seam rippers and magic

my very clever sister taught me how to ride a bike and how to draw a nice-looking fish. once upon a time we found a reason to fight over almost anything, except for that one day we scribbled life-size portraits of ourselves on the wall in red colored pencil.

today our creative work doesn't overlap so much as it did then... but I did get to make-over her little blog, and put together a banner and business cards for her brand new etsy shop.

the process went through a few phases. Kara had a name picked out already: whitecarnation. she asked me, the geek that I am, to help her make it look cool. working with nothing but a name and a few rather unexciting stock photos, I threw together these:

not bad... but not very evocative either. she used the green one for a while before throwing it out and putting up a nice gray and white banner of her own making. and that was cool too... but then she wanted to get really serious. so over Christmas, she dug through her scraps and arranged a few lace flowers among a field of miscellaneous fabric pieces. many, many pictures were taken.

{ random fact: that's my very favourite brown skirt, down at the bottom there. }

once I got all the pictures off the camera onto my as-of-yet nameless macbook, I went to work tweaking the saturation until we got just the right look. lots of texture, just a little bit faded. smooth a bit of Museo Light on top and you've got something pretty amazing.

and maybe it's just because she's my sister, or maybe it's because I was in a good mood that day, but I think I'll nominate her for the best client ever award. it's always wonderful when we're impressed with each other. and when we can be in the same room and see just what's happening. and when it's clear that we really love what we do. maybe all clients seem awesome when those things happen...

anyway, it's worked out that Kara gets a day or so of graphic design from me, I get free alterations on all the clothes that don't fit me anymore from her. it's perfect.