Chalkydoodles Blog » Folks We Love

Spreadin’ some Cheer – Friend and Photographer Chelsea Green

Lyn Pollard — Wed, 21 Dec 2011 17:14:34 +0000

I have to take a minute today to spread some holiday cheer about my friend and new favorite photographer, Chelsea Green.

Our family spent a fun and relaxing hour or two with Chelsea during our photo session last month, resulting in some amazing shots and a ton of great memories! We met up at the Heritage Farmstead in Plano – just off of 15th and Custer. It was the PERFECT place for a rustic, festive photo shoot (and was less than 15 minutes from our front door!)

Check out our Christmas card and some of our favorite shots from the session:

Interested in booking Chelsea for your next family photo shoot? If you’re lucky enough to live in the Dallas area, she just may be your new favorite photographer, too. Check out her website and shoot her an email. I know she would love to hear from you.

Also, read the blog post I wrote about Chelsea recently on the Dallas Advocate blog as part of my “How It’s Done” series. Chelsea does a great job of balancing working from home, caring for her sweet family and mentoring local high school girls through Young Life Richardson.

Merry Christmas from the Pollard Family! Thanks again, Chelsea!

Chalkydoodles on the Oilcloth International Blog

Lyn Pollard — Thu, 17 Jun 2010 05:10:06 +0000

Check out Chalkydoodles on the Oilcloth International Blog!

Thanks for the blog mention and for the sweet Tweet, Oilcloth.com!

Folks we Love: Jane Joss and Sweet Leaves™

Lyn Pollard — Sun, 07 Feb 2010 18:27:08 +0000

Here’s some sweet inspiration for you as we enter Valentine’s week!

Last fall, a friend and I met a terrific pair of up and coming designers at the Etsy Dallas craft show. Alyssa Krismer and Joslyn Krismer not only have a great story (they are former college-roommates, turned sisters-in-law – now married to twins!) They are also the co-creators and co-owners of Jane Joss a new Texas-based creative crafting company that is home to the Sweet Leaves™line of fabric plants, now available on Chalkydoodles.com.

Joslyn and Alyssa have a refreshingly-different eye for design, and have created a line of home decor that is unique, natural and sustainable – Sweet Leaves™ fabric plants. Perfect for those of us with less than a green thumb, Sweet Leaves™ look great season after season and never require the proper amount of sunlight or watering!

Made from a wide selection of designer and vintage fabrics in tons of different shapes and sizes, these creations by Jane Joss are the perfect addition to any decor. From potted plants to adorn your kitchen window sill to dainty branches perfect for your home or office, you’re certain to find an empty corner that would make the perfect home for these sweet creations.

Sweet Leaves™ also make the perfect, everlasting Valentine’s Day gift! Give them today, enjoy them for years to come!

Check out the selection of Sweet Leaves™fabric plants at Chalkydoodles Shop > Order by Tuesday, February 9 for delivery in time for Valentine’s Day! FREE local delivery in the Dallas/Fort Worth area is available. Contact us for more information or to create your own custom design.

Chalkydoodles loves Quirky Bird!

Lyn Pollard — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 03:45:24 +0000

As you may have heard me say (ok, I’ve said it MANY times) – I LOVE Quirky Bird. Quirky Bird Inc. is the company I chose to create the new Chalkydoodles.com website – and I am so very glad I did.

Quirky Bird Web Design - www.quirky-bird.com

The California-based QB team, led by artist and designer Staci Brillhart, is top-notch. Throughout the process (and it was quite a process) they continually gave me great advice, great customer service and in the end, what I think is a truly great website. I am officially a happy customer!

You can check out the new Chalkydoodles site as part of the portfolio at quirky-bird.com and while you’re there, also take a look at their impressive collection of both ecommerce and informational website designs.

The Chalkydoodles site as part of the Quirky Bird client portfolio.

Once again, thank you Quirky Bird for a job well done (and for all the fun we had doing it!)

So, now that the site is completed (well, there may be a page or two that I’m still tweaking!) I thought it would be fun to show you a little bit about the design process and how it all came together.

It all started with a piece of fabric and one of my favorite vintage aprons. I sent both to Staci for inspiration and low and behold, a design was born!

My vintage apron on its way to California and the Quirky Bird studios.

Next, I send Staci a few different shapes and sizes of my original Oilcloth Mini Chalkboard Labels to use in creating the new Chalkydoodles logo. Here’s how we decided to do it.

A Mini Chalkboard Label soon became...

Next steps were to define my products, categories, the overall way I wanted the site to function, etc . That was definitely the hard part! While I worked on that and also got to work on loading my products, Staci did her magic and turned my vintage apron, the floral fabric, the graphics from the logo design and my ideas for the site design into this – the finished product! (notice the lace and embroidery from the vintage apron at the top!)

www.chalkydoodles.com

Just a very small taste of the website design process, but I think a lot of fun to see how it all came together. Once we completed the actual design, the QB technical team got to work on coding everything.

Then came the testing period (definitely not my favorite part of website development) which is so crucial to ensuring everything is working correctly and that the customer has a good experiece while on the site.

We finally got everything fixed and tweaked and it was time to flip the switch! Chalkydoodles officially went LIVE on Thursday, January 14th. All in all, more than a 6-month long process. But, in the end, definitely worth it!