love you tender

sorry for the lack of posts lately, but i've had a busy weekend/week!
on monday morning, i welcomed my new baby nephew into the world.

(here's his foot after making his very first piece of art)


wow, witnessing birth is exciting. both he and my sister and the rest of our family are doing great and we're all very happy that Elvis is here at last. (yes! it's a perfect name for him!)
i'll be back to regular work and posting in a few days! xo.

love birds

it's another new kit!


i know - i've done maybe too many kits with two little creatures and heart over top of them, but really, with this one, i just couldn't resist! these sweet birds sitting on their branches looking at one another; i had to do it.


i dug up these little birdies while doing research for custom order request - i had used them on a piece that i did long ago, and almost forgot about them. i'm so happy to be seeing them in this new light! and then, when it came down to choosing colors for the new pattern, i went with my love of godard's palette of french blue, white, and red. i like the folksy look it brings to the piece. i hope you agree. i've only got a small amount of this fabric color, so i'm thinking this one is going to be a limited edition... unless it goes over well and i can get my hands on more of this color? we'll see....
it's in the shop - here.


i'm signing out for the week, i think... my sister is due to give birth to baby number three any time now, and as soon as i get the call, i'm running out the door! my bags are packed and i've been watching my phone like a hawk. it's amazing how productive i've been thinking that i have to use every minute i've got to make things happen in my studio before being away from it for a few days to a week. (those of you with custom-orders in, don't worry, i've got all of my supplies and materials in a go-box, ready to go with me! same goes for regular shop items.)

have a wonderful end to your week and weekend, all! xo.

dance dance revolution

here's the story on this one: it was inspired by the two movies i've watched this week; "black swan" and "desperately seeking susan."
i've been wanting to do a few dance-inspired pieces, and i have several in mind, but haven't gotten to them yet.... because the images i have in my head require me to create new fonts, and that's not always my favourite task.... but this one, this one came about pretty easily; i heard the line in madonna's "into the groove" (which is in "desperately seeking susan") and almost immediately got to work on putting the letters together.
two fun facts about me:
one - dancing is probably my favourite thing in the world to do. i love a dance party like nothing else.
two - "into the groove" was the song for our pom-pom routine in 8th grade. that's right, i was a cheerleader. for one year. sometimes when i'm out dance-partying this song comes on and if i've had a few cocktails, the pom-pom routine moves come out.


with the "black swan" influence, i totally wanted to do the piece with ballerina-pink stitching instead of ecru, but i decided it's better to go neutral on these random pieces that i make.


(behind the piece, you can see that state that my living room walls are in at the moment. i finally found the right color, but haven't yet gotten to the painting....)

expect more dance-themed pieces to come!

i will follow you...

after months of being out of the shop, and getting several requests for it, the "listen to your heart..." piece is back!


i had to do a little rethinking/reworking after the frame size (to which i'd originally designed it to fit) was discontinued, but now, methinks it works super well in the 8 x 10 frame size.



and b, my wonderful photoshop-saavy boyfriend, worked a little magic to lay the text overtop of the photo for the etsy listing.


(i know, it's not such a difficult thing to do, but i tell you, i have NO patience for those design programs and i'm happy to have someone who can help me to make things happen. otherwise, this would be sitting on my to-do list for weeks.)

i designed this piece right after i made my decision to move out to california for a little while and then, once i put it in the shop, got several orders for all kinds of places -- some of the memorable ones were "sweden" and "hollywood" and "florida," which i *almost* sent out stitched up as "flordia," and i probably would have if it weren't for my lovely friend and sometimes chez-sucre-chez assistant nicole pointing it out to me! phew! i'm still thankful of that, nicole!
where has your heart taken you?

color conundrum

oh friends i need your help.
i got three new towel colors for my monogram towels, but i'm having the most difficult time coming up with truly descriptive names for these colors!
here they are:


the working name for this one is latte:


and seriously, the reason for that is simply because when i went to take the photos of these towels this morning, i just happened to put my mug of almost-all-gone latte down next to them and noticed that the color was pretty similar.
and then there's this one, which i'm currently calling cornflower -- but it's not quite cornflower:


i simply don't know how to describe/name this color blue! what the heck is it? it's not tiffany blue, it's not royal blue, it's not cerulean -- what is it?!
then the last one is this one, on top:


(i didn't get a good shot of that one alone....)
it's not off white, it's not beige, or tan -- what the heck do i call this one? maybe it is beige, or tan, but those are such boring names and i don't think they really are quite right for this color.
i don't need any fancy names like you'd see describing the colors of sweaters in a j crew catalogue -- i just need simple, true, descriptive color names that are also hopefully attractive sounding.
any recommendations?
ugh, i am going through color conundrum indeed! i'm also in the midst of trying to find the right color for my living room and that is driving me crazy, too. i'd been looking through paint chip samples for weeks and had my mind set on one, then i went and got a color sample of the paint yesterday (my past house renovation project taught me many things, GET A PAINT SAMPLE was one of the biggest: color *never* looks the same on a wall as it does on one of those paper paint chips) and i don't love it.


so now i'm back to square one. you'd think that with me looking at those brown/beige/greige/tan paint chips so much that i'd have plenty of color names in mind for these towels! but i really don't want to name the towel colors "mushroom bisque" or "almond whisp".... okay -- that's all for now. if you have any ideas for me, please send them my way! thanks so much!

(the new colors, by the way, are available for order through the shop!)

let's juice!

here's me (making kind of a crazy face) on the set of a little video shoot i helped to do for my friend robyn's website grow indie, which is a fabulous resource for gardeners; whether you have a few containers on your fire escape or a full-on victory garden in your yard.
we were doing a demo video for a wheatgrass juicer and i got my first taste of wheatgrass juice. holy cow, it's good stuff! for the video we did wheatgrass and spinach juice, and that was surprisingly delicious and made me feel like i had taken some sort of pac man power pellets. i brought one of the juicers home with me and made apple/wheatgrass/parsley juice and that is amazingly delicious, too! i think i'm hooked! have any of you ever gone on a wheatgrass kick? do you have any favourite juice recipes/combos or suggestions or recommendations?

see you on sunday?

on this coming sunday, october 9th, i'll be hawking my chez-sucre-chez goods at this event (above) in lancaster, PA. three of my z-town gals, karen stanford of skylark studio, melanie linder of spread-the-love, and jen lindsay of jen lindsay designs, will also be there. we're not sure what to expect, as it's only a 4 hour event at a museum we've never been to before, but i'm looking at it as potential exposure to a new area and a reason to get my indoor show set-up fine-tuned before the holiday show season sneaks up on me. if you're near the lancaster area, come on out and say hello!