friends
Hope all of you in the States have had a great Thanksgiving! I went to celebrate with friends in Santa Barbara, on a ranch in the mountains...
and in LA, by the beach in Santa Monica...
I'm thankful for all the wonderful people in my life, and for the opportunities I've had to create the beautiful things I've always wanted to. I'm also thankful for ice cream.
Mariko x
Here's a very sweet picture of my parents-in-law's vegetable allotment, with the sign I painted for them. Hurrah for an English summer!
I designed some thank you cards that matched our wedding Save-the-Dates and invitations, to send our lovely guests. The illustration features the watercolour leaves from the wedding, but small pink flowers have been added to the design, to show love blossoming...
The leaves were printed in HK (my friend Sandy at Lui & Co handled this for me) on specially chosen thick soft paper, and these were then sent to my friend Katie Baldwin in the States, who letter-pressed my calligraphy and flowers by hand. 
This created the effect of softness and crispness, in one beautiful package. I hope it's a special way to thank everyone who shared our wedding, and those who sent us gifts from far away...
Designing and illustrating for my own wedding has been a pleasure. Stressful, but full of joy too. I created all the stationery first, with a green/pink/brown/white colour palette, and occasional border of green watercolour leaves, and then carried this through all the wedding elements. Simplicity was the key to everything.
The reception was held at the Black Barn, in Berkshire (UK), a huge barn on a working farm, and a delightful setting for a perfect day. They don't have many weddings there, and I was free to create everything just how I wanted it...
My brother Kenji was in charge of the bar (he's a drinks specialist) and he created a welcome punch for the guests, with watermelon hearts on the glasses, and special cocktails for the evening. 
I made the signage for both in the wedding colours.
My friend Karen made bunting out of different shaped paper doilies and green ribbon, which we hung inside and outside the barn. I had lots of fun with the flowers, which I bought from New Covent Garden market and arranged with my mum, in my personal collection of vintage bottles, jars, and white ceramic jugs. 
The interior of the barn still takes my breath away. I wanted it to be pretty, welcoming, and sparkling, and retain the essential "barn-ness" of the venue itself. To create a glowing atmosphere, I used festoon lights for the ceiling, hung by the amazing James and Chris of acdisco, and smaller pinlights from thinkgadgets for the columns. My friend Alvin, of YMK design, oversaw all the technical aspects of the styling and installation.
I painted the seating plan as vines with leaves, in the U shape of the table layout.
In the entrance to the barn, photos hung on twine with wooden pegs (along with some framed photos of the bride & groom). Alvin took fun photos at the wedding with a mini polaroid camera, and these were also hung up for everyone to see.
On the opposite side of the entrance was the centre-piece of the reception: the cake table. Friends brought hand-made cakes, meringues and puddings, and my friend Anna styled the table to look irresistible.
I made hand-written doilie labels for the desserts, with the baker's name, aswell as the type of cake. I also made doilie candles in various heights, containing battery-operated tealights, for all the tables. Our official photographer Sonja Read took these beautiful photos of the cake table.
My dad made our gorgeous wedding cake; three tiers of homemade fruit cake heaven...
At the end of the cake table was a mini sweet shop. Everything came from my favourite treat website, Chorley & Baker. We had sugared almonds, milk bottles, gummy hearts, and apple bon-bons, all chosen with the wedding colours in mind.
My friend Alex at ChocoYou even made delicious little hand-made chocolates with an edible version of my vignette illustration on them!
My dad also made some lovely wine bottle labels, using elements of my illustrations. Each label had a portrait of us, and a quote about love.
The amazing Street Kitchen provided the catering. They parked their airstream just outside the barn, and everyone went up to collect their food. For the main course, I used eco-friendly plates that matched the barn, that we could recycle,
and for the desserts, I gave each guest a personalised vintage side plate. They doubled as place settings and wedding favours, and were such fun to make.
I bought plates from Portobello market, thrift stores in San Francisco, and charity shops all over London, and then created a dotty calligaphy font in ceramic paint, which could be baked on, to become permanent.
It was our dream wedding, and I'd like to thank everyone who helped us with all the planning, designing, installation and clean-up (especially Johan, our wonderful DJ friend). It simply wouldn't have been possible without the help of all our friends and family.
Everything was perfect, and I'm full of love for all of you...especially my adorable new husband.
There are so many things I'd like to show from my wedding, but for now, here's a photo of the ceramic wedding cake topper that my friend Aude made for us. I love it so much!
I'm away on honeymoon for two weeks, and when I get back, I'll blog lots of gorgeous wedding stuff...
I painted this rubber ducky for my niece. 'Duck' is her first proper word, and this one is covered with clouds and stars...
My favourite bit about Christmas is wrapping the gifts. I often wrap other people's gifts too! My friends Bob Foundation in Tokyo have just published a new book about wrapping. 
I love wrapping! They asked me to demonstrate my wrapping powers, and here I am in the book, with my specially wrapped Bob gift.
I used to dream about being the gift-wrapping person in the department stores in Japan....
A little advance notice of an exhibition I'm having with my friend Aude, who makes beautiful ceramics. I'll have lots of framed prints, perfect for gifts, and we've got two guest exhibitors this year. The show will be in Kentish Town, London, in a private gallery, so please e-mail me for exact directions.
So far I've done 2 new images for this project, making use of several other artists' bits of artwork. In the first, I directly used Aude's fox mask and Kahori's flower to complement my bird branch theme:
In the next round, I didn't use the others' actual artwork, but was inspired to draw my own stag (thanks Hiromi!) and fox. I made a little scenario with its own Latin motto "a true friend is a rare bird".
Keep voting, and some of these t-shirts could become real!
So, my Outer Edit collaboration project starts today. Please go the website, register, and vote for my artwork! The collaboration continues until October 16th, and then the T-shirts with the most votes get produced, yay!
The theme is 'Flora & Fauna', and this is my starting artwork...
I did a few sketches while at my friend Karen's wedding. It was held in the University Chapel in Glasgow, which was rather grand and imposing, but everyone was so happy and beautiful it felt warm and cosy. I really adore Scottish weddings, with all the men wearing kilts...
Karen's dress was classical and simple...
The flowers at the reception was adorable, lots of anemones and simple glass jam jar holders.
I created the wedding invitations, place settings and seating plan, for my friend Karen's wedding recently, up in Scotland. They had a map theme, mixing elements from both London and Glasgow, the cities where the bride and groom live.
We chose pink and brown to give a lovely vintage look, to match the overall theme of the wedding.
The place settings had elements of the invitation illustration on the front, with a little bonus illustration of Karen's spaniel in a neat bow-tie on the reverse. I added a delicate die-cut pop-out shape for the guests' names, which I hand-wrote in brown ink. I then also hand made name settings for the tables to match.
The tables were named after roads in both Glasgow and Scotland. I designed the seating plan around this concept, making it into a street map, with each individual place marker as a geographic feature on the map: a house, a tree, a car, a statue... 
Us and the seating plan on the day...
The wedding photos were taken by Christopher Currie.
This weekend I went to Liverpool to visit some friends and see the Alice in Wonderland exhibition at the Tate Gallery. Although the Tenniel illustrations (the ones the story was originally published with) are fabulous, my favourite are those by Tove Jansson (of Moomins fame) and Mervyn Peake (author of Gormenghast). It was great to see so many original documents relating to Lewis Carroll and the original Alice.
We walked around the docks in the glorious sunshine and blue skies...
and also enjoyed a drink in the amazing Philharmonic pub. I loved all the period details.
In my last NY blog I mentioned that I went to a gig of a friend of a friend (Stephan Said) and did some sketches... well, my friend showed him the sketches, he (Stephan) loved them, and asked me if I could do some more for his new album. So I did.
We discussed the album, I watched videos of his live performances, listened to the songs, and then worked out a concept for the album cover: I drew each of the main band members, and the image wrapped around the front and back of the CD packaging to show them all.
I did extra sketches for the inside of the booklet, and also did most of the hand-lettering in the same loose pen style, for the titles and track names. I think it holds it all together well.
Here's an interview with Stephan on PRI, and you can listen to the single 'Take a Stand' on the Huffington Post, and of course you can find out all about Stephan on his own website.
The album was released yesterday, September 21st, International Day of Peace.
Hi all, a big thank you to everyone who came to my opening party last night. It was crowded and cosy and wonderful! Many tea sets and etchings were sold, and I hope all my new patrons of the arts went home happy.
The show continues until the 24th September, with new pieces (rugs/cushions etc) being added next week. Bring your friends...
This is me, my friend Alexis, and some of my 'Peony Collection' silk cushions. The Peony Collection designs are created from details of the flowers in my etchings.
So, my good friend Ping got married this May, and I designed his wedding invitations, and also created a special map for him of Central Park in NY (where he made his romantic proposal). The style brief for the invitation was a vintage, country feel, with a quirky, hand-made aesthetic; light-bulbs hanging from wooden rafters and flowers in jam jars, that sort of thing.
I created a simple, hand-lettered invitation, in two slightly retro colours, with a few illustrative details. Inside, the card was also hand-lettered.
The card design was used as a detail throughout the wedding, with cards on the tables as menus, place settings and memory cards, where everyone could write notes for the bridal couple and hang them up on a washing line...
The map I created for them was a narrative of where they walked that day, where Ping hesitated, where they got lost, and where he finally proposed.
It was used as an animated feature in a mini-movie of the wedding, and also as a back-drop for the stage at the reception:
What a lovely wedding...
*the photographs were taken by Tec Petaja
After the conference in Kyoto, I travelled for a week with some friends, and we went to Naoshima, an island in the Inland Sea that has been turned into a sort of 'art park'. It has several museums: my favourite was the 'Chichu Art Museum' with some amazing installations by James Turrell. You can get all the details of Naoshima here:
www.benesse-artsite.jp/en/naoshima/art/index.html
We stayed in a mongolian tent on the beach, and in the morning, we walked to Yayoi Kusama's pumpkin scuplture on the end of a jetty. It was beautiful. Serenely odd and perfect at the same time.
There were various scupltures and art pieces dotted around the island, so it made exploring really exciting!
We also spent a few days in Tokyo, visiting galleries and traditional shops to get printmaking supplies.
3331 in Tokyo is a new multi-use artspace in an old school, that has galleries, studios and workshops. I bought a print, and thought about having a show here one day.
I also ate tasty tasty tai yaki,
and had a restful day local style at Odaiba...
