Marisa Seguin's cute, colorful, charming work always brightens my day. Her work is a perfect visual for the concept of celebration. Happily, she's participated in our birthday interview and gave us a look at her sketchbook phase!

What inspired the work you have in the exhibition?

I've had some cake doodles (and other sweets) kickin' around in my sketchbook for a little while and thought it would be a fun opportunity to spiff them up. I love illustrating sweets but especially cakes because they are so customizable and fun to experiment with. Fun print/pattern and colours lend themselves perfectly to these confections, it's easy to get carried away with the details.

How do you feel this piece (or pieces) relate(s) to your work as a whole?

Structure/palette-wise I think it fits right in with the rest of my work. I tried to push myself a bit with the different pattern-work used within the cakes since I was planning on keeping the compositions super simple and knew the extra detail wouldn't be too distracting.

What are you working on now?

I'm looking forward to a fun swap for Ten Paces and Draw this week (I keep sketching ideas and then not wanting to give them away because I want to finish them myself!) and have also been making some (verrrry slow) progress on some new maps for my Here & There series.

We’re celebrating our first year of existence! (We might actually relax our birthday weekend.) How do you celebrate your birthday?

My birthday always falls on a national holiday in Canada so when I was younger my birthday meant no school/work and fireworks! Now that I'm living in Milwaukee and you guys aren't so into celebrating Canada Day (what's up with that?) I always like to go out to eat with friends on my birthday.

What is the best party you have ever attended?

A few years ago some of us threw a surprise birthday party for our friend Liz. We gave all of the guests a theme with 5 facts and played our own version of The Unbelievable Truth. (Bonus points were awarded for delivering your speech in a British accent). Many many Cthulhu cupcakes were also consumed.

For more of Marisa's work, you can check out her site and follow her on Twitter! She also has a great trend/inspiration blog here!