Julia Quinn

A little something different this week :) Julia Quinn is one of my favourite authors (at the moment) and on Tuesday her latest book is due out. It is a semi- sequel to another one which was rather good. Anyway the point of this note is that I can't figure out why the publishers are now adding little book previews for prospective buyers - when I see them I think the word ham. This one is not too bad but I have seen others which made me just laugh at how awful they are.

I am sure the book will be tons better and I await for its arrival in about a week after publication from the book depository - with their free shipping worldwide (almost) - had to give them a plug.

By Artful Xpressions

I just wanted to share a card Micki of Artful Xpressions made with the Jessi stamp. I really love the colours, colouring and background and how alive and happy the card looks. Thanks for doing a great job.
A direct link to the card is here

Little clowns

Ahh this seems to be one of those morning I feel like doing nothing. My glasses are getting constantly smudged and my left sinuse feels heavy. Must be because I spent an hour last night and about the same time this morning trying to get an ip banning module on the site to work but with no luck all this is in hope to do the unthinkable and ban THE search engine spider -googlebot! He is the bane of my life as he messes up downloads and drives me crazy with his frequent visits. Today he has been by at least 5 times in as many hours. I have tried banning him via the google recommended robot text but he is ignoring it it seems

Anyway...i n a designer group the challenge last week was to great something related to the circus, and here on tv at sometime in the year (usually in winter I think) circus acts from Morocco are shown. These are rather cool as they feature acts from all over the world and not many animals are involved and focus more on the grace, strength and beauty of the human form. After saying all that I drew two little non svelte clown kids. Here is a pic of the boy using an embroidery effect program on the clipart.
The set can be found here and here

Dotti's cook out

Here is an attempt using the Dotti digital stamp which can be found at mygrafico.com. I was not totally sure what to do with her, so in t he end I blotted out the star with a pot and wah-La got decided on a casual type invitation. Since the party is to be on the 4th of July I decided to go with the appropriate colours :) A digital paper as a the background, a corrugated cardboard jpg colour changed, resized. On one I used a glitter edge action but had to then trim it as it was too wide for my liking., figured out how to get the stitching action to work, but I am not overly happy with it. Then I added some brads, coloured the dotti clipart, her pot and steam. And then of course added some shadow. Of course this is a photoshop project as I don't have the materials to do the real think but if I did I am not sure I could do it with the kids around nor will I find by some mysterious monster my things decorating the house in one form or fashion. (I have now got to remove a page which mysteriouly was stuck to the parquet floor

Little peacock as a stamp

Converted the little peacock into a digital stamp this weekend. I'm still fretting over line width as I found the freebie I did - hug a cat ( to download it go to http://www.mygrafico.com/freebies/cat-hug/prod_826.html) the line to heavy for colouring - something I did not realise - and in the below post and this I made the line thinner, but now I worry may it is too thin and what if someone wants a heavier line and have only really jpg or png etc etc.

Oh this of course is done via the pc in totally - all expect he original sketch (which may have been also done via the pc but I can't remember now lol). The background and bird were painted - the former via the paint bucket, the latter with the airbrush took to get shadding etc, then I used atomic cupcake's destressed action and added the created effect to a new layer with the colour burn properties and reduced the tranparencies. I found some ribbon I created for an earlier scrapbook set, resized it and changed the colour, did the same thing for some tacks/ brads. Added a shadow to each element to give it (I hope) a more 3D effect and then my book mark was finished.

Making Stamps - Summer Day Girl

Boy this stamp making business is rather a bit more complicated than I had original thought. The problem comes with the line width. While in embroidery designs the bigger the line the better and no line even better, in stamping the opposite seems to be true. And while in embroidery a complete picture per say is desired in stamping it is not eg when a girl sits in embroidery clipart it is good to have things around her eg rock, flowers etc, but with stamping while you can have all that, it seems to be better not to as card making artist may desire to but this 3D element (a flower) or that. So the result I am finding is that I can't just change my colour filled clipart into stamp without some manipulation. Time is saved some times by not having to draw from scrtach but not much :(
Ah well here is my attempt with a new stamp set that will be up at mygrafico.com later today when the states wake up. It is all done on the pc - digital water colour painting, then the painted clipart is opened in photoshop. In photoshop I used a ribbon gotten atomic cup cake as well as there cut out and tissue action.

The Dogs

Began sketching some puppies this week and trying to decided if to do each breed in a set or just have them all out as in my sketch as call it wally.

Anyway on the dog blog I follow I saw this video that I just had to post. Hope you enjoy it - I did :)

Groan

An idea thought is an idea out there - is what I have been told. Once you speak it or in my case sketch/ doodle it is out there more for the world to grasp. Now it has happened that on many an occasion I have doodle and sketched something which I would be doing for the site and then wham before I get it up on the pc or site, some one has beaten me to the punch. No copying, no talking to the other artist, just that they had the same idea as me Only really twice can I recall when it has happened that made me really want to band my head, and then of course this morning. I had this little sketch for a while and only on Friday did I decided and put to paper the full set and was going to work on it this week or next - .

Yes I know there are no new ideas but old ones coming around around again but ...
Oh well, that is life -thud thud ( banging my head on my desk).

Rag doll Christmas

Coming later this week is the Rag Doll Christmas line art set.
Next week I hope to have the colour versions of this and the kittens.

Little Kitten singles line art

Some cute little kittens are up this week. At the moment only the line art is up - which can be used as coloured work sort of like red work - if you wish to use red thread - for digitisers; or as digital stamps if you are like to use them in making cards or scrapbook elements.
The image above just shows some the them singles bunched together:)

Digi Stamps

An article on Digital stamping showing the results of couple examples and the pro and cons - Digi Stamps.
The techniques for the cards are hybrids where the author has used both digital and traditional card techniques. The results are very pleasing.

In a nut shell the Pros seem to be 1. that you can resize your image - if the image is a vector you can resize it to really any size your printer allows - for me these would be file endings in EPS, AI, EMF, WMF. I think the EPS are opened by most graphic programs. If the image is pixel the amount of resizing is limited by the resolution (dpi) of the image. Since in digital stamping one will tend to want to have clean non-fuzzy lines the higher the dpi the better - good dpi in my opinion is 300 dpi. and the file ends I tend to use are JPG, PNG, BMP and EPS (nonvector due to the program it is saved in eg photoshop).
2. They are very affordable.

The major con the author mentioned is printing and the ink. Since most digi stamps need to be coloured, you the card maker need to colour the line art image that has been printed. Depending on your paper type, weight, glue and colouring technique you need to make sure that your lines will not run. I personally would be very interested in hearing more about this and how to avoid messy lines.

The full article can be found via this link Digi Stamps

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Playing with Manga

In my inbox I get a number of freelance jobs which if the mood hits I can apply and try my luck. Last week a job was posted looking for a cute little child alien illustration. It was something that took my fancy and I tried with much success to put my thoughts on paper. The result was horrible until I figured out I had no idea of how to propotion a manga face (have not dealt with the body yet). I found this site which is rather cool, instruction wise , http://www.howtodrawmanga.com. Below is the results of it, and while a manga fan may say it is not such, I am pretty happy with the end result :)
The line art
The coloured version

creating newspaper pots

Well my back is hurting today so I will stay away from the computer chair and the spade outside i.e preparing garden beds, but I got tons of seeds I need to plant them. I bumped up on this video on making paper pots which is rather cool and I will do it with the kids today. So while the garden bed can't be prepared today at least I can start the seeds.


...a week later
We tried the pots. The kids had a great time making them and was now wait for the seeds to sprout.