on the walls

A  wildflower canvas in Tessa's room, plus a Paper Source banner

Sometimes friends who come over are surprised by the art on our walls—mainly, I think, by the fact that we have some. We try not to be snobs. We're not too proud to frame posters. A Wayne Thiebaud cake print has hung in every kitchen we've had since we lived in California after college:

Two cake slices on the poster; forgive my bad photography

Most of our art, though, we've bought online. And we haven't paid much for it. One great source, for housewares and and jewelry as well as art, is supermarkethq.com—a sort of edited etsy (as on that huge site, you deal directly with artists) for people with a clean, modern aesthetic, like Sean Finocchio's altered photos of taco trucks and seedy motels in Southern California:

The British firm boldandnoble.com sells beautiful, simple, graphic posters (and has great styling in its shots). 

Image from boldandnoble.com

Robin Rosenthal, a former Martha Stewart design guru, now puts out graceful, super-chic kids' posters of letters and numbers at robinrosenthal.bigcartel.com— and she's so sweet that she sent me a personal thank-you email when I bought her blue print for Charlie a few years ago. (She also created this adorable app: papertownfriends.com.) 

Tara Hogan, who runs inkandwit.com out of a barn in upstate New York, makes letterpress prints with sweet but not precious animal imagery. Her "Pommebirds" looks perfect over Tessa's bed:

Sharon Montrose's gorgeous animal photography, available at theanimalprintshop.com, has made the round of style blogs (and now graces our front hall and dining room). 

Image from theanimalprintshop.com

Yes, I do have a weakness for animal art: I'm thinking the next thing I get will be one of the lovely (and really, really reasonable) watercolors from an Italian artist named Dimdi on etsy.com. This ibis, maybe?

Image from dimdi