nothing's gonna take away these golden years

"nights are warm and the days are young" (bowie - golden years)

i know i've said it before, but man, i love summer! b and i have been taking advantage of the long days and warm nights and we've been getting out and trying to make the most of them.
the night before independence day, we made a plan to see some local fireworks - without the crowds. b scouted a perfect spot for this, on a big hill of one of our local nature preserves. it was great. we had the whole park to ourselves and, as soon as we were finished devouring our picnic dinner, the light turned amazingly golden and i jumped up for an impromptu chez-sucre-chez photoshoot. this was exactly the light that i wanted for the stay gold totes, and i did have mine with me. hooray!
here are some of my favourites:

pretty great for an unplanned shoot, right? b's been killing it...

and, since i didn't post them already, here are some of the general product shots that i took for the new totes:

i am SO psyched on these totes. i worked with masthead print, in philadelphia, to do the printing. it was super fun, and i LOVE the way they turned out.

the idea is that you can leave the tote as it is, screen printed with metallic gold ink, or you can stitch over top of the screen printed x's, like i did on my pink sample tote. (i decided to give the pink sample tote to myself as a birthday present.)

blue stitching looks great, too. floss packets (and a needle) are included with the totes -- choose bright pink or ice blue. on the pink tote, i used three strands of the 6-strand embroidery floss; on the blue one, i used two strands. it does make quite a difference -- the pink one is more textural and the blue one shows more of the gold peeking out beneath the stitching.

the totes that i used for them are of excellent quality, and they're made in the usa! i sourced them specifically because they're the same ones that THIS gallery & incase used for the giveaway totes at our gallery shindig, and i really like the size and the quality of that one; i've put it through A LOT of use and it's stood up beautifully. it's a great size for groceries or a day at the beach or a weekend in the city. check them out, they're in the shop!