Of Mein Kampf and Sakura
Today my sister Mai came over with a brand new copy of Mein Kampf tucked under her arm, an intended birthday gift for her mother-in-law. Lest you naughty-minded ones there think that this is somehow an allusion to her MIL being Der Fuhrer, I will have to say that her mother-in-law is into autobiographies and that she has a great relationship with my sister. 
At first I thought it was for me because I’ve been wanting to buy a Kindle copy of the book but Mai explained that she wanted me to wrap it for her mother-in-law instead (pfffft.). She knows I am totally anal when it comes to wrapping gifts and that I also have plenty of Gocco’d gift tags stashed around the house. Nothing makes me itch to put those wrapping skills to work more than an unwrapped autobiography of Adolf Hitler haha.
Mai tells me her MIL would be glad to know that we used recycled materials. So we scrounged around for some leftover Manila paper, a recycled ribbon and a handmade gift tag (with my sakura design) I made early this year from bits of leftover paper I used for my notecards. Here’s the result:
I think we did pretty well considering the lack of recyclable materials around the house.
Wrapping the gift led me to search for other handmade cards which had my sakura (cherry blossoms – or at least my interpretation of it) design Print Gocco’d on them.
on pink, textured note cards
sakura on kraft paper. shabby chic!
i used red and pearlized pink gocco ink on these note cards
yellow sakura design on textured paper
a client had me customize 150 of these irridescent blue thank you note cards with matching cream envelopes.
sakura bookmark using tea green-magenta card stock
my original black and white sakura design
Cats
my son inigo, poble espanyol/barcelona 2008
I am currently working on a logo design for a product that has something to do with the acronym C.A.T. While I can’t show you the finished logo just yet (I’ll post it here once the brand has been released in the market), here’s where I began when I started making the cat logo:
my rough sketch of a fat cat which i thought looks more like a puppy than a feline creature.
the interpretation in illustrator.
Of course the final logo looked very far from these illustrations. Logos are usually not as “noisy” as these designs. Hopefully, I’ll be able to showcase it here soon.
I have lived with many Zen masters, all of them cats. – Eckhart Tolle, Guardians of Being
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