april margin scribbles 🌸

notes on craft club, mahjong, art, and inspiration

Hello and welcome to Margin Scribbles, my monthly newsletter where I share updates on Craft Club, my upcoming mahjong sets, artwork I’ve been working on, and things I’m inspired by. I’m so glad you’re here!

Craft Club

March Craft Club was great - we had so much fun decorating cookies with Cookies by Jennie. Thank you as always to East Pass Coffee Co. for hosting!

Our last craft club of the season is coming up later this month. You may have seen the Instagram reels or Tiktoks of moms collaging their children’s artwork to make a unique canvas for display. Well, that’s what we’ll be doing! Gather that pile of artwork and snag a ticket here before they are posted later this week. All materials will be included and beverages are available for purchase.

*<secret giveaway time>*

Comment below with any ideas you have for next year’s craft club season and I’ll randomly select someone to receive a snail mail surprise!

After our April event, we will start back craft club in September or October with a whole new lineup of crafty events for you!

Mahjong

I know half of y’all are here to get mahjong set updates, and I’m happy to share that my Emerald Coast set is still on track to be delivered this summer!! Stay tuned as I share more details about the launch party in the coming months <3

In the meantime, I’d love to invite you to come see and play with my set in person at my friend Morgan’s Mahjong Monday events at The Henderson here in Destin and at our upcoming card review and open play session at Local Market next week. You can RSVP for the card review session here and learn more about Morgan and her Mahjong Monday events on her Instagram here.

Finally, an update on Coastal Christmas! I sent off my tile design to get a sample set manufactured that I cannot wait to share with you! My mat design is below, but still deciding on border color. I thiiink we will go with green but I love all three. My goal is to have these available in October/early November.

Digital Graffiti!

Digital Graffiti, maybe the most fun art festival in the planet, is a digital light show in Alys Beach in May. The work of digital artists from around the world is projected onto Alys’ beautiful white homes and the neighborhood invites you to walk around and take it all in. It’s an art show, it’s a party, it’s just sooo much fun. This was my FAVORITE event last year so I spent close to 100 hours hand-drawing the animations of each frame of this year’s piece - Child’s Play - and I’m so excited and honored to announce that it was selected for this year’s show!!

My son Harry was enamored with the festival last year and asked me to teach him how to animate so he could submit a piece. He was a diligent student who spent so much time hand drawing each frame of his animation he titled Eye Color. It’s an eyeball bouncing around the screen with a changing background inspired by Rui Yang’s beautiful artwork from last year’s festival The Bouncing Eye. We submitted it, not thinking much, and y’all - he got in!! His work is going to be looped after mine in the show. I am beyond proud of him and grateful to the wonderful Alys Beach folks who made my 6-year-old’s dreams come true!!

What I’ve Been Making Lately

Ok, substack says I’m nearing the length limit so I’m going to try to wrap it up. Some favorite projects over the last month were new frozen drink machine signs for my husband’s beach bar The Sand Flea, custom painted wine bottles for Destin Charity Wine Auction Foundation, and a figure drawing session led by Lindsay Tobias, which I loved and can’t wait to repeat every month.

What I’ve Been Loving Lately

My friend Sarah gave our book club these Spongelles for Valentine’s Day and I have since ordered more. A spongelle is like a sponge combined with a bar of soap - every little hole of that cute flower shaped sponge is packed with lovely smelling body wash and using it is such a nice experience, just trust me!

I got my kids and all their cousins Tincan landline phones for Christmas, and we enjoy them so much! My son often comes home from school and calls his grandmother to see if he can run over and hang out for an hour. The kids feel so independent being able to pick up their own phone to call a relative or friend anytime they want - highly recommend!!

Finally, the Brick - cannot recommend this thing more. I have a love/hate relationship with social media. I enjoy it but, like most people, I can also get sucked in and waste a tremendous amount of time. The brick is a physical device that blocks specific apps (you select which ones in setup) until you physically put your phone next to it to unblock. So for example, if I find myself picking up my phone at a dang red light because I don’t have the attention span to sit through 30 seconds of waiting anymore, I can “brick” my device from the app. Then, I can’t open any fun distracting apps until I return home and tap my phone on the physical brick I put in the kitchen. Even at home, I find the chore of getting up to tap the phone enough of a reminder to just put the phone down. It’s been great!

An Assignment for Y’all

Blob Drawings! I found this idea on Instagram a few months back and now I cannot for the life of me find who to credit it to (sorry!). Basically, you take a sheet of paper and draw a bunch of dots. CM and I did this together and used Posca markers for dots. Then go back over with a pen and turn those dots into as many different things as you can think of. This is such a fun activity to do by yourself or with kids!