A little peek into the 2013 sketch book… Black letter meets Victorian!

Putting the finishing touches on a few neutral-inspired, calligraphy-filled wedding invitations for an upcoming photo shoot. Can’t wait for the reveal!!!

Winston says hello. 

I know a lot of you are animal lovers, so I’m super excited to share good news! Our newest project studio assistant Winston went back to the vet yesterday for his first post-heartworm treatment of Interceptor, and all went well. Winnie’s completely recovered from last month’s icky arsenic shots and is now only coughing once in a blue moon. Our best guess is that the treatment was successful, though of course we won’t get confirmation of that for a few months. Apparently it takes that long for the last traces of the heartworms to leave his system. (Boo-hiss heartworms!) Winston’s ready and raring to get back in action, though — only two more weeks until ball-chasing and woodland-romping can resume! (I will try to take some videos so you guys can see how redonkulously adorable this little fella is. When he gets excited, his ears flop around like Dumbo, lol.)

Thank you all so very much for your prayers, love, encouragement and patience. I can’t tell you how touched we felt knowing y’all were in Winston’s corner and I am 100% positive that your loving energy made all the difference in his recovery. Truly, he is a dog transformed.

And because everything has gone so well, I have more happy news to share: our studio hours are back to normal!!! Double yay!!!

I’ll have lots more posts very soon – there’s so much new work to share with you, I can hardly stand it!

Just a little screen-cap peek into some new custom work I’m brewing up. Dahlias, for the win!

Today’s round up is all about S-P-R-I-N-G! She’s definitely here, as my peonies know.

- A pretty watercolor moth print by Mikrofaza
- A breezy and modern crinkle-cotton dress in the perfect shade of leaf
- Recipes for my springtime favorites: ramps, rhubarb, sorrel and morels
- Bridesmaids in Wellies, swoon!
- Wendy Waldman gets her dulcimer on
- A beautiful tissue paper vine tutorial from Martha
- Sullivan Owen puts my favorite striped tree peony blooms to work

Happy Friday, Lovelies! What are you up to this weekend?

There are so many things to love about Easter weekend, but one of my favorite activities is dyeing eggs. They’re color you can eat! Mr. Magpie & I don’t have kids, but that doesn’t stop me from whipping up a couple dozen of these pretties every year.

After seeing so many gorgeous examples of naturally-dyed eggs on Pinterest, we decided to ditch the food coloring and experiment with the contents of our fridge.

The spotted grey-purple eggs were dyed in an overnight-bath of grape juice and vinegar. Vinegar is an acid and it reacts with the calcium shells, which produces a neat mottling effect.

To make the bluish-teal eggs, I filled a stock-pot halfway with water, added a cut-up head of red cabbage, and boiled the whole mess until the brew was nice and dark. (And stinky. Pee-ew cabbage.) Then I added a  few teaspoons of baking soda, cooled & strained the mix, and dunked the eggs overnight. I hear that adding vinegar instead of the baking soda makes a pretty pink-purple. Chemistry, FTW!

I also tried to dye eggs with tumeric & paprika, but the color didn’t really stick to the eggshells. In all cases, the overnight eggs + dye-baths were kept in the fridge, as we plan to eat these all week.

I just love how unique each egg becomes. How about you? Are you experimenting with natural dyes this weekend?

As some of you know, in late January we rescued a very sweet & very ill senior dog who had been abandoned in a farm field. We christened him Winston, and he’s living up to his namesake. This dog has pluck.

In addition to dealing with near blindness, deafness, arthritis, hypothyroidism, severe anemia and a hemolytic crisis, Winnie is also fighting a nasty case of heart worms. Despite all of this, he remains an incredibly loving and wonderful companion so he’s been helping out sleeping at the studio with us each day. We love looking after him.

After two months of awesome veterinarian care (shout out to Dr. Mike!) Winston is finally ready to fight his biggest battle yet. Monday morning, he’ll receive the first of two heart-worm-destroying Immiticide injections. Assuming all goes well, he will be confined & monitored for around two months, so that we can prevent and/or quickly treat any embolisms that result from the worms’ deaths. This means that Winnie is essentially under house arrest for the foreseeable future. Because yours truly will be his nurse, I want to let y’all know about a few changes in our schedule for the next few weeks.

Current Clients: Design & production of your order will continue on schedule, from my home office. C’est si bon.

Communication: Barring any emergencies, I will be available via email and Google chat, Monday thru Friday, from noon – 5pm, CST. Status updates will be shared via Twitter, so if you’d like to stay in the know, please follow @MagpiePaper here. Plus, we’d love to say hello.

Samples & Product Orders: Any samples or products ordered from our shop will ship on Mondays only. If you need your items for an upcoming event, please plan accordingly. If you have any questions about scheduling, I would be glad to help you determine whether we’ll be able to ship your items in time before you place your order.You can email me here.

Font Orders: We’ve got you covered. Your download link(s) will be provided immediately after your font purchase, just like normal.

With lots of love & prayers, Winston should be up and at ‘em soon and it’ll be back to business as usual. Many thanks, Lovelies, for your understanding. Winnie sends puppy kisses!

Our Sunprint place card tutorial was featured over at Ruffled today! If you want to incorporate a little chemistry magic into your wedding, head on over for the how to. Science = awesome sauce.

Three cheers for fellowship, hand-crafted beauty, and a special love-letter project that will totally make you cry. Steve & Amanda are two of our very favorite people, and their down home, supremely-styled Southern wedding is featured over at Green Wedding Shoes. Y’all are going to want to check this one out asap.

Steve… Amanda… Thank you for inviting us into your hearts. It was such an honor and a pleasure working with you. Y’all inspire!

p.s. Let’s also hear it for the delightful Scott & Cristen, of W. Scott Chester Photography, who took the poignant photo above. Georgia couples – go snatch these two up immediately before your date is booked. They’re amazing!

That’s pretty much how I’d sum up the last 12 months. I’ve been trying to write this post for the better part of year and I hope you’ll bear with me, Friends, because truth be told, I’ve struggled putting my feelings into words. Today is a very special day for me, and I want to tell you why.

Exactly one year ago, I quit my day-job. I know, it doesn’t sound like much. But it had been a long time coming, and the series of events that finally pushed me into action were pretty crazy.

You see, slowly the winds around me had changed. This time last year, the creative work that once made my heart thump was making me feel miserable. I was working 12-15 hour days for months on end, and for folks who weren’t always so nice. There were days I was so busy that I couldn’t find time to eat – on more than one occasion I stopped drinking water at my desk because there wasn’t even time for trip to the bathroom. I no longer found any fulfillment in what I was doing, who I was doing it for, or where I was doing it. In order to Get Through The Day, I buried my true self way, way down – I didn’t know how to be me, in this place that was so very wrong, without going crazy.

Meanwhile, at home in the wee hours of the night, I’d been carefully building up a little fledgling stationery studio. Magpie Paper Works was a full-time “part-time” venture, and it meant the world to me. My husband called me a wedding elf – each evening I set up shop in the basement and cut paper, painted, wordsmithed, hand-printed and packaged… And then in the mornings, little boxes of new-beginnings winged their way across the country. Designing was more than a hobby – it was an opportunity to do good. To share love. It felt like shipping hugs! I wanted more than anything to focus all of my energy doing this thing, but Lovelies, I was too scared. You know that voice! The one that says you’ll never, you can’t…

And then the strangest four weeks of my life took place.

Now, I didn’t used to be one of those people who believed that everything happened for a reason. But last January, it sure seemed like someone or something was going to help me change my path whether I was ready or not.

There was a terrible car accident, in which my husband was hit head-on by a commercial truck. He survived, thank goodness, but we both came away with an awareness of how suddenly life can change. I no longer had a vehicle, so getting to work became incredibly difficult. My commute turned into a four-hour-a-day affair. (On top of a 15 hour day.) Then I was given an overseas assignment which triggered immediate & visceral premonitions of doom. (No joke – I had a full-blown panic attack in a Verizon store, when I was trying to buy a country-specific SIM card.) Next, a series-of-unfortunate-office-events-that-shall-not-be-described-here. The straw that broke the camels back? An ice storm rolled through town, and while I was trying to hurry into the office the next morning, I slipped & fell in the middle of a busy intersection, cracking my head open. On the way home, I noticed that a prominent billboard in the city had been changed and now read: “Looking for a sign? You’ve found it.”

I handed in my notice the next day. (Okay, so I gave them 4 weeks to find a good replacement, who I trained. I’m from the Midwest – Nice is what we do.)

On February 25th, 2011, I walked out of the open gate, feeling mostly terrified and a little exhilarated at what I’d just done. I had no idea what the future had in store, or where I would land (would I?). But as it turned out, if you’re crazy enough to leap, to trust in the unknown – and believe me, on the 26th I felt pretty crazy – the landings tend to take care of themselves. Part-time Magpie became full-time, and it didn’t take long before more work began to trickle in. Slowly, ever so slowly, the shell began to fall away and the old me started to flicker again.

Which brings me to today. Today is an anniversary I will celebrate until the day I die. In many ways, it’s the day that I felt my purpose + my hands get in sync. It’s the day that the Universe kicked me where I sorely needed it. When I decided to trust in possibility instead of fear. It’s a day in which I celebrate all of the growing and learning I have yet to do – Lord knows, it’s an infinite amount! And I’m so grateful! Not the least for all of the amazing people I’ve met and worked with along the way, and for the opportunities that lie ahead.

But most of all, I celebrate that little spark – the one that burns inside all of us, waiting patiently for the day when we’re ready to kindle.

I guess this is sort of my love letter to the Universe. It’s also a very wordy hug for each of you out there who might be thinking about taking the leap. Be you, Leapers! Be you, bravely.