illustration – Sanae Ishida

February 28, 2023

Queen Anne Book Company: A bibliophile’s haven

Hello, my friends! If you’ve been around here for any length of time, you know that Queen Anne Book Company has a very special nook in my heart. In March, the store will be celebrating its 10th year since becoming QABC under the purview of the current owners (the bookstore itself has been around for about two decades in the same location). My very first book deal (Little Kunoichi!) came about because of this wonderful store — I wrote about it here (I go on and on about my thoughts on criticisms for a while, but the summary of the book deal inception is towards the end).

To commemorate this momentous 10-year-anniversary, the lovely staff printed up limited edition posters and postcards and guess who painted that illustration? Yep, yours truly, and I’m so honored! A former QABC bookseller commissioned me to paint the illustration back in 2016. The bookseller was retiring and wanted to gift the bookshop something unique. At the time I was still rather new at the whole watercoloring thing, and I was so nervous to take on the project! They also printed personalized notepads and Blackwing pencils for the occasion. I love Blackwing pencils. Naturally, the generous folks at Queen Anne Book Company gave me my own set of a poster, postcards, notepad and pencil.

The display at Queen Anne Book Company

So awesome. If you’re ever in the neighborhood, please stop by this delightful haven for bibliophiles. The booksellers are warm and knowledgeable and always at the ready with spot-on recommendations. For me, it has always been and continues to be a magical place. My Hogwarts, if you will. And here’s a fun fact: my friend Wendee — one of the amazing booksellers — modeled for my book Sewing Love. Isn’t she beautiful? She’s also brilliant and fun and super stylish and I aspire to be like her one day.

Photos of Wendee by Manuela Insixiengmay | Styling by Rachel Grunig | Hair and Makeup by Kaija Towner

Cheers to many more decades of Queen Anne Book Company goodness!

December 16, 2022

2022 Free Printable Holiday Tags and Mini Gift Wraps

Can December 16th still be considered early December? No. It cannot. I erroneously believed and declared that I would have these holiday printables for you many, many days ago, but here we are. Let’s not dwell on excuses or explanations, though. If you need last minute tags and mini gift wrapping paper (ideal for tiny presents — jewelry, perhaps?), I got you.

I’ve designed some fun ones, which I hope will come in handy. Lately I’ve been really, really, really loving the Procreate app and have been playing around to see if I can make my digital watercolors look like the real deal (not that digital painting isn’t real — it’s just a different medium). I’ve sprinkled in some traditional watercolor illustrations amongst the digital ones. Can you tell which is which? I’m actually having trouble differentiating them myself.

For your merry-making and gifting pleasure, simply click on the image to download the PDF file. As always, I recommend printing the tags on card stock or sticker paper or textured inkjet paper like this one. If your printer has a borderless option, please select it; otherwise, you’ll have a 1/4″ border for the wrapping paper, which isn’t too big a deal. I tried to create some designs that could be used all year-round, just because I’m a practical gal and like to have options.

I will one day round up all the tags and wrapping papers I’ve designed and posted on this blog over the years, but if you’re looking for more options, please search on “holiday tags” and a whole slew of them should pop up!

Anyway, here are the 2022 holiday printables (click on the image to download):

TAGS

MINI GIFT WRAPS

Alright. That’s it for me in terms of 2022. What a year! I am looking forward to some R&R, and other than a couple of short posts for Patreon, I will log off from the online world to allow for some much needed rejuvenation. I’m going to hang out with my fam, eat some good food, read lots and lots of books and paint up a storm in Procreate! Oh, and I’ll squeeze in some sewing too. Sounds divine.

I am thinking of you all with a heart brimming with appreciation and a sense of wonder. We’ve made it to the end of another year — this alone is cause for celebration!

Sending you so much love and wishing you the most glorious holiday season and the loveliest start of 2023! I’ll be back at the end of January. Stay cozy, my friends.

October 31, 2022

Wait, is it already Halloween?

October. Oh, how this month felt like it was kidnapped by pirates, torn asunder and swept away into roiling, thundercloud-studded seas. Okay, that’s a bit dramatic. Basically, I have no idea where the time went. And these pirates that I drew and made into a repeat pattern seem awfully adorable and incapable of any kidnapping.

Year after year, October continues to be the busiest month full of deadlines for me. How’s your October been?

I’m currently smack in the middle of preparing for the next round of Creativebug classes, and that’s been my main focus for the last month. I totally phoned it in with K’s Halloween costume and resorted to a hyper-speed shopping trip at a local thrift store. One plaid pleated skirt, one white button-down shirt and one blue blazer later, the Rory (of Gilmore Girls fame) costume was complete. We have zero spooky decorations, not even a tiny pumpkin in sight. It’s safe to say that I’ve been a Halloween grinch.

We were at one of K’s volleyball games last week, and the sound system blared holiday music. Holiday music!!! Pre-Halloween! I was very confused. I remember the ancient times when fa-la-las could be heard only after Thanksgiving. I’m starting to sound more and more like a crotchety old person, aren’t I? Don’t get me wrong, I love the end-of-the-year festivities, but mid-October seems a tad much to get the holiday spirits jumpstarted. I’m pretty sure that my stress level spiked up as the first notes of Jingle Bells filled the gymnasium.

Anyway. Enough of that. I am going to jump back into Creativebug preparations and will be back next month with some downloadable goodies! Hope you all have a delightful Halloween!

February 28, 2022

Obsessively designing

Hello, hello! How are you all doing? What a crazy time…I have no adequate words for what seems like ceaseless global upheaval.

I find solace in making things when the world seems to be churning, and lately I’ve been having a love affair with designing patterns for wallpaper, stationery and fabric. I celebrated a dear friend’s birthday this weekend, and let me tell you — wrapping the presents with my own designs is incredibly gratifying. I’m getting more and more comfortable with what’s called “seamless repeats” and am challenging myself to more complicated patterns. I am drawn to simple designs too, though.

I’ve been diligently adding to my Spoonflower shop with new designs every week. I’ll be adding more items to my online shop this upcoming week as well and I’ve also been experimenting with making my own “mock-ups.” Mock-ups are easy ways to visualize what a design would look like on a product without actually sewing/producing said products. It’s all done digitally. For example, I created a mock-up of my Reversible Eco Bag pattern. You can see the same apricots pattern on the Eco Bag here:

And here are a few other versions I played with:

Fun, right? I designed the eco bag to accommodate different fabric combinations, but I often just like to simplify and cut the outer bag from a single piece of fabric as shown in the first three bag examples. I have so many strewn around my house and use them all the time.

The floral pattern shown in the first couple of images is my faborite so far and will be available soon. After I printed it out for the wrapping paper, I realized that I need to make a few more tweaks.

Anyway, today I just wanted to share this heightened devotion to puzzling out seamless patterns. It’s a good way to use my brain so I don’t worry so much about everything, you know?

I hope you are all staying safe and cozy and peaceful. Much love!

November 30, 2021

2021 Advent Calendar + Free Printables!

Hello, hello my friends!

If you’re in the US, I hope you had a lovely Thanksgiving weekend to kick off the holiday season. Mine was quiet and very low-key, which is exactly how I like my my celebrations, especially celebrations about gratitude.

One of the things I’ve been working on over the long weekend is the annual Advent Calendar. It’s going to go on top of the piano, and this tradition is a much beloved one in our family. As I was cutting and assembling, I realized that this will be my 10th Advent Calendar. 10 years!! Isn’t that mind-boggling? As always, I’ve listed all the calendars I’ve made to date at the bottom.

It’s always a challenge to come up with a different concept, and this year I designed a bunch of patterns, then I folded them into triangular boxes (I followed the tutorial from here, but made my own template of quatrefoil shapes). Aren’t the patterns cute? Can you find the boba tea and volleyball ones? You can tell that I had a lot of fun trying to make them holiday-esque! I created about 30 designs total but obviously only used 25, and tried to include a few motifs that represent K’s favorite things. I had a “doh!” moment, however, when I noticed that I forgot to include a music-related pattern. Music is at the top of her favorite things list! That and true crime podcasts, which I also didn’t include. What would I have drawn? Knives and blood and dead people? Crime tape?

So I started by cutting out the shape…

Then folded in the “petal” edges…

Then folded each triangle inward to create the square base…

Added the filling and punched a hole in each petal tip…

Threaded a cord through and attached a little circular label (for the countdown numbers 1-25)….

And voila!

I was especially proud of the idea of including a puzzle piece every day. I got one of those DIY puzzles from an art store and painted it with watercolors. I love that she’ll be able to slowly put together the puzzle throughout the month.

Fun, right?

Here they are…adorable triangular gift boxes, ready to be opened (sorry for the image quality — I was rapidly losing natural light):

Every year I like to offer up some free printable holiday tags for YOU, and realized that I could simply reduce the size of the quatrefoil shapes into sweet little tags. You know how much I love tags! If you’d like to download some tags from years past, scroll down after the list of Advent Calendars.

For this year I selected 12 of the designs that felt more generally appropriate (you probably don’t want a volleyball themed tag, right?) and arranged them onto one sheet as tags. Click on the image or here to download the file. I recommend printing them on card stock or textured paper like my go-to Inkjet paper for best results.

I’m so excited for K to see the calendar tomorrow morning (December 1st)! That’s the most thrilling moment for me: when she wakes up and beholds the whole shabang.

By the way, if you’re subscribed to receive blog posts by email, I’ve switched email services and will be sending the blog posts from a different email address (sanae[at]sanaeishida.com), so you may find the blog updates in your promotions tab or in your spam folder. Please have a look there if you notice that you haven’t been getting updates from me. Thank you!!!

Oh, and here are the past Advent Calendars:

And here are tags from years past for your convenience if you’d like more options:

2020 Tags