on Grain de musc, which, beyond being a fascinating read as it is, confirms what I think we all knew already all along about 2010: forget el nino, we're in a green wave, folks.

Valentine's Day prompts increase in fragrance sales on Beauty Packaging (via Nathan Branch). 1) No Duh. 2) Attributes the sale to the offering of smaller sized bottles, which I have to disagree with, but that's another soap box.

Lots of news from Mandy Aftel: Aftelier launches a new perfume, Trevert, another green-waving fragrance. Green-surfing, so-calls Nathan Branch about 2010's green trend in perfume. Can you guess what I might do for Spring? (I know, I know.) Besides going green, she gets modern too: now you can fan Aftelier on Facebook or follow her on Twitter. And there's a podcast of her latest lecture, called The Perfumed Road: Back to the Future of Forward to the Past (which I have yet to listen to, shame on me).

Exsence 2010 Preview on Basenotes. Can, uh, somebody loan me a plane ticket to Italy, plzkthx?

Caveat: This is not a fashion round-up post. What with NYFW still underway, I doubt to get to one today. Maybe under a featurette on Thursday, but oh dear god, have you been watching the eye candy?

Also, in case you didn't notice, I'm re-working my blog layout just a touch. I hope it is, at the very least, navigable right now. It should be prettier soon!

Tandoozy is for lovers: Seattle's new favorite street food

2010-02-15T19:07:59Z

Seattle isn't exactly known for its street food. At least, not in the way that Portland has embraced its food vending carts that are seriously everywhere downtown and usually delicious, where you can get everything from vegan Thai to greasy Mexican. But I had the fortune of experiencing two Seattle street food institutions this weekend: Taco Truk (though I'm still not sure if it was THE Taco Truk from Eastlake/Stranger fame) and Tandoozy, a tandoori street food vendor at Seattle's Fremont Sunday Fair.

"We wanted to do one thing and do it really well," said Craig, the maker of Tandoozy's outside grills and fine, fine chicken tikka, after explaining that they founded Tandoozy as an experiment and upon request from a friend.

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This is Craig. He is, by trade, a glass blower; so what's a glass blower doing making fabulous Indian street food at a Sunday fair in Seattle? It was fun-turned-business, but more than that: "It was like everything I had been doing culminated into this," he explained, stating how building glass ovens, gauging temperatures and paying attention to heating and cooling, and learning how to translate that into cooking, prepared him for Tandoozy. So familiar. I know exactly what he's talking about.

So how does he do it? First the meat is marinated in a lemon juice mixture, then a yogurt-spice mixture, for 24 hours. Then they're placed in the tandoor until the meat is fall-off-the-bone tender. "I wouldn't recommend this until after you're 40," he jokes. "You can cook anything else, but grilling chicken is another story."

Whoa mama. That's some chicken.

Craig also explains that food is only best for about thirty minutes after it's cooked. I am pretty darn sure that my plate was fresh.

Let's have another look at that, shall we? Guh. Makes me hungry again.

In fact, it was so good that I forgot to actually take a picture of my plate of food. If you are looking for a good special occasion joint without the finery of a sit-down restaurant, Tandoozy is five-star Indian food. My friend Shadi proclaimed it "proposal-worthy," and the chutneys, by the by, are killer. In fact, this was my second trip (though the mens' first — and they agreed on its amazing goodness), and you can bet I will be back.

You can become a fan of Tandoozy on Facebook for updates about special weekend deals (Craig is trying a new dish next weekend!), or check out a few more photos on my Flickr.

The Weekly Blogged Edition #3 + Editorial schedule for Essais

2010-02-12T18:22:44Z

I'll be the first to admit it: I've always been kind of an anti-Valentine's Day kind-of-girl. I don't get the showering-of-affection-one-day-a-year so the greeting-card-companies can rip us all off thing. (Of course that was my sentiment long before the handmade revolution. I'd never even need to buy a mass-produced card now.)

At any rate, I'm a little low on content this week for Weekly Blogged #3 because everywhere I turn there is something pink and heart-shaped. And frankly, I'm ready for Monday to get here so I can have my blogosphere back. Here's my favorites from this week that have nothing to do with that dreaded V word, in a short and sweet list.

Above: The Art of Display on SF Girl by Bay. (So much eye candy here.)

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Pretty Party Dishes on One Charming Party.

Pretty wrapping paper with pom poms and doilies on Paper Crave.

A Moment to Oneself on Teagan Tall, Craft, and others. If you missed this little stop-animation video, go see it now.

Crafting fabric rosettes on Lillyella.

Wilfred summer collection photography on Mustard and Sage (and others). Gorgeous!

A Bad Situation Turning Worse on Now Smell This, re: the One Mighty Drop Big Boy of Fragrance campaign. *headdesk*

RIP Alexander McQueen on Rackk and Ruin (and many others). :(

Editorial schedule update

I've been neglecting my fragrance blogs as of late; most of the "big name" fragrance blogs on the Web are so saturated with celebrity fragrance news that I couldn't stomach it for awhile. If I had to hear one more thing about Beyonce's fragrance I might have puked. With that in mind, here's my weekly blogging schedule:

Monday: Free writing/personal/weekend wrap-up (if any post at all)
Tuesday: Fragrance news/industry round-up/perfumer chats/nose words
Wednesday: Filed under loving (mood boards)
Thursday: Features/featurettes/finds/flickr inspiration
Friday: Filed for the week/Weekly blogged

I guess we're going with an "F" theme. Who knows. It just happened. ;)

Prison Girls

2010-02-11T21:19:25Z

{Photo by Meghan Guthrie}

Like any inspiration, themes shift. At work, I've been digging into logos for our design & research team so during the day I tend to bury myself in design sites, but during a conversation with my mother yesterday I realized I hadn't actually physically nailed down my color scheme for my wedding. We've got our location. Our officiant. Our musician. Our invitation designer. And I bought my dream dress via Etsy. And even though I had thought I knew what colors I wanted, I didn't have swatches.

Enter 100 Layer Cake, my favorite wedding blog of the moment, which not only led me to an accurate portrayal of my color scheme but the to-die-for prop photography of Meghan Guthrie. If only my shop photography was as nice. Here's a helping, because it's good for the soul.

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I'm still not sure how best to set up inspiration posts, but I'm trying to blog more as-I-see-it. So we'll call this an experimentation, for now. Enjoy!

Today, filed under loving

2010-02-10T05:49:12Z

Fashionscapes by Reed + Radar {via Teagan Tall}

I lamented on Twitter recently regarding my lack of personal, tangible inspiration board. And somewhere between that lamenting and now I realized that I have the perfect inspiration board that is just collecting virtual dust already for me: my blog. And while I'd like to do something slightly more formal than post links and pictures, we'll have to work up to that. So for now: baby steps. Enjoy these, because I have been.

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{Anthony Zinonos' Stuck Inside Hound via Here's Lookin' At Me Kid}

Via one of my favorite new blogs. There was too much to choose from in my Shared Items from Here's Lookin' At Me Kid.

{DecorMaison wallpaper fashion shoot via Emma's Design Blog

I can't stop staring at this picture. Remember last season Project Runway's newspaper challenge? Well, they all just got blown away as far as I'm concerned.

{Betty Crocker through the ages, via Mid Century Flickr pool}

I just love this. Don't you?

{Fashion photography of Jason Lee Perry as seen on Rackk and Ruin}

Rackk and Ruin is still easily my favorite fashion blog.

{Camilla Akrans photography on Fashion Copious}

Loving the big white bow.

{Alice in Wonderland at Printemps in Paris, via Haute World}

Dear God, please deliver me those Christopher Kane shoes. Please?

This Week in Blogged #2

2010-02-05T18:23:47Z

Left: Factory 20 on Oh Hello Friend
Right: Whimsy and Spice on Indie Fixx

Though I wish I could blame my accidental mass-unsubscribe of all my favorite design blogs, I can't for this week's lack of "week-end blogged" content. What I can blame, however, is my current obsession with upgrading, updating, and revamping my wardrobe. However, here are some posts that definitely made it to my Shared Items from this past week, and are highly worthy of your time.

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Left: Crafty Books to Inspire Creativity on Apartment Therapy
Right: Shawnimals Yeti Ninja on CRAFT

Left: Couture Du Jour 2/4/10 on lillyella
Right: Girls Allowed Vogue UK photoshoot (Via Rack and Ruinn)

Left: Sweet Straws on A Field Journal
Right: Printable Conversation Candy Wrappers on Creature Comforts

Above: Inspiration comes in many forms on sfgirlbybay

More next week!

Show and Smell this Saturday in Pioneer Square!

2010-02-04T23:39:57Z

Our good friend Sweet Petula is having a studio sale this Saturday and graciously invited us along for custom perfumes! Stop in for great deals on soap, glass candles, jewelry, bath salts, fizzies, and fragrances! This is perfect for a little last-minute Valentine's day shopping, so come on in and get your love on! (Or something like that.)

We will have our full custom perfumery set up, along with our Madeline cupcake fizzies (as seen on today's edition of Poppytalk Handmade) and our latest limited edition fragrance, Amelia (plus all of our usual ladies in waiting). Yes, portions from Saturday's sale of Amelia 1/2 ounce bottles will still go to Haiti.

Hope to see you there, lovelies! Stay tuned tomorrow for an interview from Jeanee Duval (seriously, for real this time) and our weekly blogged edition.

Stop in from 11-5 pm at 208 S. Jackson St. in Seattle, WA.

New product photos (and perfumes!) for February + how we're helping Haiti

2010-02-02T00:03:28Z

I haven't decided yet if we're going to stick with the four-perfumes-per-quarter release thing this year or not, but in the meantime: have a new fragrance! Our limited edition Valentine's Day fragrance, called Amelia, was released in our Etsy shop over the weekend. This is the fabled icy-bergamot-of-death / tuberose-black-cherry concoction I was tweeting about last month. It is sultry, sexy, and sinful, but ethereal and musky with twinges of wood. To boot, $5 from every bottle of Amelia sold will go to the American Red Cross Haiti relief, and the first five bottles sold will come with a FREE Madeline cupcake fizzie made by our good friends at Dirty Laundry. Only 8 ounces of this aviatrix-inspired fragrance have been brewed and after that, it's gone!

In other new news, although this may not be news to most of you, I decided to update our packaging for 2010 with actual waterproof labels rather than the twine-hung tags we'd used in 2009. We've begun the update on our glass bottled fragrances and will figure out what to do with our solid perfumes + other potential offerings soon, but we've had some really great feedback so far about the update. Everything from "stunning!!!" via Twitter, to "they're both like a classical book cover and an event announcement" via our Facebook fan page, where I debuted the new product photography last night — which I'm pleased as punch to say I took myself.

Also notably, our full size (1/2 ounce bottles) now ship in 100% recycled brown jewelry boxes, tied with some custom silk screened ribbon that was handmade by Taylor Made Designs on Etsy.

That's enough for you to chew on momentarily; in the meantime, I want to know what you think about the new look.

The Weekly Blogged Edition #1

2010-01-29T18:53:24Z

{image from Beverly Hsu: Helvetica cookie cutters}

During the week, I tend to abuse my Google Reader Shared Items because I can't seem to keep track of a Tumblr, I don't like to stumble upon things, I've abandoned Delicious, and my Facebook doesn't cross-post to my twitter account for personal preferences. So consider this a broadcast of what I've been reading, summarizing, and linking to all week. PROTIP: Add my shared items to your Reader to follow along if you don't follow me on Twitter.

Divine Twine: I can admit when I have a problem. I'm obsessed with twine. {via Just Something I Made}
Valentine's Day Goodie Bags: Gorgeously designed to print yourself. I remember seeing these last year, and they're still great. {at Twig and Thistle}
Message in a Cookie Cutter: On the subject of cookie cutters with something to say, which seems to be the overall theme this week, these are lovely. {via Creature Comforts}
Jamie and Adam's wedding is my favorite "real wedding" to date. {via 100 Layer Cake}
Sense of Popos: A map of San Francisco's secret spaces. {via Strangemaps one of my weekly faves}
Speaking of J.D. Salinger...: On the death of J.D. Salinger, The Stranger kindly reminds us of King Dork, a novel by the lead singer of The Mr. T Experience, one of my all-time favorite bands. {via Line Out}
Hendrix's statue may be moved: If Hendrix leaves the Hill, so do I. Off to Georgetown. {via Seattle Sketcher}

Last but not least, check out my interview on THE WASH, where crafty chicks come clean. I'll be posting an interview from Jeanee, creator of our cute Valentine's day cupcake fizzzies, later today!

The power of collaboration (and product placement)

2010-01-28T23:12:12Z

On the subject of collaborations (because did you see my latest collaboration with Dirty Laundry?), here's probably the most clever way I've seen a user make it to the FP on Etsy:

Can you see it? Via Mireio Designs.

How to use Open Site Explorer to compare Etsy shops

2010-01-20T21:54:39Z

Once in a former life, I was an SEO (Search Engine Optimization) developer. I helped companies move from the nether regions of Google to the top rank in their selected keywords, so I generally like to think that I know what I'm doing when it comes to SEO best practices and where to go to find the best SEO information on the web.

When I was an SEO, SEO Moz was basically my blog Bible. I'll admit, my site right now does not have the greatest SEO score — though I am on page one for my top keyword &mdash but since my fiance recently was hired at SEO Moz as a developer, I've taken more interest in it again.

(Disclaimer: I have not been in any way asked to write this or compensated for this blog post. These are my personal opinions.)

Enter Open Site Explorer, a new free tool from the SEO Moz crew to browse external links pointing at your site (or shop, in this case). For the next 48 hours, the pro version is free to evaluate, which is why I'm posting for the second time today. (I know, that's unusual.)

What's it good for, you ask? Well, it's good to find new sources of links for your brand, and good for finding out who's already talking about your brand. It is replacing the Yahoo! version of this tool, which Micrahoo (Microsoft merged with Yahoo!) will be doing away with sometime in the coming months.

Read on to see some screenshots and learn how to evaluate your Etsy shop using Open Site Explorer.

]]> Finding out who's talking about your shop While there is always a lot of hooplah on the forums and in the Storque about using Google Analytics, it isn't always the most user friendly of the SEO beasts on the internets. And, since it only tracks visitng sessions and not necessarily links, it's hard to discern if the content in question was actually based on you or someone else. The problem inherently in determining your Etsy link metrics is that Analytics tracks a visitor upon first visitation to Etsy.com. If they happened, byway of organic browsing and before they closed their window, to then stumble upon your shop, it shows up in Analytics. So you might see Design Sponge listed in your Analytics, but no record of your Etsy shop exists on Design Sponge.

Real data for sweetanthem.etsy.com in Open SIte Explorer.

As you can see above, it's an easy, clean interface that allows you to see exactly where your links are being generated. Since I have an Etsy button in my navigation that links directly to my shop, my own site generates a whole heck of a lot of links for me. (My site gets a lot more attention most of the time than my Etsy shop, but that's another post.)

Finding out who's talking about your competition

Ever wanted to know where you stand against your competition? Well, now you can in one easy step. Visit Open Site Explorer, type in your URL into the first field and then click "Add a URL to compare" below. A new field will appear, and you can type in the second shop you want to compare yours to. I've chosen my friend Britton's shop to see how we compare. You can view this comparison yourself if you want to follow along.

The first five URL results for Sweet Anthem vs. Haus of Gloi. Click to view larger.

See? Easy peasy. No browsing extensive search directories. No opening multiple windows or tabs. No mining through Analytics data. Just clear, presented metrics for you to munch on.

What do I do next?

OK, so now you've looked at your competing shops, you might be wondering what this information is good for. Do they have links from blogs you wish you had press mentions on? Are they listed in a handmade directory that you didn't know about? Get the word out. Go participate in the blog's comments, forums, or better yet: send them your press information and a sample of your goods. I promise you that 9 times out of 10, bloggers want your content. They want something interesting, pretty, and handmade to post about: so find your niche.

Compare your fellow crafters' links and analyze where you fit in, then get out there and walk around the blogosphere. The beauty behind the OSE tool is that it can give you the road map.

(Backstage #1) Manufacturing the minis

2010-01-20T18:14:31Z

Everything begins in parts, it seems. Labels start in full sheets and then get cut down to size (by hand, mind you). Bottles start in pieces — the container, the pump, the overshell. There are so many bits and pieces to the perfume manufacturing puzzle, but I'm getting much faster at doing it all by hand.

I want to be better about documenting our processes. I don't mean in the "step one: decant into bottle" kind of documentation but mostly in photographs. It's a good reminder for me on days when I think nothing will ever get done that actually we can make a whole lot by ourselves, and the end result is almost always fabulous. So I took these the other night while we manufactured a bunch of mini misters:

So simple, and yet I love how a huge row of them makes me feel like we put together an army of fragrance samples. These are available exclusively on our Etsy shop for now in packs of 4.