Tee shirt mock ups

Just playing around with two recent sets I put up. Took an image from both and applied an embroidery filter program to see how they might look when digitized. The tree is from Tree days and the caterpillar is from Garden doodles.

Anansi causing trouble

Here is one of the book sketches I mention:) Anansi is a little spider who is a trickster or more plainly a trouble maker. In another post one day I will write a bit about Anansi (Anancy) and his history.
The background to this scene - anansi has caused the roster to crow before dawn. The dog has just come to gossip telling them that the master wants to put the errant rooster in the pot. He is off spreading the juicy news while fowl react in various ways it.

A.M. bloom

I just love this card. Maybe it is the weather - it is has started out really crappy today - and this card just brightens my day that I wish I had it and could stick it up on my wall and look at it. Now this is the parts that urks me - It isn't even my stamp (line art)...ack!!! Micki from artfulxpressions did a super fantastic job on Lindsay's Stamp Stuff (yeah she is a pretty talented artist too :) )

Can't believe it is Friday already. Spent most the week sketching anansi - the spider I bring up once in a while. It is 7am here, illustrator is up and running and I am torn between finishing the anansi sketches (I got 7 more sketches to do for the main story) or finishing my clipart sets I started last week. ahh decisions and moods.

P.s. I want one of those nice signature thingies that are at the bottom of people's blog post. Where to get one.

Emo ..sort of

Three little emo girl stamps that I am working on. At the moment they will only be in non vector format. I sat with my daughter, borrowed some of her coloured pencils and then cut out the printed digital stamp. I wanted to try to make a card but alas I had printed the line art to big :)

Simply Tree

Here's a little preview of a set I am working on. It is rather simple and basic in its elements which is rather nice for a change.

Picked up the little spider manuscript (anancy) last night and refresh my memory about the characters. Will post of pic from the book once I get them in a more presentable stage.

A small blizzard is forcasted for today. So the kids are at home - they are thrilled and I am tired as I came down with another cold yesterday so feel rather fuzzy :( The road is semi-drivable well was about an hour ago.
I am looking forward to spring.

Rose and Baby's Breath

When designing this limited edition clipart set I thought of weddings. I enjoyed drawing the roses, but the baby's breath ... what can I say ... I have seen them, touch them, but had no idea on earth what they actually looked like when it got down to it. Such a tiny flower, so small, elusive with invisible stems ... ahh the name :)
The pictures in this post are great! They are two designs from the set which have been actually digitized and stitched out by Misty Mountain (no filter used here :) ) and can be found here. She has also digitized stitched out a couple of the Flutterbies which I think look FANTASTIC ( with all the little lines, dots and finickiness in these two sets must have some people cussing me hehehe).

Lego and the imagination

We were all children once, but I never realised the role imagination played in child's life until I watched my son play with his lego blocks. Why this is not special. I know, but you see my son did not speak when he was 2 nor 3 and began to speak a bit when he was 4. He would sit for hours and build with mega block, build systematically, obsessively and more advance for his age, that I feared for him. The he turned 5 and started to show an interest in communicating. Now he is 6 turning 7 and still is obsessive about building and lego blocks, his creation and abilities are still advanced (in my motherly opinion), but now he talks, his creations have voices, situations and events happen, he comes and reports and chats about what is happening in his imagination with the Power Miners or the Lego City character. He goes on the net to the lego site, plays games, watches trailers (using stop animation with the toys), looks at what other kids have made, see the creators (adults) play with their lego, and of course looks at the products in their shop and tells me what he wants next. I guess what I am trying to say is that while Wii and other software games are good and cool ( he had lots of soft ware programs to play with most educational but fun), they cannot and should not replace the "old fashion" toy where a kids spends time by himself or with others role playing. On the lego.com site my son showed me this video as it is one of his favourites and I just had to share it will you.
I hope it bring a warm fuzzy feeling inside as it did me.

Birthday cards ... digital

I was told that I my digital stamps need examples and not just to colour them :(..."Oh dear I thought", for as I might be able to draw a bit crafting is really not my forte :(, but after a fellow artist showed my that she was trying her hand at the crafting I decided okay I could at least try, and of course since I have no crafting supplies required to make cards and the like I decided to pull out the old Photoshop with some rather cool atomic actions I purchased a while back and give it another go. These are the results: The boy card is made using the little boy stamp
which I then coloured and shades in Photohsop using the burn and dodge tools to get the copic colouring effect. I am quite pleased with this as I think I have finally figured out the colouring technique I wish to use in the Anancy book illustration, which I am about to pick back up. The dots and arrows I used the atomic cupcake action felt tool, and around the sentiment card I used their ink edge action, and little chain - a tin action (but this one did not really come out) lol.
On the little girl card I use the little girl stamp and coloured it the same way as the boy. I then used some paper from the free digital paper (I used the pink and the green - to get the green rim), then I used an atmoic cupcake flower template, and then used various brushes and textures I created in photoshop.
I rather like both cards, and once I get some coloured printer ink and maybe some card I can print them out as see how they actually print. While the boy card will be a straight print the girl card will require a bit of delicate cutting at the top by the green "cord".

Mermaids

I decided to do something a little different with the mermaid set. Instead of the whimsical pencil line I like and I have been using recently I tried the "live trace" that illustrator has. Now there are benefits to live trace in the it is faster once I spend all my time making the sketch a complete line art drawing and then cleaning it up. But there are two serious draw backs it seems (well there are more but two that erk me at the moment).The resulting line is not a smooth as the ones I create when I use the "pencil" brush and two - there are tons of anchor points - which makes the file horrendously large - or maybe I have missed something in a layer. The good points is that this drawing might be easier for digitisers to use - the line issue (again) and also seems to conform with most of what people are doing in the digital stamp world. The problem is I don't really like it. Anyway after saying all of that, the result was not bad, and quite workable. The pic is using one of the mermaids from the mermaid line art set and playing with it.

Digital paper freebie

Was playing with making some background paper the other day and this is the result. It is a very simple and you can down load it by clicking here.
It is not seamless but with a little patience and perseverance it might work that way.
I think it might look quite good in as a box or something like that. I need to get some colour ink for my printer and try it out.

February Freebie

Just a quickie here, I am rather exhausted today - physically as I have been shoveling snow all weekend and looks like I will be shoveling again tomorrow and the kids will be home as the road to the main road will be snowed-bound until county tractor/plough comes and frees it up :(. Where am I shoveling - our beautifully long @#$& curved driveway.
Anyway I just wanted to let you know in the yahoo group February's freebie has been posted.
Oh I forgot to add, I did complete the butterflies from 2 post before. This pic is one of them where I have used an embroider effect filter. The actual set can be found here.