🌷🪞 Tufted Mirrors & Chinatown Daydreams 🧧🪄

Happy belated Mother’s Day to all the moms, mother figures, grandmothers, pet moms, and everyone spending the day surrounded by love in one way or another 💐 Living only a mile away from my mom now means we get to exist in our own little Venice bubble together more often, full of salty air, eclectic neighbors, long walks, and lots of color. We spent the day together and I made homemade caprese chicken orzo for dinner which felt fresh and light for a warm May evening. There is something so wonderful about cooking for someone who spent years cooking for you.

🧶💜 A Mirror for Violet

My newest tufting project was made for my mom, but also, for Violet. Mooncake has a mirror, so obviously Violet needed one too. 

I ordered a small mirror online, about the

size of a rottweiler’s head which honestly feels like the only acceptable unit of measurement for this project, and designed a tufted border around it filled with tiny symbols and details. Hearts, stars, little pops of color, and even a dog

bone tucked into the design for Violet herself. The border is made up of my mom’s favorite color combination, reds and purples, and for once I finally used yarn that does not shed all over my place. Thank you Google for guiding me toward the correct tufting materials before I accidentally created another fluffy disaster.

I also made a few smaller homemade gifts including a collage of Violet photos with a hand sewn violet attached to it, but the mirror definitely became the centerpiece.

📦🖼️ Prints Flying Across the Country

Lately I’ve been quietly revamping the shop section of my website to make it feel more organized and easier to browse. The old version started feeling like a giant overflowing drawer where everything had been shoved together with no system whatsoever.

While reorganizing everything, my somewhat neglected Etsy shop suddenly started getting attention again and prints are officially heading out across the country this week. It never stops feeling surreal seeing strangers connect with my work enough to bring it into their homes. Somewhere out there, little monsters and colorful objects are being unpacked in apartments and houses I will probably never see, which is a very beautiful thing to think about.

🏮🎐 Returning to My China Inspired Roots

As for current projects, I’ve started working on a new series that feels very connected to my years living in China. Instead of my usual fully whimsical monster scenes, these new mini paintings lean more observational and grounded in real places and memories.

A year or two ago I completed a commissioned Shanghai streetscape and ever since then I’ve wanted to revisit that visual world. This new body of work feels like exploring China through the eyes of an American who speaks the language, deeply cherishes the culture, and still carries those experiences everywhere she goes.

The first piece is inspired by a photograph I took in Chinatown in San Francisco. Most of the series will pull from places I visited while living in China, but since I’m back in the States now, it feels meaningful to also document the traces of Chinese culture I seek out here too. No matter where I travel, I always end up wandering into Chinatown first. Maybe it feels familiar, maybe comforting, maybe nostalgic. Probably all three.

I’m excited to slowly build this series into something that feels both personal and documentary, combining memory, travel, language, and visual storytelling all together in one place 🧧✨

With love and color,

Rosalie