Copics! On your mark! Get ready! ...

In celebration of 3 rd Card Making Day on 3rd October Mygrafico and its artist (yup I am one of them "D ) are having a celebrations with 40% discounts, door prizes and more!

Details can be found at http://www.papercraftplanet.com/group/mygrafico

Funky Flamingos featured as a challenged

Much to my glee and surprise one my stamp sets at mygraphico.com ( http://mygraficochallengeblog.blogspot.com/ ) is been used as this week's challenge. The set is my Funky Summer Flamingos (female version), the challenge is to make a retirement card - something I think would be difficult but well appreciated when one is happy about retiring.
The entries are great, lots of talent out there, but these two are my favourite. by kylie - I love the light carefree atmosphere she has captured and this by Raindrop Echo Designs - I just love the destressing and the dark look about it ( yes they are sort of opposites in style).

Veggies for the kids

It is amazing at times what happens in society. Here is Latvia we are undergoing a major economic collapse (?) , if negative, or transformation, if positive :) . During the last couple of years things were booming - land prices, house prices, clothes, food etc. Loans were abundant to the point where they had ads on tv where a family drove up to a fast food type window and the banker guy asked what the family of 4 wished and then gave them the cash and the happy family drove off. While this might be all well and good in most developed countries it was a disaster waiting to happen here where the folks did not understand the concept of loans, interest and what they will have to repay in the future. But I am starting to digress. The thing is this country and its inhabitants were up to their ears in debt, then the American thing happened, banks going bust across the oceans and then all crap started to hit the Latvian fan as majority of loans held by common folk and government (country) are owned by foreigners. The end result of this fiasco is not yet reached here, but in the intern civil servants salaries (which in many cases are more than the private sector's) are being slashed, teachers (almost all are public) have gotten serious pay cuts effective immediately (that was in summer), sections of hospitals closed, staff left off, big ups in the government system of course are fighting a reduction - I mean a teacher can have a salary reduced to 125 LS a month but an civil servant who earns 4000 Ls can fight a reduction... Anyway with that said life goes on and so do pre-school projects ( with less children this year as a couple of families bread winners are breadless), which brings us to the header. This week The kids and I had to get stuff from our garden (aka grocery store or neighours - as I did not attempt to do anything other than squash and pumpkin - the latter was not fruitful :( - and make "art" with them. After the initial moral outrage at wasting food in such hard times, we made a spider consisting of carrots and a celery ( so the shelf talker said), and a caterpillar make from the small onions. The eyes of both are make with beans. The mushrooms are potatoes with tops of apple The creations are stuck together with match sticks and some glue (the eye), and the kids happily took their creations to their respective classes.

a girl of summer

It has been a rather hectic week with autumn on us and trying to get the last minute garden things done like replanting trees and sowing grass . This has interrupted the little angry spider and co sketches which is good in a way as I was getting into an artistic tizzy with it. Yesterday the Master was busy doing some "real work", so I got some time at the pc and I went through my "to do" sketch book ( a big purple binder with various pieces of paper two holed punched to keep them in one place) and came across 3 summer girls I drew around Ligo ( mid summer). So,I did up the line art for some digital stamps and completed one and a bit in full colour for the digitizers, but alas have not as yet put them up on the site, but it is only Tuesday today so if luck hold out I will finish the girl I am working on and the last one today and will have them up in a day or so. Yes this girl is one of the 3. She is our favourite :) My conscience is being plagued by cards... I need to do some for the site. But before that the kids need to create masterpieces of art using vegetables..urggg!!

a little angry spider

Spent the week doing a couple sketches for a book to most likely hit the press this time next year... yes it is a bit early to put pencil to paper but when the mood it hits it is a good thing to grab it. But even with all good intentions my pace was rather slow and hampered in someways the monsters were home two days this week and the youngest is still very mummy oriented at 4yrs. Anyway here is a preview of a sketch. The little spider is annoyed that his web has been broken. Well off to either work on more sketches, contemplate how to colour them or be cinderella to the monsters.

feel like illustrating

that says it all I think.
Good thing I have some words to work with. Yes mum the spider will emerge... I hope.
I had thought I would not do any illustrations this year and work just on clipart but it is September and for some reason my brain is looking around for something not just to draw but to transform words and thoughts into pictures, and the book with it words sits there and will not leave me be until it is done or partly done

In your hands

This is one of a set that has been in my sketch book for a while. I can just picture it with some bible verse around it.:) It can be found on in the store.

Alphabet preview

On the "sketch board" so to speak is a little alphabet which should be finished by next week. This is letter F is case it is not recognisable :D