Pay it Forward…

I signed up for “Pay it Forward” over on Tinkerfrog's blog yesterday—and I'm excited to see what she comes up with, being such a wonderful quilter. What is “Pay it Forward,” you ask? The first three people to leave me a comment will receive from me a handmade item that I will create. In my instance it will be an illustration or scrapbooked thank you cards. You in turn, post the “Pay it Forward” post on your own blog and create three things for your first three posters.

You have 365 days to create your item, but I'm sure it's a lot more fun if the projects get completed a lot sooner than that. I hope some people play and enjoy their new creations.

Create Your Own Avatar…

Ever dreamed about being a kubric-styled lego character-type person? Of course you have—who hasn't? Well, now you can bring those dreams to reality with the BlackBerry avatar builder.

Here's me as a vampire and how I dressed getting a cup of java this morning.

coffee … gimme!

What’s New This Week…

Check out Mountain Mama for some inspiration for wonderful knitting and baking projects.
Here are my favorite three on her site:

1. Learn to make bread dough
2. Perfect Colorado fall vest
3. A Patriotic Top

To me, knitting is like magic. From a single yarn something beautiful and essential is created. It takes the basic need of clothing and lofts it into an art form. Beautiful work Mountain Mama.

I wonder if she ever finished her beaded necktie from college?

Halloween Decor…

While picking up a bunch of household goods last week at Target, I noticed these awesome paper silhouettes from the Martha Stewart line of craft products. Normally, I am not drawn to the Martha Stewart products. I know I should love it—it's very well designed and usually very good product—but there's something about the products I just can't get in to. I always look, but never buy. Not this time. These things—these funky, spooky shapes! These. Are. Excellent.



Each pack comes with about 12 silhouettes that are at least the size of your hand. In the case of the spiders you see, they also come with string to hang them, as well as little adhesive dots. While I was putting them around the house, I realized they are way too creepy as is. I was having tarantula flashbacks, so I picked up my silver marker and doodled on all of the spiders. They are still creepy! I also picked up a package of rats and mice that come with little mouse holes and tacked them around the house along my baseboards and sitting on top of my electric outlets. The only mods I made to those was to add red eyes. For about 9 bucks, I had an entire house of spookiness, and the paper is of such nice quality, stored flat I can see these lasting for a long time.

New Children’s Illustration…

This is another project for the same product line. This piece is all about discovery in your back yard. Not my back yard though—mine's all gravel, what with living in the desert—but it's the backyard I remember from growing up in Colorado. This family lives in my favorite style of house—the Craftsman Bungalow.

I made a number of illustration style evolutions in this piece. Most notably, the texture to the trees. it's something I've wanted to implement for a while now, and this seemed the perfect place to do it. I'd started to put in texture like this working on the Charlie the Choo-Choo books. The leaf shapes were inspired by the sky designs as seen in Spongebob Sqaure Pants. Yes, I watch that show. I was a little worried about the overall crazy-business of the piece, but my client said "bright, bright, bright," and are even adding more color to their packaging. Whew! A bit of color overload, so I kept the palette tighter with a complimentary (red-green) color scheme. I also added some of my signature smoke, as found in the Charlie the Choo-Choo series of children's books.

Detail of the image.

New Children’s Illustration…

An illustration for a local game company for one of their new projects. This piece was created in Adobe Illustrator. It focuses on small town environments and what you might see along an afternoon walk. Though honestly, I'd love to see the town that has buildings this fun.

Detail of the drawing. If you've ever had the opportunity
to feed a giraffe, you will recognize their long tongues.