Posted on September 12, 2025
I have something really exciting to share…I’m now teaching in Ireland with my daughter, Kenzie (Snippets of Whimsy)!
Next March, Kenzie and I will be leading an art retreat in Ireland, and we’d love for you to join us! As a mother-daughter duo, we’ve always found so much joy in creating and exploring together, so it only makes sense for the two of us to also lead art retreats together!
Come with us on a 6-day creative retreat across Ireland.
We’ll travel from Dublin to Killarney, and document our trip in our own personal travel journals. (And guess what…we’ll be there on St. Patrick’s Day!) Throughout the retreat, we’ll be sharing our favorite travel art journaling techniques to help you capture the magic of the moment, in your own unique way.
This isn’t about being “good at art.” It’s about slowing down, being present, and creating alongside kindred spirits. Whether you’re new to art journaling or have shelves full of sketchbooks, there’s space for you at our table.

Some trip highlights:
🇮🇪 A walking tour of Dublin
🍺 A Guinness Storehouse visit,
🏰 A visit to the Cashel Castle
🐑 A scenic tour of the Ring of Kerry on its winding path through the countryside
🥃 An Irish Whiskey and cheese tasting
🎨 Creative sketchbook sessions
When: March 16-21, 2026
Where: Dublin → Killarney
Who: You, me, and a small group of kindred spirits
Why: Because you deserve a little adventure

Space is limited! Snag one of the 3 remaining early bird spots before they run out! (A $100 savings)
Price: $2995 $3095 First 8 spots save $100! Selling fast, only 6 left!
Only 25% down is needed to claim your spot and payment plans are available. Just select ‘pay over time’ at booking and apply to finance your trip.
Let’s go explore Ireland!
Posted on August 29, 2025
I have something really exciting to share…I’m now teaching in Ireland with my daughter, Kenzie (Snippets of Whimsy)!
Next March, Kenzie and I will be leading an art retreat in Ireland, and we’d love for you to join us! As a mother-daughter duo, we’ve always found so much joy in creating and exploring together, so it only makes sense for the two of us to also lead art retreats together!

Come with us on a 6-day creative retreat across Ireland.
We’ll travel from Dublin to Killarney, and document our trip in our own personal travel journals. (And guess what…we’ll be there on St. Patrick’s Day!) Throughout the retreat, we’ll be sharing our favorite travel art journaling techniques to help you capture the magic of the moment, in your own unique way.
This isn’t about being “good at art.” It’s about slowing down, being present, and creating alongside kindred spirits. Whether you’re new to art journaling or have shelves full of sketchbooks, there’s space for you at our table.

Some trip highlights:
🇮🇪 A walking tour of Dublin
🍺 A Guinness Storehouse visit,
🏰 A visit to the Cashel Castle
🐑 A scenic tour of the Ring of Kerry on its winding path through the countryside
🥃 An Irish Whiskey and cheese tasting
🎨 Creative sketchbook sessions
When: March 16-21, 2026
Where: Dublin → Killarney
Who: You, me, and a small group of kindred spirits
Why: Because you deserve a little adventure

Space is limited! Snag one of the 6 remaining early bird spots before they run out! (A $100 savings)
Price: $2995 $3095 First 8 spots save $100! Selling fast, only 6 left!
Only 25% down is needed to claim your spot and payment plans are available. Just select ‘pay over time’ at booking and apply to finance your trip.
Let’s go explore Ireland!
Posted on July 28, 2025
We LOVE research and learning as a way to get inspired and boost ideas and creativity!! So, Kenzie and I are going to be sharing the inspiration that we collect here in our second newsletter…. once a week!!!
Here’s how it works:
We provide the inspiration. You interpret it however you wish… any medium, any size. It is meant to inspire lettering and floral art combined together. But, you can:
Hope you will create with us and post your work at #wordsandwildflowers2024 and tag @lorisiebert.studio and @snippetsofwhimsy
Quote of the week…
“Laughter is timeless. Imagination has no age. And dreams are forever.”
– Walt Disney
Inspiring artist of the week: Maria Prymachenko
Maria Prymachenko was born in 1909 into an artistically talented rural family in the village of Bolotnia. Her mother did embroidery, her father was a carpenter, and her grandmother painted Easter eggs. Just like another outstanding female artist—the surrealist painter Frida Kahlo—Prymachenko suffered from polio as a child, and she also wore long, hand-embroidered skirts to conceal her paralyzed leg.
She learned to draw, paint, and embroider at home. Even though she never acquired any artistic qualifications and had just four years of primary education, she became a professional embroiderer at the turn of the 1920s and 1930s. For the next few years, she worked in nearby Ivankiv until her talents were discovered in 1935 by Tetiana Floru, a textile artist and embroiderer linked to the Ukrainian Folk Decorative Art Museum in Kyiv. Some say she was impressed by Prymachenko’s embroidered shirts on sale at an Ivankiv market. Others claim that Floru was sent out by the Soviet authorities (initially, USSR cultural policy welcomed naïve folk art) to travel around the villages in search of folk artists and was enchanted by Maria’s embroidery on display at a cultural center.






Hand lettering inspiration of the week: Rolly Crump
Rolly Crump was born in Alhambra, California, and joined Walt Disney Studios in 1952. Initially he worked on inbetweening, before becoming an assistant animator on movies including Peter Pan, Lady and the Tramp, Sleeping Beauty, and One Hundred and One Dalmatians. In 1959 he joined WED Enterprises (later Walt Disney Imagineering) and became a designer of some of Disneyland’s attractions and shops, including The Haunted Mansion, Enchanted Tiki Room and Adventureland Bazaar.As well as his work at Disney, he designed innovative and satirical psychedelic posters in the early and mid 1960s, including several for the West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band as well as logos for the band’s singer Bob Marley. He also designed guitar string packaging for Ernie Ball.
He was responsible for designing many of the Disney attractions at the 1964 New York World’s Fair, including It’s a Small World, and its Tower of the Four Winds marquee. In 1966, when the attraction moved to Disneyland, he designed the large animated clock at the entrance that sends puppet children on a parade.
He contributed to early designs of the Magic Kingdom at Walt Disney World in Florida, and worked on designs for NBC’s Disney on Parade in 1970, before leaving Disney to work on outside projects including Busch Gardens, the ABC Wildlife Preserve in Maryland, and Ringling Brothers & Barnum and Bailey Circus World. In 1975, Knott’s Berry Farm opened Knott’s Bear-y Tales, a dark ride designed by Crump.In 1976 he returned to work for Disney, designing the Land and Wonders of Life pavilions at the Epcot Center, before leaving again in 1981 to design the proposed Cousteau Ocean Center in Norfolk, Virginia, and to set up his own business, the Mariposa Design Group, which developed projects in Oman, Las Vegas, Denver and elsewhere. Crump finally returned to Disney in 1992 as executive designer at Imagineering, working on EPCOT Center.
He retired from Disney in 1996, and published an autobiography It’s Kind of a Cute Story in 2012.






Posted on July 14, 2025
We LOVE research and learning as a way to get inspired and boost ideas and creativity!! So, Kenzie and I are going to be sharing the inspiration that we collect here in our second newsletter…. once a week!!!
Here’s how it works:
We provide the inspiration. You interpret it however you wish… any medium, any size. It is meant to inspire lettering and floral art combined together. But, you can:
Hope you will create with us and post your work at #wordsandwildflowers2024 and tag @lorisiebert.studio and @snippetsofwhimsy
Quote of the week…
“Maybe we can release the birds from our chests and chase them straight into the lives we’ve always held inside us anyway.”
— Victoria Erickson
Inspirational Artist of the week: Peggi Kroll-Roberts
Award-winning artist Peggi Kroll-Roberts was trained at Arizona State University and the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, CA.
Peggi worked as a fashion and advertising illustrator before transitioning to fine art. Her artworks are featured in the Laguna Beach Art Museum and the Pasadena Historical Museum.
Using intense color and value to accentuate her subject, she moved into fine art with a bold palette, a love for small paintings and a very loose style that achieves a lot with a few very energetic brush strokes. She prefers to suggest reality rather than render it.
Peggi paints animated figures, and breaks away from conventional still life with playful paintings of everyday scenes: cosmetics, the occasional coffee cup or slab of butter. Peggi’s work gives us a new appreciation of daily life.
Peggi’s realist impressionist and expressionist styles are striking, and she has won multiple fine art and plein air awards in addition to the Blackwell prize in painting.




Hand lettering inspiration of the week: Margo Chase…
who I once hung out with for a day YEARS AGO…and when researching her… found out that she died in a plane crash while piloting at age 59. SO sad to hear this.
Margo Chase (February 20, 1958 – July 22, 2017) was an American graphic designer known for her eclectic and experimental design style. Chase was prolific – with a career bridging the graphic design field’s transition from the analog to the digital era, working with clients ranging from Selena and Prince to Mattel and Procter & Gamble.
With a portfolio of medical illustrations, Chase found work at a small advertising firm in Long Beach, designing packaging for the Ralph’s grocery store chain. She was soon hired away by Rosebud Books to design a series of tourist guidebooks. During this time, Chase met Laura LaPuma, who would go on to give her her first album cover design job at Warner Brothers Records. As she accumulated more design work, Chase set up an office in her Silverlake home, hiring Nancy Ogami and studio manager Robert Short to assist in servicing clients such as Geffen Records, Virgin Records, and others.
Chase designed logos for Prince’s Lovesexy, as well as his Paisley Park production company. Attracting enough positive attention, she was asked to design the logo – and eventually the packaging – for Madonna’s 1989 album Like a Prayer. This opened the door for other high-profile projects such as Cher’s Love Hurts, the poster campaign for 1992’s Bram Stoker’s Dracula, and others.
Chase’s work from this period of her career was quite distinct, taking inspiration from a wide variety of sources – calligraphy, illuminated manuscripts, and medieval architecture – leading publications to refer to her as the “Queen of Goth.” Wary of being aesthetically pigeonholed, she took on work for linen manufacturer Matteo. What initially began as a logo and stationary design project morphed into full-blown textile and product design. During this time, Chase expanded her studio – hiring designer Terry Stone to help her launch into motion picture titles, as well as market her typographic work as a separate venture called “Gravy Fonts.” After working with clients across the entertainment industry, Chase decided that she was a print designer at heart and turned her attention to packaging design, stating, “What I like about designing print or packaging is that when the job is finished there is something physical to show for it – it’s timeless. With the broadcast work, once it’s been seen, it’s already old.”






Posted on June 30, 2025
We LOVE research and learning as a way to get inspired and boost ideas and creativity!! So, Kenzie and I are going to be sharing the inspiration that we collect here in our second newsletter…. once a week!!!
Here’s how it works:
We provide the inspiration. You interpret it however you wish… any medium, any size. It is meant to inspire lettering and floral art combined together. But, you can:
Hope you will create with us and post your work at #wordsandwildflowers2024 and tag @lorisiebert.studio and @snippetsofwhimsy
Quote of the week…
The secret to living well and longer is: eat half, walk double, laugh triple and love without measure.
— Tibetan Proverb
Hand lettering inspiration of the week: Margaret Kilgallen
Margaret Leisha Kilgallen (October 28, 1967 – June 26, 2001) was a San Francisco Bay Area artist who combined graffiti art, painting, and installation art. Though a contemporary artist, her work showed a strong influence from folk art. She was considered a central figure in the Bay Area Mission School art movement.




Inspirational Artist of the week: Donald Baechler
Donald Baechler (b. 1956 – d. 2022) emerged in the 1980s as part of New York City’s East Village art scene alongside such luminaries as Jean-Michel Basquiat, Keith Haring, and Kenny Scharf. Born in Hartford, Connecticut, Baechler studied at the Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore, then Cooper Union in New York City. To briefly escape New York of the late ’70s, he took up an invitation from German exchange students to visit their homeland, where he then spent much of 1978 and ’79 studying at the Städelschule in Frankfurt. There Baechler witnessed neo-expressionism taking hold in what became loosely known as the Neue Wilde movement, which featured German painters disinterested in the dominant forms of conceptualism and minimalism.
Returning to the United States, Baechler honed his version of graphic, neo-expressive painting paired with flashes of Pop Art, American folk art, and children’s drawings. With Baechler back in New York, the early ’80s saw his first major solo shows in New York and abroad as he continued to explore brightly colored and thickly outlined foreground images—often flowers, faces, skulls, animals, and ice cream cones—painted over heavily textured collages sourced from scattered ephemera. Baechler cited Giotto, Robert Rauschenberg, Joseph Kosuth, and especially Cy Twombly as major influences.
Furthering what he called his “education in public,” Baechler eventually began showing playful bronze statues of flowerpots and large-scale figures in stride. Overpainting, erasure, and intense editing—not to mention a lighthearted sense of humor—remained key to his process thoughout his career. “I’m an abstract artist before anything else,” he has said. “For me, it’s always been more about line, form, balance, and the edge of the canvas—all these silly formalist concerns—than it has been about subject matter or narrative or politics.”





Posted on June 23, 2025
We LOVE research and learning as a way to get inspired and boost ideas and creativity!! So, Kenzie and I are going to be sharing the inspiration that we collect here in our second newsletter…. once a week!!!
Here’s how it works:
We provide the inspiration. You interpret it however you wish… any medium, any size. It is meant to inspire lettering and floral art combined together. But, you can:
Hope you will create with us and post your work at #wordsandwildflowers2024 and tag @lorisiebert.studio and @snippetsofwhimsy
Quote of the week…
“Kindness isn’t a weakness — it is a very potent strength.”
-Steve Carrell
Inspirational artist of the week: Isobel Harvey
Isobel Harvey is a London-based artist who works across multiple mediums, including paintings, textiles and ceramics.
Isobel Harvey grew up in a house full of books about birds and bird-related artworks. The sculptures her dad made were mostly modelled on birds and binoculars, and he’d always point out different species when they went on walks.With both her parents immersed in art and nature, Isobel’s creative journey and focus were shaped early on. Now a full-time painter, her work heavily features abstract bird motifs alongside other animals, expressed in striking and vibrant shades. “Birds and fish lend themselves nicely to being interpreted because they’re so colour and pattern-heavy in their thousands of species.”
In addition to her rich use of colour, there is also a sense of texture across Isobel’s work which brings her subjects to life. A lot of her ideas come from constructing and deconstructing a painting. When it doesn’t go to plan, she simply paints over what she has done. And that creates tactile layers. Her aim for her paintings is for them to be very texture-heavy.Though the process is largely intuitive, she credits folk art and ancient Egyptian paintings as inspiration for her forms.





Handlettering inspiration of the week: Tony Fitzpatrick
Tony Fitzpatrick is a Chicago-based artist best known for his multimedia collages, printmaking, paintings, and drawings. Fitzpatrick’s work are inspired by Chicago street culture, cities he has traveled to, children’s books, tattoo designs, and folk art. Fitzpatrick has authored or illustrated eight books of art and poetry, and, for the last two years has written a column for the Newcity. Fitzpatrick’s art appears in the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, and the National Museum of American Art in Washington, DC. The Neville Brothers’ album Yellow Moon and the Steve Earle’s albums El Corazon and The Revolution Starts Now also feature Fitzpatrick’s art. In 1992, Fitzpatrick opened a Chicago-based printmaking studio, Big Cat Press, which exists today as the artist exhibition space Firecats Projects. Before making a living as an artist, Fitzpatrick worked as a radio host, bartender, boxer, construction worker, and film and stage actor.




Posted on June 13, 2025
Pack your paints – Ireland’s calling!
You’re getting exclusive, early access to a new Art Journaling Ireland creative retreat hosted by my daughter Kenzie!

Consider it the luck of the Irish if you can journal through Ireland with Kenz. (if I’m lucky I’ll get to go too!!) Imagine your next sketchbook filled with watercolor sketches, café scribbles, and the scent of sea air on each page? This new Art Journaling Ireland Retreat with TrovaTrip is your chance to slow down, soak it all in, and create something truly personal.This is a retreat for creative souls who love to wander and want to document every beautiful detail in uniquely creative ways.


Let us break it down for you:
Retreat dates: Mar 16-Mar 21, 2026
(Yes, you will be in Ireland on St. Patrick’s Day!)
This 6 day trip will take you from Dublin to Killarney with 5 included activities, plus art journaling sessions. You’ll go home with a one-of-a-kind travel journal – park sketchbook, part diary, part treasure.
You will enjoy:
• A walking tour of Dublin
• A Guinness Storehouse visit
• A visit to the Cashel Castle
• A scenic tour of the Ring of Kerry on its winding path through the countryside
• An Irish Whiskey and cheese tasting
• Creative sketchbook sessions

Also included:
• Five breakfasts, two dinners
• Double occupancy in 3-star hotels (limited single rooms available)
• All city transfers
• Local, experienced guide


Wanna join?
Spots are limited, and early access means you could be on one of them. There are only 16 available spots AND the first 8 get early bird pricing of $2995 (a $100 savings). To snag one of these early bird spots, all that is needed is a 25% down payment ($749). The remainder can be paid in payments INTEREST FREE with TrovaTrip until 12/16. Payment plans via Affirm are available…more info here:
Posted on June 9, 2025
We LOVE research and learning as a way to get inspired and boost ideas and creativity!! So, Kenzie and I are going to be sharing the inspiration that we collect here in our second newsletter…. once a week!!!
Here’s how it works:
We provide the inspiration. You interpret it however you wish… any medium, any size. It is meant to inspire lettering and floral art combined together. But, you can:
Hope you will create with us and post your work at #wordsandwildflowers2024 and tag @lorisiebert.studio and @snippetsofwhimsy
Quote of the week…
“We should really love each other in peace and harmony, instead we’re fussing and fighting.”
-Bob Marley
Inspiring artist of the week… Rex Ray
REX RAY (Sept. 11, 1956—Feb. 9, 2015) was an American artist best known for his innovative pop aesthetic in fine and commercial art—on canvases, wood panels, album covers, paper, book jackets, murals, and rock and roll posters. Born in Landstuhl, Germany in 1956, Michael Patterson was raised in Colorado Springs. Before moving to San Francisco in 1981, Patterson, inspired by Andy Warhol, adopted the moniker Rex Ray. He attended the San Francisco Art Institute where he studied with Sam Tchakalian, Kathy Acker, and Angela Davis, and received his BFA in 1989. He became a major force in the Bay Area’s art, literary, and activist communities. Ray was one of the first artists to use Mac-based technologies in the creative process to generate art and graphics. His early designs include: the first graphics for the San Francisco chapter of Act Up; many guerilla marketing flyers and posters for queer nightclubs; and numerous book covers for City Lights Books and HIGH RISK/Serpent’s Tail. His impressive client roster in the music, fashion, entertainment, and design industries, includes David Bowie, The Residents, Bill Graham Presents, DreamWorks, Levis, Neiman Marcus, Sony Music, Warner Brothers, and Apple. Rex Ray designs have been licensed and produced as distinctive imagery on scarves, carpets, ceramics, wristwatches, surfboards, and even on a Mini Cooper. During his lifetime Rex Ray generated a prolific body of painting and works on paper. His technique involved a complicated process that combined Xerography, handmade woodblock prints, newsprint, and magazine images into vibrant color schemes with parabolic forms and abstract patterns. His works reference mid-century modernism, Dada, decorative arts, Fluxus, and Pop Art.




Hand lettering inspiration of the week… Anna Tou
Anna Tou is a classically trained designer, creative leader and strategic marketing thinker with a proven track record in building brands and leading diverse projects across advertising, digital experiences, identity, brand strategy, packaging, marketing promotions, social channels, and more.




Posted on April 28, 2025
We LOVE research and learning as a way to get inspired and boost ideas and creativity!! So, Kenzie and I are going to be sharing the inspiration that we collect here in our second newsletter…. once a week!!!
Here’s how it works:
We provide the inspiration. You interpret it however you wish… any medium, any size. It is meant to inspire lettering and floral art combined together. But, you can:
Hope you will create with us and post your work at #wordsandwildflowers2024 and tag @lorisiebert.studio and @snippetsofwhimsy
Quote of the week…
You’ll never get anywhere if you go about what-iffing like that.’ – Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator
-Roald Dahl
Inspirational artist of the week…Cornelia O’Donovan
Cornelia O’Donovan was born in 1981, and trained at the Royal College of Art, London.
O’Donovan plays with old folklore and poetry, but in a loose and dreamlike way. She draws particularly on tales native to the British Isles, and especially Celtic poetry and myth – from the tale of Prince Llewellyn’s grief at the sacrifice of his greyhound Gellert, to the figurative ballads of Ellen O’Leary and lines from WB Yeats.
She has designed ceramics for Anthropologie in the past. Her paintings are flat, stripped of all perspective or realism, their surfaces hazy and meandering like an old tale retold a thousand times. Roughly rendered yet delicately arranged, she creates patterned compositions reminiscent of old tapestries, into which she plants naïve pre-Modern motifs. Outlines of old figures, ancient heralds, esoteric herbs and familiar animals all appear like inherited objects worn smooth by the touch of innumerable hands.
They retain the homespun quality of medieval rustic artworks, flowing across the canvas like a stroll through a country garden.






Hand lettering inspiration of the week: Deloss McGraw
DeLoss McGraw is an American artist known for his whimsical gouache paintings. Inspired by his own poetry as well as poems by W.D. Snodgrass, McGraw’s dreamlike works are often reminiscent of paintings by Paul Klee. Klee like McGraw, was inspired by the works of folk artists and children. Born in 1945 in Okemah, OK, he went on study at the Otis Art Institute in Los Angeles and received his MFA from the Cranbrook Academy of Art in 1973. McGraw lives and works between Los Angeles, CA and Okemah, OK. Today, his works are in the collections of The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Cranbrook Museum of Art in Bloomfield Hills, MI, and the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C., among others.



Posted on April 21, 2025
We LOVE research and learning as a way to get inspired and boost ideas and creativity!! So, Kenzie and I are going to be sharing the inspiration that we collect here in our second newsletter…. once a week!!!
Here’s how it works:
We provide the inspiration. You interpret it however you wish… any medium, any size. It is meant to inspire lettering and floral art combined together. But, you can:
Hope you will create with us and post your work at #wordsandwildflowers2024 and tag @lorisiebert.studio and @snippetsofwhimsy
Quote of the week…
“You don’t have to see the whole staircase, just take the first step.”
– Martin Luther King, Jr.
Inspirational Artist of the week…William Frend De Morgan
William Frend De Morgan (16 November 1839 – 15 January 1917) was an English potter, tile designer and novelist. A lifelong friend of William Morris, he designed tiles, stained glass and furniture for Morris & Co. from 1863 to 1872. His tiles often recall medieval or Islamic design patterns. He applied innovative glazes and firing techniques. Galleons and fish were common motifs, as were “fantastical” birds and animals. Many of De Morgan’s tiles were designed to create intricate patterns when several were laid together.






Lettering inspiration of the week… Louise Fili
Louise Fili (born April 12, 1951) is an American graphic designer and artist known for her use of typography. Her work incorporates elements of modernism and European Art Deco, combining historical typography with contemporary design approaches. Fili designed nearly 2,000 book jackets while working at Random House. Since establishing her design studio, she has shifted her focus towards restaurant identity, food-related logos, and packaging. Fili currently teaches at the School of Visual Arts in New York City and has previously taught at The New School, New York University, and Cooper Union.






