In belated tribute to legendary singer-songwriter John Prine, I designed a Valentine for my country-music-loving friends. It accompanied an Oh Boy Records fly swatter embossed with a lyric from his classic, “Angel from Montgomery”. The song sheet music is the card background, and the QR code links to a curated playlist of 40 versions (originals and covers) of the beloved ballad.

While employed as a Development Strategist for the Killebrew-Thompson Memorial, I created a deck of cards for Esophageal Cancer Awareness Month in April to honor notable lives lost to the disease (inspired by Harmon Killebrew, a dedicatee of the annual charity event).

Toned in the official color of the esophageal cancer ribbon, each card features a famous person with a QR code linking to content (video, song, obituary) celebrating their life work. The exercise proved to be a unique lens through which to discover the diverse beauty of human experiences.

I was scheduled to go with a friend on a kitesurfing trip to Aruba. In advance of the trip, she sent me a onesie. We cancelled the trip dues to COVID concerns. As a thank you for the onesie, I created a set of 36 photos, enclosed in an old-school film processing envelope that highlight the sights and activities we might have enjoyed had we gone.

The invitation to a French-themed bridal shower for my Francophile future sister-in-law—a French teacher who moonlights as a belly dancer. The French headlines speak to how the couple met, the wedding locale, the honeymoon destination, and the bride and groom's professions as teachers by day and performers by night. (My brother is a musician.)

For a Matrix-fan friend of mine facing a professional crossroads, I created candy inspired by the choice that Morpheus presents to Neo:

You take the blue pill, the story ends. You wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill, you stay in Wonderland, and I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes.

The red and blue pills are Mike and Ike® candies, and the "Surprise Inside" is a flash drive with The Complete Matrix Trilogy.

Snowkiting is an outdoor winter sport where people use kite power to glide on snow or ice. To celebrate my snowkiter friends' top performance in the Red Bull Ragnarok, a 100-km endurance race in Norway, I made edible trophies that pun on ski slang. The "hot dog" is a Bulgarian sausage, a tribute to my friends' homeland.

A tongue-in-cheek pitch to my friend Neal Gottlieb, Founding Twin of Three Twins Ice Cream, for a new flavor with five quintessential Hawaiian flavors—coconut, Kona coffee, macadamia nuts, cashews, and roasted kukui nuts. The three twins are sporting aloha wear fashioned from the brand’s ice cream pints and the leaf in the logo.

Tetra is short for Tetraodontidae, the scientific family name for pufferfish, which are characterized by their ability to inflate and secrete deadly toxins. Made to delight my then two-year-old nephew, Tetra inflates to dispense not poison but candy.

A detail for my own amusement, the bicycle-print fabric fin is a nod to the feminist slogan, "A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle." Commonly misattributed to to Gloria Steinem, the slogan was coined by Australian social activist Irina Dunn and popularized by U2 in their song "Tryin' to Throw Your Arms Around the World."

Cotton is the traditional gift for the second wedding anniversary. A gift for my brother and his wife, the all cotton plaque features font fashioned from Q-tips® cotton swabs. The Cotton Incorporated logo alludes to the company tagline, "the fabric of our lives"—an apt tagline for the institution of marriage.

Betabrand is a San Francisco clothier known for its punny and irreverent product names and descriptions. For the birthday of my co-founder friend, Matt Their, I made a literal sock-it-to-me cake from Betabrand socks.* The cake earned a place as an in-store display.

*”Feel like a podiatrist on shrooms with our new community-designed socks.”

My nephew, Angus, and I share the same initials. To brand my "aunt experience", I modified the A&W Root Beer logo on team t-shirts for our regular outings. "Since 2010" refers to Angus' birth year, and "AWsome" is the initialized version of the word we use to describe all of our adventures. Two sizes of Rooty the Great Root Bear on the back represent each of us.

Naturally, A&W Root Beer is our signature drink. For my recent birthday,  Angus treated me to lunch (with his own money) at an A&W restaurant. The staff was so amused by our t-shirts that they gave us A&W Root Beer Floats on the house. By all accounts, it was AWsome!