January 20th, 2012
Woohoo! My Milwaukee design made it into the Top 10 on Spoonflower this week. Actually in the top 4! I’m so proud that I got so many votes for depicting a smaller, lesser well-know town than somewhere like New York or London.
I’m in very good company with such talented designers. See all the top ten designs here.
Can you find all these buildings in the design?
1. the Calatrava 2. Well Fargo building 3. the Basilica 4. the Summerfest grounds 5. the US Bank building 6. Miller Park 7. Joey Buona’s building 8. Wisconsin Gas Building 9. City Hall 10. Northwestern Mutual 11. Trocadero 12. the Allen Bradley Clock Tower 13. apparently the Alcohol Tobacco Firearms Explosives building (I didn’t know what that building was, I’m just used to seeing it downtown!) 14. The Hoan Bridge (ok that one’s pretty easy)
Bonus points for my friends and family if you know which building is my third ward office building!
Tags: brew city, calatrava, city, city textile design, downtown milwaukee, hoan bridge, miller park, milwaukee textile design, pattern, summerfest grounds, third ward
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January 12th, 2012
This week I submitted a very special design to Spoonflower’s Cityscape contest: a tribute to the city I’ve been living in for 6 years, Milwaukee! I work downtown so I’m pretty familiar with some of it’s iconic buildings, but I also looked up some pictures for inspiration. As I was working on the design I started noticing common architectural details like archways and colors that pop up all over the city like cream city brick, rusty-reds and blueish green accents.
Among the well known buildings like the Calatrava and the Allen Bradley clock tower I put in a few personal touches like my apartment, my sister’s house and as a little joke to my friends: Jo Cat’s pub and the coffee shop next door Rochambo (classic Brady Street establishments).
Go here to vote for my design!
Go here if you want to order some fabric!
Tags: allen bradley clock tower, calatrava, city, cream city, downtown, milwaukee, milwaukee textile design, third ward
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December 31st, 2011
One of my projects I was working on to frantically get done before Christmas was a puppy portrait for a client. She gave me a picture of the dog, but asked me to photoshop it into a nice living room scene so it would look similar to the one I did for her a few years ago and the one I did for my grandma.
Here’s BooBoo, the Yorkshire terrier in watercolors.
Tags: living room scene, photoshop, puppy portrait, watercolor, Yorkshire terrier painting
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December 21st, 2011
Happy Holidays! Here’s my Christmas card design for this year.
Also, good news on the computer front. After letting it sit for a week or so it started up again! But I still kind of want a new computer now! I’m dreaming of a 27″ imac!
Tags: christmas time, clock, elf, holidays, red
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December 13th, 2011
Boooooooop! Allison Beilke is experiencing technical difficulties…
My cat was sitting up by me while I was on my computer the other day and spilled a cup of water on my poor little macbook. It looks very much like a new computer may be in the cards. Until then, unfortunately I won’t be able to post updates on things I’m working on. Which is ok because I’ve been SUPER busy between doing holiday cards, painting and sewing cat ornaments! More to come on all of that hopefully soon if all goes smoothly when I bring my computer in to the Apple store.
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December 4th, 2011
The Friday after Thanksgiving was my 30th birthday – on black friday no less! I normally don’t have huge birthday celebrations because of it’s proximity to Thanksgiving. I usually just have a nice family dinner, consisting of some kind of anti-Thanksgiving food like sushi or Mexican.
However this year was a milestone birthday and my bestie, Erin’s birthday is a few days after mine so we decided to put together a big birthday bash the weekend after Thanksgiving. We decided the theme would be “Full Glitz” which is a term that they use on Toddlers and Tiaras to describe the really over the top pageants with tons of hair, make-up and glittery outfits.
We came up with the genius idea of renting a hotel suite and having drinks with our gal pals, followed by seeing our favorite lounge band, The Five Card Studs play in the hotel bar. Of course, we couldn’t resist putting together some decorations to match the invitation and we both made prize ribbons that said “30″ on them.
Sooo cute and classy! I couldn’t have been happier for my 30th birthday, unless we got serenaded by The Five Card Studs..
oh wait…!
Tags: 30th birthday, girly, invitation, ladies, party, pink, retro
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November 27th, 2011
How cool is this: my cousin, Kris made a bowling shirt out of my Bowling Pinstripe fabric. It totally makes me want to join a bowling league!
Tags: bowling, bowling shirt, fabric, Spoonflower, textile
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November 15th, 2011
Ok so I know halloween was a few weeks ago so this is a little late, but I just had to share some adorable photos! My partner in crime, Erin and I helped to style her mother-in-law’s halloween party and she just sent us the photos.
For some reason neither of us were feeling particularly inspired by halloween this year… well until we started our pinterest board and got the idea to do a campy, retro, technicolor themed party (think the Adams Family guest starring on Scooby Doo). I created the graphics and labels and we did this cute candy corn bunting together.
Here’s a closer look at the invitation.
I heard the party was a “graveyard smash”… yeah I said it!
Tags: bunting, campy, candy, candy corn, halloween, party, retro
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October 23rd, 2011
Someone on Spoonflower requested that I make my “Sweets” fabric design for sale. It was actually my very first design I uploaded to Spoonflower way back in spring of 2010. I had never seen it printed so I ordered a swatch. A little pre-Halloween sugar rush:
Tags: candy, lollypops, Spoonflower, sprinkles, sugar, sweet, Textiles
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October 17th, 2011
Great success! I conquered my fears of oil painting (I really hadn’t done it since college, 7 years ago!). My dad had been asking me to do a painting of a beautiful area of Italy they visited last year, Cinque Terre. Unfortunately I have never actually been there so that didn’t help with inspiration. I finally just went for it and ended up being really excited with what I came up with and now I’m actually looking forward to doing more oil paintings!
Tags: cinque terre, italy, oil painting
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