Friday, January 29, 2010

Fun Freebie: Patterns for Colouring




Check out the awesome Patterns for Colouring blog to download tons of cool, free patterns! Perfect for coloring as relaxation, making some art to spruce up your work area or giving to the kiddos as free & creative entertainment. This site is really well-organized & searchable by tags such as organic or symmetry. Fun stuff!







Wednesday, January 27, 2010

Digi-Doodle: Nanners To Go!


Nanners To Go!

This silly drawing was inspired by some Richard Scarry books I just bought for my collection. Love his work, which is always full of busy little animals working, raising families & otherwise being productive citizens. It made me wonder, if this guy had a job, what would it be? A banana delivery driver, of course!

P.s.
I decided to change the name of this series from "A Design A Day" to "Digi-Doodles." Trying to do one a day turned out to be a little bit over-ambitious. I'm still going to stick with this challenge, but it will be more like every other day, or perhaps every 3 days, or maybe every 4 ... whatever I can muster. : )

Care to share some of your own doodles? Post them on your blog or Flickr account, then leave a link in the comments below. They can be in any medium - photography, digital illustration, collage or traditional illustration that you simply scan in - anything you like. I'd love to see what creative things you're doing!

Tuesday, January 26, 2010

What's Growin' On: Winter Color


christmascactus1

Most of our backyard is still looking wintry-sad, but our Christmas Cactus is in full bloom! We brought it inside to better enjoy it. Check out those gorgeous red blooms!

christmascactus2

Monday, January 25, 2010

Etsy Crafters Support Haitian Relief Efforts


Lots of wonderful fund-raising efforts for Haiti going on now in the blogosphere, particularly in the Etsy community. There are currently over 3,000 handmade & vintage Haiti Relief items for sale on Etsy.

The items I'm featuring here are all ones in which 100% of the proceeds go to Haitian relief organizations! If you have any gifts to buy (or want to treat yourself!), consider some of these fab handmade goodies. Pictured above is a pretty headband/neck warmer by bitsy blossoms. These bands come in tons of colors & are only $15-$17.

Modern Bird is donating every bit of the proceeds from sales of items marked "Haiti Relief" to Oxfam International. One such item is this lovely sterling silver Peace Dove, available for $48.













These adorable little bear postcards from Stockton come in a set of 6 for $6. Proceeds go to Doctors Without Borders.
















From now until February 30th, 100% of the proceeds from all sales at Twee Prints will be donated to Habitat for Humanity to support the relief effort in Haiti. They have lots of cute cards for all occasions. My fave is this funky Thank You card with an orange bird perching on a bicycle, available in a set of 8 for $16.












The sale of these cool peacock earrings from Pretty Paris will also benefit Doctors Without Borders. The earrings are only $11 & also available in gold.
















You can keep your coffee warm (& cute!) with this knitted coffee cozy from One in the Hand. The cozies are available in many designs, and for the rest of January, 100% of the proceeds from every sale will be donated to Partners In Health, an organization started in Haiti that provides medical care to the poor.

Remember, this is but a small sampling of the items available on Etsy that benefit Haitian relief efforts. Search for "haiti relief" to see 'em all!

Friday, January 22, 2010

Embroidered Neckties are cool!



softGO_H_embroidery2
Made this last night at The WonderCraft's "soft" grand opening at our new spot at The Art Pad. It was a trial run for the BIG Grand Opening we're planning next month. You can read more about it (& see lots more pics of the cool ties people made!) in my re-cap on our Get Crafty blog.

softGO_H_marking
I had a great time helping people add some embroidery to their neckties. Beth A showed our guests how to screen print on them & even made some with our WonderCraft logo for the 4 of us to sport at the GO! Stay tuned for more details on that upcoming par-tay...



Tuesday, January 19, 2010

Digi-Doodle: Monkey Face


monkeyface

Inspired by a vintage monkey mug that I keep my pens & pencils in.

Care to join me in my "A Design A Day" challenge? Do your own doodle, post it on your blog or Flickr account, then leave a link to it in the comments below. It can be in any medium - photography, digital illustration, collage or traditional illustration that you simply scan in - anything you like. I'd love to see what creative things you're doing!

Monday, January 18, 2010

Pretty Pics: Small Towns in Southeast Texas


Wharton_field_left
Over the weekend, P & I traveled down to my parents' hometown of Ganado, TX for my cousin's wedding. Along our trip, I got lots of shots of the wonderful scenery. The pic above is a field that was right outside of our motel room in Wharton.

The rest of the pics below are from the drive home, when we stopped off in Bastrop, right outside of Austin. I spotted a highway sign that touted it as "The Most Historic Small Town in Texas!" Surprisingly, neither of us had ever been there, so of course, we had to stop! Glad we did; it's a really charming town. It was Sunday though, so most of the shops were closed. We'll have to go back on a Saturday because there were some great-looking antique shops.

Bastrop_barberpole

Bastrop_UnionHall_bicycle2

Bastrop_Gracies_slatwall

Bastrop_ironwork_myshadow

Bastrop_peekaboo

Bastrop_greencoveredstairs_angles

Bastrop_keyhole

If you're enjoying these pics, check out my Texas Towns Flickr set for lots more!

Bastrop_ColoradoRiver_cabins

Bastrop_mossytree

Bastrop_FirstNationalBank_detail

Bastrop_bakerywindow
Of course we had to end our exploration of Bastrop with a peek inside the bakery! We had already had donuts that morning though, so got a mini buttermilk pie for the road & a package of hamburger buns for grilling later this week. Yum!

Thursday, January 14, 2010

Pretty Pics: Sunny Santa Fe



It's rainy & overcast today here in Austin, so I thought I'd share some sunshine-filled photos with ya. These pics are from the road trip P & I took when we moved from Seattle to Austin in August 2008. I have a lot of wonderful pictures from that trip that I'll share here from time to time, even though they're now over a year old. You don't mind, do you?







We soaked up the pretty Pueblo Revival Style buildings, the Barrio De Analco Historic District and the fabulous Canyon Road galleries. These bronze works by Sergio Bustamante at The Meyer East Gallery were my absolute fave. I hope to someday own a dreamy piece by this Guadalajaran artist!



Hope you've enjoyed my photo tour of Santa Fe! Have you ever been there? If so, what struck your fancy?

Wednesday, January 13, 2010

Fun Freebie: A Snuggle Herd Dot-to-Dot




I've been hard at work on an activity book that I hope to have ready this spring. It will have coloring pages, dot-to-dots, complete-the-picture pages & more! I wanted to share my first completed page with you, and would love to hear what you think. If you have any kiddos at your disposal, please print this out for them & let me know how they like it.

How to print: Use the "Download the Original size" link on this Flickr photo download page. The "original size" file is sized to fit on an 8.5" x 11" sheet of paper. Enjoy!



Tuesday, January 12, 2010

Digi-Doodle: Alligator Tortoise



This one's another exercise in adding patterns to a scanned-in sketch. I'm really enjoying that right now. This sketch is a portrait of our Leopard Tortoise, Marvin. I thought the alligator skin pattern on his shell was a cool twist.

Care to join me in my "A Design A Day" challenge? Do your own doodle, post it on your blog or Flickr account, then leave a link to it in the comments below. It can be in any medium - photography, digital illustration, collage or traditional illustration that you simply scan in - anything you like. I'd love to see what creative things you're doing!

Monday, January 11, 2010

Lovin' Bloglovin



Follow my blog with bloglovin!

I'm lovin' Bloglovin! It sends you email updates when a blog you follow has a new post. This is great since I read soooo many blogs; I can sign up for updates for the few must-reads that I don't want to miss! I use Google Reader also, but I can see how Bloglovin will be useful to me in keeping certain blogs from getting "buried."

I just signed up Crafty Mishmash, so you can receive my updates via Bloglovin if you like. Just click the pic to the left here (an illustration by Danny Roberts).

Friday, January 8, 2010

Outdoor Oasis: Finished Brick Patio


Our patio extension has been finished since early November, but I'm just now getting around to posting about it. My super-handy husband, Patrick, did all of the hard work himself, and I think he did a fabulous job! He used unwanted antique Chicago bricks from a local contractor, found via Craig's List. In this photo, he hadn't yet filled in all the gaps around the patio's edge, but that's done now.

Here's how this area looked when we first bought the house, just over a year ago:

We've made quite a few changes in addition to the new patio:
  • replaced the windows (as well as those on the rest of the house)
  • sledge-hammered away those humongous rocks around the pond so that it's more integrated into the landscape & less Flintstones-y
  • painted the inside of the pond black so that it almost disappears & looks more like a real pond & less like a teeny-tiny swimming pool
  • removed those mind-bogglingly random pavers from around the pond & re-purposed them in other parts of the yard: the small square ones are now flower bed edging, placed on end & buried deep so that only a few inches of each are visible (it looks really good!), and the others were used to build a retaining wall for our compost piles
  • created the little rock bed with cacti cuttings from my parents' yard & our suspended flower pots (which are now empty save for one - some replanting is definitely in order!)
  • covered the ground with weed-blocking cloth & crushed granite gravel to create garden paths between our flower beds

We designed the patio together (of course I helped out with that - that's the fun part!), but Patrick did most of the work. I did help with the loading & unloading of all of those bricks when we got them from the contractor's site - 700 bricks! That's a lot of bricks. I didn't help much after that, though.

Patrick poured a foundation of gravel and sand and tamped it down, then laid each brick by hand (which ended up being even more than 700; he had to order more).

The last step was the coolest: sweeping sand across the bricks to fill in the gaps. It was mesmerizing to watch. I even swept a section myself; it was oddly satisfying. You start with a pile of sand, then sweep it across the bricks and it falls in between them, neatly filling in all of the spaces and leaving the tops of the bricks clean. I loved that step!

Of course I mostly love that our patio is all finished now. It looks amazing, especially with the shiny new grill we got as a Christmas gift! We've been using it a lot already, and can't wait for it to warm up so we can have friends over & enjoy being out there.

Next step in creating our Outdoor Oasis: converting that boring covered slab into a relaxing and beautiful outdoor living room! Stay tuned...

Digi-Doodle: Earthy & His Tiny Kite



How can an earthworm fly a kite, you ask? Well obviously, as the illustration shows, he just wraps it around his body in lieu of holding it in a hand (which he would if he could, but alas, he has none). Considering the scale of an earthworm, this kite must be pretty dang tiny, and therefore will probably not catch enough wind to blow away or lift Earthy off the ground.

But maybe because he is so light, being an earthworm, this tiny kite could in fact lift him? I don't know; physics is not my strong suit. Feel free to muse about the likelihood of an earth worm flying a kite in the comments below. ; )

Care to join me in my "A Design A Day" challenge? Do your own doodle, post it on your blog or Flickr account, then leave a link to it in the comments below. It can be in any medium - photography, digital illustration, collage or traditional illustration that you simply scan in - anything you like. I'd love to see what creative things you're doing!

Thursday, January 7, 2010

Fun Freebie: E-Postcards by Eric Carle




Who doesn't love Eric Carle? His illustrations are so joyful & adorable! Four designs from the book, Eric Carle Decorative Prints are available as e-cards from Chronicle Books. By the way, Chronicle Books has tons more e-cards in case The Very Hungry Caterpillar isn't quite your style!



Digi-Doodle: Patterned Elephant



I'm a bit obsessed with applying patterns & textures to things using Illustrator tools right now. There's a pattern called "elephant," so of course I had to try that out! It's the one I used for the elephant's skin, plus I applied a transparent green overlay to it.

This illustration was inspired by a dot-to-dot version of Elsa the Elephant that I'm working on right now for my kids' activity book. Stay tuned for more on that new item!

Care to join me in my "A Design A Day" challenge? Do your own doodle, post it on your blog or Flickr account, then leave a link to it in the comments below. It can be in any medium - photography, digital illustration, collage or traditional illustration that you simply scan in - anything you like. I'd love to see what creative things you're doing!

Wednesday, January 6, 2010

Digi-Doodle: Crazy Canna



Inspired by sites such as Illustration Friday & iHanna's Creative Space, I've decided to challenge myself to do a little digital illustration each day. Just a quick, purely for fun, no-pressure little doodle; a way to feed my brain & stimulate my creativity. Sometimes these little doodle-y designs may lead to a bigger project, but often they will not (although subconsciously they may start some synapses a-firing in my brain that lead to other ideas that lead to a project down the road). In any case, I just want to have fun with it, not over-think it & just do it!

For this first design, I started by scanning in an old sketch of one of my all-time favorite flowers, a canna. I then used Adobe Illustrator to turn the drawing into a vector image & add colors & patterns. Boldly polka-dotted leaves - sure, why not?!

Care to join me in my "A Design A Day" challenge? Do your own doodle, post it on your blog, then leave a link to it in the comments below. It can be in any medium - photography, digital illustration, collage or traditional illustration that you simply scan in - anything you like. I'd love to see what creative things you're doing!

Tuesday, January 5, 2010

Pretty Pics: Ice Sculptures After a Storm



I'm soooooo not a winter person; I'm already longing for the warm days & bursting flowers of spring! and apparently, an "arctic blast" is supposed to hit Austin Thursday morning. So I decided to find some photos that might help me appreciate the beauty of winter (Flickr to the rescue).








Thanks, Vilseskogen, for sharing these beautiful photos from New Jersey - they really are lovely.

What's your favorite thing about winter? Maybe y'all can persuade me that it's a nice season after all. ; )
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