
I’m starting out the week completely amazed and inspired by the work of Dana Tanamachi, a custom chalk letterer and graphic designer. In this digital age, the drawing of letters is almost a lost art. But, I love the gritty and personal quality of these large-scale pieces. I love the whimsy inherent in conveying a message in the chalk medium. I also love the idea of possibly moving our digital tools in reverse — scoping out designs and messages in the digital sphere, and THEN translating that message back to a hand-wrought medium like chalk. [I think I may be gushing.] Be sure to check out the time-lapse video Dana made of the process of creating one of her pieces.


Ace Hotel Room 1021 from Dana Tanamachi on Vimeo.
Pin ItI’ve been experimenting a little more lately with taking photographs, and I wanted to try out some photoshop “actions” I found from Paint The Moon. Last Friday I took a little field trip (as I sometimes do) to the Cotton District area of Starkville to get some detail shots. The actions just give the photos a slight shift in lighting that gave the rainy day shots a little more depth. I thought I’d share.







I love this idea! I came across ownacolour.com in a recent ezine and was really impressed by the clever approach to fundraising. The site is developed through the support of Glidden paints and benefits Unicef, the United Nations’ children’s fund. For a donation through the site of as little as $2, you can purchase your choice of the 16.7 million available colors. You can name your color, make a statement about why you like the color and give it a one-word description. You can even gift the color to someone if desired. For you web techies out there, your donation also gets you the hex code for your newly named color of choice for use later.
MY color purchase? “Newborn Leaf” hex #add46e, and my one-word description was “courage.” Go get one for yourself!

My eye has been gravitating toward wooden objects lately, and these three are so beautiful…


Wood veneer pendant lights held together with wooden buttons ~ Waf Limited Series by Asaf Weinbroom
Birch veneer graduated storage boxes ~ CB2
Bent wood cup & saucer ~ by Yukio Hashimoto via Generate


I found this sweet printable calendar over at Cool Mom Picks, and I couldn’t resist making it my 3rd time-marking purchase of the year. It’s created by French-based Tiny Us and is available for a donation of any size to their Presence charity — a school for handicapped children. Given my love of all things paper-related, the paper dolls really struck my fancy. I love their unabashed girlie-ness and the encouragement for play each page provides. I can’t wait to print them!
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My name is Haley Montgomery. After 16 years of ad agency wizardry, I hopped out on my own with Small Pond Graphics. I'm a creative for hire. Plop! is my pursuit of frogs with great prince potential... What's inspiring me. What's making me think better. What's turning my smile. What's keeping me afloat. It's all here.

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