Remember this I was working on? Well with a few little adjustments (some added embroidery, etc) I finally got the sample back from the factory. The middle of the flowers light up when the kid walks. It’s really fun to work on kids shoes, because cute is the priority, and you know, that’s pretty much how I approach a lot of design, hoping it captures “cute.” I’ll show you more, later. Currently I am working on what seems like a billion different shoes for our Spring Summer 2009 collection, and my head is in a million different places; beach thongs, strappy sandals, peep toes, skimmers, infant shoes…

Look at this amazing sunset a few nights back! That’s the Boston skyline as seen from our porch.

Sorry my blog has been so blah lately. I used to post so often and take so many photos! I’ve been feeling like I should spend more time making stuff by hand and less time on the computer, for some reason. Could be that I’ve been spending my days for the past 4 months or so, not on the computer, and have actually enjoyed being away from it for long periods of time. Also, I’ve been enjoying domestic home life and games of scrabble, walks with the dog, and something made in the kitchen almost every night. I’ll try to post more often, I really will. Today I helped create a Thanksgiving holiday window display, with some 3-foot corn stalks made out of paper. Fun! Photos soon…

Great news, I am getting back into a full-time footwear position! Starting in December, I will be designing Guess? kids shoes for a company here in the New England area! I am super happy to be working with a great team, at a private company (you might remember my rants of working at a mega-corporation, and what ultimately drove me into the freelance world a year ago.) How fun to be doing kids footwear full time as well! I love kids footwear, lots of sparkly this and thats and bright colors and fun trims and stuff. I had the pleasure of doing some fun freelance kids projects, now I’ll be doing it full time! Yeah! This means I’ll be traveling for work again, which I am looking forward too.

We are throwing a cajun creole party for Memorial Day weekend, and after doing lots of research on all kinds of lovely things to draw for the invite (crawfish, gumbo, cocktails, shrimp, fish, trombones and other brass instruments, beautiful wrought iron details in architecture) I settled on this image of a perspective view of New Orleans house, complete with decorative wrought iron. The bottom half is going to list the menu in handwritten letters, as well as the other important info. Should be fun! And now, I must get to work drawing shoes in Illustrator for my latest footwear freelance assignment here in Boston.

Dolce Vita, Nine West, Nine West, Poetic License, Repetto, Kenneth Cole, & Chinese Laundry. Irresistible shiny materials (patents & metallics.) Flats with interesting details (peep-toes, ankle straps, contrast binding, bling) and the occasional wedge. Yay for Spring Footwear! No I didn’t just go buy a bunch of pairs of shoes, but over the course of the last year, my little spring collection has been building, but they are just now seeing the light of day with the spring weather that is (finally) here on the East Coast. It’s true, while shopping all around the U.S. and Europe for footwear inspiration for work, it’s hard to not snag a pair for yourself every now and again. Especially once you’ve seen so much of the same everywhere, you know a good deal when you see one, and you know when you are seeing something special too.

And check out these cute Joseph Campbell ankle boots I got on my last shoe shopping trip to California! Snazz-eh and a super deal!

Ehhhh, well that was a nice two days of upper 60 degree weather! Now I guess it’s time for snow again! Back to winter-wear.

We just got these samples back, I love seeing my print patterns developed and in the details of my footwear designs! I designed the apple print as well as the shoes. Don’t wear the patent peep-toe sneaks in the snow though!

These strappy little numbers will perk you right up!

Ok a little sassy peep-toe patent wedge with cute buckle detail. We all need a pair of these!

Not all the prints we use are of my original design, this one was a nice plaid fabric we turned into a screenprint for a kids rainboot.

Yippee! It’s 70 degrees today in NYC! Wow! I swear we are having bizzare weather. One day, it’s 9 degrees and snowy. Then a week later, it’s 70! Freaky! But I’ll take it, cuz it means I can wear my new poetic license funky flats I got in California! Wheeee! No socks, no down coats, no gloves! And it’s still light out when I work late, and leave at 6:30 or 7:00 at night! Yay!

Last week I went to New Jersey to the Garden State Mall to continue shopping for spring inspiration. Lucky for me, I stumbled across a pair of ultra-reduced clearance special Missoni sunglasses. Fab-u-lous. Look at this gigantic pile of crusty dirty snow. Yeck! Anyway, then this weekend I caught the flu, and then it turned into bronchitis. More Yeck! I am sick sick sick and have been in bed sweating out the poison for the past 5 days. Finally made it to the Dr. today so should be better within another 5 days thanks to antiobiotics. I hate being sick, I hate being home and feeling so bad all I can do is sleep. I want to draw, to work, to knit, to sew, something. But I can only sit up for about 20 minutes at a time before I feel dizzy or have a coughing fit that turns into an asthma attack. Okay. gotta go before the wheezing takes me over!

Another of my footwear design samples returned to the office while I was gone! I was influenced by old-fashioned, upholstered big heavy furniture when I designed this tufted pleather bootie! This sample came back exactly as I designed, which is always a great thing to see, I love it when a plan comes together.

More of my boot and slipper samples have been coming in for Fall/Winter 08, the wellie boots turned out cute I think! I designed the prints for these. Hopefully, these will be sold under the Steve Madden label. I can’t remember who is going to be looking at the slipper line, but I think it’s a retailer in the mid-west. Again, it’s all such a long, arduous process for these designs. Half the time they don’t get made right, so they are dropped before they can even be sold. And then, sometimes, they don’t get sold, so they never end up in retail. And all of this is happening 6 months to a year after you have designed them. So, I’ll try to follow the progress on these things so that I can find out where they will be sold, and when!

Anyway, it’s like Christmas getting your samples back. Sometimes, it’s a terrible gift you can’t wait to get rid of (it get’s dropped right away because of various reasons; execution or just “what the hell was I thinking when I designed this”) but sometimes, it’s the gift you’ve been waiting for, it’s almost darn-near perfect. It glows. It’s so right. It’s even better than your 2-d sketch. You relinquish a lot of control when you send the designs out to the other side of the world to be made, and when they get back to you, and you see what happened to what you tried to do, it almost feels like gambling. I guess that is why we have to put forth so many designs, because the odds are better you’ll come up with a complete line even after drops. It’s fun though. Working in product design and development is exciting and fun.

Getting on the craze for flats and ballerinas, we updated the details of this popular silhoutte and put on a quilted patent toe cap, patent binding and and bow, and used cute houndstooth and animal print fabrics. Pretty snazzy eh?