Spring Wildflowers

It's spring and it's beautiful in Birmingham.  It has been so sunny and warm and we've had plenty of chances to get outside.  There are wildflowers popping up everywhere and I've taken advantage of this to create fresh wildflower bouquets to lighten up my home!!

This is a wildflower bouquet that I gathered at Moss Park in Hoover.  Love it!!!

Here's the wildflower bouquet in a vase at home.





This admittedly is not a flower I picked - I bought this big, beautiful flower from a wild, homeless man in 5 Points in downtown Birmingham. I was out to dinner with a friend and he was selling these for a dollar! He was a hilarious, sweet man and this awesome flower lasted a week and a half in my living room.

New Orleans Inspirations

I went to New Orleans the week before Mardi Gras during all the parades. My friend and I had a great time walking around the French Quarter, buying art and seeing the mayhem of pre-Mardi Gras.  These are a couple of things I saw there that I loved.

This was an amazing door for an empty building.  This is seriously one of the most beautiful and intricate doors I have ever seen - I was really tempted to rip it right off that building.

This was a spray painted stencil on Chartres St. 

Perfect symmetry and very stereotypical New Orleans (at least for a tourist!). Art on Jackson Square with a horse-drawn carriage and a New Orleans police bus.  

Gator heads and claw back scratchers in the French Market...

Sloss Furnace

Sloss Furnace is an awesome, ominous, industrial landmark in Birmingham.  Photos of Sloss and it's blast furnaces, water tower and buildings are totally iconic in Birmingham.  It's an old blast furnace that was a big part of Birmingham's steel industry.  You are able to walk around freely and check everything out. It's apparently one of the most haunted places in the United States and they have events all throughout Halloween.  It's super creepy, and yet beautifully amazing, all at the same time.  Here are my shots of Sloss.

Entering Sloss.

Blast furnace.

Beer Bottle Label

My mom asked me to try designing a beer bottle label for her boyfriend's son who is getting married in May.  They were going to the couple's wedding party and wanted to give them a 6-pack with personalized labels on them.  They wanted to include a picture of the couple as well as their dog, Trigger, a lab/Australian Sheppard mix, who in an integral part of the family now!! My brother works at Thirsty Dog Brewing Co. in Akron, where they all live, and bought a 6-pack of Labrador Lager, which ended up matching perfectly in both theme and color.
  My mom peeled off the labels from the Lager, printed out my labels on a label paper with a good printer, and placed these on over top. Their name ended up looking like a legitimate beer name!

On the back I added a solo picture of Trigger along with their names, wedding date and some other little details.  I put a recycle symbol, weight and bar code to make it a bit more realistic looking.  They are both in the Air Force so I used that logo, and it blends well with the other details.  

Here are pictures my brother took with a camera on his phone of the end result. Gives you a little taste of what they ended up looking like as actual labels.

You can see how well the front label matches the Labrador Lager sticker up top - and not even on purpose!!!