Bookmark compo

A couple of weeks of ago, my favourite internet bookshop announced that they were having a bookmark competition. Now being one who likes to doodle and likes to read (when the kids (and husband(and dogs)) allow), I could not resist the chance to get some free books - the prize is a 100 euro worth of books. After sitting down and doing my entry - see the birdies on the left, I read the rules - yes a bit backwards I know. Initially I thought the guys there will judged them but after reading the info it seems that maybe the lucky 10 winners will be drawn at random, so I guess my chances of getting some free books either way is still about 1 in a million. So anyway wish my entry luck miracles do happen"D
yup had to put the yucky copyright symbol. It sort of messes up the pic a bit though:/

Dancers sketch

At the moment I am working on these dancers for next week. I am not sure if they will be vector or not at the moment though :\

This is a thumb of one the finished line art and colour versions. I decided to colour them via photoshop so they were not vector in the end.

A little Pinny

Here's a preview of a set I am working on at the moment. She is called Pinny. Yes how original I know ... not "D
Any where here is her story. She came to life when a client asked me to create something that was fanstasy and well as sewing oriented. At the time dear little Pinny did not get further than my sketch book, but two days ago I was flipping through it as she popped out and said, " Now you 've got the right brushes - downloaded some rather cool pencil type illustrator brushes - and now you have to bring me to life. So here she is. She is to be one of 8 images. Not sure about the colours of her at the moment (or the wings) - I think I need to watch myself as I seem to be happily drifting back into the dark somber tones and mid-night blue skies in the day :)
If all goes well, barring sickness , crashing computers, and falling skies, she should make an appearance in the store next week sometime.

New collab stamp set

A new collab stamp set is now up at Mygrafico (MG) , it features a number of cool and some wacky digital stamps aka line art. So if you got a moment pop on by and have peek. The total set has 18 stamps ( I think) at an amazing price.

Sketch of November's freebie

2010 will be the year of the tiger. A tiger is truly awe inspiring. In honour of his coming year I have dedicated this month's yahoo group freebee for him. Here is the sketch I just did which I will hopefully (all members of the house are coughing and ill ( well minus me) and no fevers so no swine) complete today in line art /digital stamp and full colour format.








Decided I did not like the bear's arm sticking up lol








... as the day ends

Here are the finished versions which can be found in the group. The background of the colour version is not included.

SALE, SALE, SALE

Yes there is a blue moon tonight, and we are having a sale at clipartandscrap.com. When will the next be, not for a while so if you wish to snatch something up at a super good price click on by the store this week. Click here to get to the store

a card by Birgit

In the mygrafico ning community Birgit of bigganed.blogspot.com posted this beautiful card creation. What can I say but WOW!! The colours are muted and some may say a bit drab, but when she combined these muted natural colours with basic materials - card board, a heavy weave (looks sort of like linen) the result is just stunning.
While Birgit lives further north than me, I had hoped that maybe she sells her card. But alas she doesn't.
The line set used in the card can be found at mygrafico (5 clipart set).

From Clipart to Cross stitch

I’ve seen my work a number of times transformed into embroidery design, but when I saw it on Shoo Fly Pie it was the first time I’ve seen it used as cross stitch.

What is cross stitch – according to Wikipedia - Cross-stitch is a popular form of counted-thread embroidery in which X-shaped stitches are used to form a picture. Cross-stitch is usually executed on easily countable evenweave fabric called aida cloth. The stitcher counts the threads in each direction so that the stitches are of uniform size and appearance. This form of cross-stitch is also called counted cross-stitch in order to distinguish it from other forms of cross-stitch. Sometimes cross-stitch is done on designs printed on the fabric (stamped cross-stitch); the stitcher simply stitches over the printed pattern.

What amazed me with these two examples of cross stitch are how true they are to the original drawing/ clipart.

When I draw whimsically with black outlines especially if they are stick figure oriented in the limb department I’m always concerned that the black lines would be either too heavy or thin for the embroider. However this seems not to be an issue in cross stitch designs. These two cross stitch designs can be found and are available at Shoo Fly Pie - the snowman here and the best friends here.

October Freebie at our yahoo group

Each month on at the Clip Art and Scrap yahoo group I post a little freebie or candy (as I have heard the hip refer to such stuff). They usually are line art and full colour clipart, which you can download for Freeeee.
The clipart is 300 dpi and JPG and PNG format - sometimes other formats too.
Ahh but life is never so easy. You see this is a yahoo group with membership, and joining of course is free, but if you "join, grab and leave" the result is getting banned :( sad but true. If you wish not get the ads then select the "special notice" email option. No mail option is not an option as I change those to special mail.

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!!