Gettin' Fancy

The plan:
My friend Jason and I wanted to treat our friends for their birthdays with a gift certificate to a fancy restaurant and an evening of us babysitting their kid so they could go to said restaurant. The problem:
Unfortunately, the restaurant was so fancy that they sniffed at the mention of gift certificates.
The solution:
So we decided to make our own.

My style doesn't lend itself to frequent opportunities to write in script, so I was particularly interested in the lettering. After a bunch of tries, I got some half-decent letterforms that met my standard of cuteness, but the whole land of cursive is obviously one I'm gonna need to spend more time getting my head around. I learned a lot from this exercise, so I think it was a reasonably successful first exploration.

Mattias Gets a Present

A little drawing for friends;
colored pencil on cardboard

Nusnäs, Sweden

One of my recent adventures in Sweden was a trip to the little town of Nusnäs {population 724}, the center of the traditional Swedish craft of dala horses. The hand carved and hand painted wooden creatures are in every gift shop in the land, and it was pretty neat to see where they came from.


{old style}


{contemporary style; the most popular kinds are red and blue}


My friend Katie with an awesome giant Dala rooster :)





My favorite items in the shop were these amazing {and large!} carved wood flowers—so cool!