Illustration Friday: Choose

This bunny believes you can choose to have your cake and eat it too! (Especially when it's carrot cake!)

It's a small world after all

Haha - now I got that song stuck in your head!

Tonight I'm celebrating the fact that I finally added international shipping to my shop. It's been about a year that I've been procrastinating. I bought a postal scale last week. Tonight I packaged up my items like I would for shipping and weighed them. Then I went online to http://www.usps.com/ to calculate the postage.

That tactic worked fine for US and Canadian shipping. However, there's an option on Etsy to charge a single rate to ship "Everywhere Else". Now, I'm sure the cost of a box going to the UK as opposed to AU is completely different. What I had to do (and the reason I was putting off doing it) was sort of make an educated guesstimate. I basically averaged those costs together. I hope I didn't undercut myself. I didn't factor in delivery confirmation or the insurance I buy for items over $35. I guess only time will tell if it'll need to be adjusted or not.

In the meantime, I'd like to extend a big smiling welcome to all of you international buyers. *waves* I've finally shown you some love. Come on over and take a look around!

Mr. B says, "I pity the fool without international shipping!"

Friday Etsy Artist Profile!!!

It's Friday. For me, that means it's time to lighten up a bit. I figured it was a good time to feature another Etsy seller. This will be another biased post because I know this seller personally. (It's another friend of mine from college.) Don't worry, I've already profiled one Etsy seller I didn't know, and I plan on doing more in the future. Today however, I'll be featuring Karen:

Etsy Buy Handmade HoneydewStudio

Karen has her BFA in textile design. Her understanding of texture and pattern is apparent in the prints of her adorable little collage pieces. Little mice snipped from the leather of a lady's glove, ticket-stub deer, and birds formed from discarded train schedules inhabit a world of rolling tissue paper hills, sparkler box mountains, and topographic map fields.
My favorite might be the Dear Talking Dear. A bright orange deer on a background of light green gives a little speech (within a paper-cut out speech bubble) regarding UFO lore.
If your walls are sad and naked but you're not interested in buying boring mass-produced "art", I would suggest taking a look around Karen's shop. Her work is unique, whimsical, and you'll be sure to find a color or pattern appropriate for any room of the house. Take a peek! (o:

I <3 Typograpy (ok, well maybe not yet, but I'm working on it!)

Let's start Wednesday morning off right:


This is a baby picture of my hedgehog, Baxter McPrickles. Baxter is currently getting on to hedgie middle-age. He's a big boy now (2 1/2!) so I'll have to put come current pics up later. In the meantime, I thought we could all use a little nostalgic cuteness on Wednesday. It's cold, dreary, and wet here today. Frankly, it cheers me up to look at Baxter's little face.

Anyway, I was a bit worried and whiney in yesterday's blog (sorry, it happens). It was pretty much unnecessary, as many of my fears are. I wound up feeling right at home in my Typography class last night. My homework was fine, and appropriate. Not only that, but I'm already feeling more comfortable in my ability to understand the program I've enrolled myself in. I may not know graphic design yet, but I'm learning. And I do have a solid background in illustration. It's still all design principles...just applied to different aspects of the visual world. It shouldn't be impossible for me to translate one to the other. It's just a matter of learning the other language. All it took was class #2 to make me realize that. Sometimes you just need to freak out, get it out of your system, and keep on truckin'. Oh well.
I'm going to attack my homework this week, and hopefully still have time to make a few new mini-illustrations. I sold one this weekend of a sheep sipping a coffee. That was awesome. I have been drawing those stylized sheep since time immemorial. I used to draw them (always drinking coffee for some reason) in the margins of my notebooks in college. I love drawing them. I'm glad someone liked looking at them enough to buy one of them.
Other plans for this week include working out international shipping in my Etsy shop. I bought a postage scale last weekend, so that should help quite a bit. I just need to weigh my items in the boxes I'll be sending them out in, and do a few calculations on the USPS website. With any luck, maybe sales will increase once I open up my shop to buyers from countries other than just Canada and the US. I'll keep you posted.

Design Whine

I'm exhausted. The weather is just miserable. Coffee isn't even helping me this morning - which is a shame because I have a long commute and an even longer day ahead of me.
I have class tonight, and I'm not at all confident in the homework I completed for it. I worry that I misunderstood something about the project, or missed some crucial direction and that my work will stick out like a sore thumb amist beautifully executed pieces.
I really don't "get" typography and layout. It's like my brain simply isn't wired that way. You might as well be speaking to me in a foreign language. I suppose that's why I'm in school in the first place, but still...you don't want to be the worst girl in class, right? You want to at least appear that you're catching on. Especially when I already have BFA from an excellent art school. I imagine people raising an eyebrow at my credentials then pointing at my homework and saying, "And this is the best you could come up with???" (I realize no one would actually do that. But that's what goes on inside my head sometimes.)
Adding to my misery, I'm working on a PC at home. A Mac is really more appropriate for these design programs. I think I missed out on a pile of potential fonts that I could've used last night for this project just because I'm working on PC platform. Not to mention that my bare-bones knowledge of design programs will eventually conspire against me. I certainly don't have any money right now to invest in a new computer system. (Unless I win the lotto...which would REALLY help right about now! Where's that genie in the magic lamp?)
Last week, our teacher mentioned that we could work our school's computer lab, but he also doesn't know that I am an out-of-state commuter. I'm not going to drive down an hour (sometimes 1.5 - 2 hrs depending on traffic) on a non-school day just to pop in the hopes there's a free seat in the lab. I do have a full-time job, an online shop, and a home to maintain. Ugh.
Anyone want give me a boost of confidence? Or at the very least, a really strong cup of coffee?* I need it today. :oP

*Along with the lotto genie, there should definitely be coffee fairies. They're much needed creatures, you would think nature would've designed them by now! Lol.

Illustration Friday: Blanket

This piece was a gift to my mom. The baby is wrapped snugly in a baby blanket, but the piece itself is also actually a mini blanket. The materials I used to create it were various fabrics, thread, and cotton batting. I thought it would suit this week's topic.

The Bad Weather Blues

My SCBWI (Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators) meeting was canceled tonight due to the storm that's expected to hit us this afternoon. It's a shame, because I haven't met with my illustration crit group in ages. Between work and school, I simply haven't had any time. Then there were the holidays, during which time we usually don't meet up anyway. The next meeting is scheduled for the 18th, which I'm not at all sure I'll be able to make. Class is on Tuesdays for me this semester, and I usually find myself eyeball-deep in last minute homework on Monday nights.
Guess I'll just have to look at everyone's blog today and pretend. If you'd like to join me, the links are on the right hand side of my page. The Pineapple Diaries and Life With Sam are the blogs for two of our members. Enjoy!