Just Keeping Myself Occupied...

Made all kinds of fun wine charms over the last few weeks, for all occasions! Sneak peek of my favorite set that I made:

I have a bunch of sets listed on Etsy that I'm trying to sell. I hate to part with them, I'd love to keep them for myself, but that is the nature of being creative- gotta have money coming in!

Lazy Daisies set of 6 wine charms

Fiesty Chic Animal Print set of 6 wine charms

Through the Hoops set of 4 wine charms

Hear Them Ring Christmas set of 6 wine charms

Coffee Cups on a Sunday Afternoon

New Etsy Listings! Having fun with ceramic mugs and ceramic paint pens! Made a test mug for myself:

Using a line from the Epilogue from Neil Gaiman's book StarDust, which is one of my favorite books of all time.

Also made another one for the Etsy shop:

http://www.etsy.com/listing/83510031/coffee-cup-ladies-do-not-start-fights

in the immortal words of the Aristocats: "Ladies do not start fights, but they can finish them." Have a couple more in the wings that I'm excited to make!

Christmas continues on...

Two more coming in! I'm failingly slow at these, but I'm trying to balance drawing with Etsy and Etsy with finding a job and I'm swirling down the stream of craziness that is my life. Enjoy!

Fun fact: When this song was being translated into modern-day language, some of the words got lost or mis-translated due to the fact that there were no actual dictionaries in which to record words. In olden times, the Four "Calling" Birds were actually called Four "Colly" Birds, suggesting that they were black birds given to be baked into pies ("Sing a Song of Sixpence"). "Colly" refers to the Old English word "Colliery", or "coal mines", therefore it was thought that blackbirds were called "colly birds" since it looked like they were covered in coal dust.

Daily Sketchbook

As a personal quest, I've decided I'm going to spend 1-3 hours a day doing a daily sketch, just to stay in shape. It started as a 3-part quick sketch cartoon for my boyfriend to make him smile during exams, and evolved from there. I've decided for the rest ofDecember I'll be drawing, naturally, the 12 Days of Christmas, developing my character design skills and working on my understanding of space and composition.

For your viewing pleasure, here are

the first two days of Christmas!

My idea behind the Partridge is that, alone in his pear tree, he has started to take notice of the fact that he and the pears have the same shape, and due to sheer lack of company, had

fallen in love with a certain pear. Anything to keep him company on cold winter nights.

My concept behind the doves is summed up very beautifully by a friend of mine. He says it looks like he has a "drunk, Japanese-businessman-esque quality", while another friend finishes, " 'I'm a bond trader and after that glass of wine, you're comin' with me' And she's actually considering it!"

I want to give these drawings as playful an air as possible, stretching my skills of face and body expressions further than I have before. I hope you enjoy! More to come!

Busy Bee

I got a good response on my "Sweet Georgia Summer" book. I haven't sold it yet, but I did get a commission to make one in different colors for my boyfriend's mom. Which gave me the insane idea of making a series of these beaded books with different designs and colors on the covers.

I was talking to a friend of mine last night about the new design I had come up with, and he asked me why I insisted on being so crazy with my designs. I thought for a moment, then came up with the best answer I could: Blending the line between genius and crazy tends to allow for some of my better and more uni

que ideas (we'll take my porcupine/cactus/needle book for instance).

So last night I designed #3 in a set of goodness knows how many. I haven't bound it yet, because quite frankly I'm exhausted from beading and I REALLY don't want to go to Walmart right now to find ribbon. But here is the cover

design anyway, because I'm very excited about it, and I want to hear your thoughts, comments, praises, or declarations of my insanity!

The cover is bound in ice-white linen bookcloth and will be bound with blue or green satin ribbon, in the same corset bind of "Sweet Georgia Summer".

The fish is hand-beaded with silver, green, blue, orangey-purple, light purple, black and gold beads (sead, bugle, large), and detailed with black sewing thread. The bubbles and red details on the side of the fish are blue and red Swarovski crystals.

This is available for purchase upon completion, so if anyone wants dibs, please say so! Thanks guys!

(sorry, the image is small. here's a link to a full-sized image!)

Preview

So now that I have some time off of work (thank you, viruses...) I've decided that I'm going to spend time exerting my creativity. Winter is usually my dry period of art, and I'm determined not to let that happen this year! So I'm going to design a couple of series to work for the duration of the winter months!

Because it's been so long since I've drawn.... anything of substance... I'll give you all a sneak peak of the design idea I have for my first set. Here is a test sketch I did tonight, playing with paper, color and materials! Enjoy!

Never saw this coming, but it feels alright.

So the other day I got a phone call from my brother's friend's dad who owns the bookstore downtown. He had a job opportunity for me, and naturally, I was ready to jump on it. I told myself I would take it "no matter what the job was". I didn't actually expect that promise to myself to be tested. Turns out, the camera girl for his TV show was gone to Haiti to shoot a documentary, and his Graphics guy was leaving for college soon, so he needed to bring in someone who had both creative vision and creative training. So my "no matter what" promise turned out to literally be a "no matter what" situation. I was brought in, taught how to operate studio cameras, lights and sound, and create and run graphics at the same time. In 3 hours. David's approach to seeing if someone is really up for the job is, funny enough, also my method of teaching people how to do things. Basically, "the most effective way to teach someone to swim is to throw them in the river and tell them not to drown." I'm usually on the teaching end of that, but to be honest it was fun being on the learning end as well. I had 3 hours to learn how to do all of what I needed before my production skills were on LIVE TELEVISION. I don't think I need to expand upon the heart palpitations I was having.

Anyway, so two weeks later, and I'm still alive and kicking. The graphics guy has three days left, and I'm going to inherit all the stuff he's been doing for the last three months, and start stylizing the show myself. I'm terrified, because by next week I'll be running two computers AND camera and sound all by myself, where for the last two weeks he and I have both been splitting the work. I know I'll be fine, and if I'm not I know I can get some backup, but it's still a wonderfully thrilling idea.

So if that weren't enough for me to do, I was just offered another Production job from the same guy for a different kind of thing. I'm not sure how much I can talk about it, so I'll play it safe, but this position is a huge opportunity for me. Being a Production Manager for two live television shows is something that will definitely open up a ton of doors, and give me all kinds of new experiences that I'll definitely need to get to where I want to be. I'm looking at a very busy fall season, and hoping that this will help slingshot me straight into Atlanta, which is my definite short-term goal.

All that to say- with my Illustration degree from SCAD, I never ever thought I would be in a film/radio/tv job (which, funny enough, was my dad's undergrad degree from UGA) but despite never having thought it, I'm finding myself enjoying the challenges, the learning experiences, the new-found space to stretch my wings, and the proximity to a fabulous gelato store. I'm really looking forward to where this job can take me, and I'm thanking God every day for providing, like He promised.