My ornaments are done!

So here they are! Each ornament is 3" wide x about 4.25" tall. I painted the second side of each piece white (with a thin/subtle layer of glitter on top) and then glued the house and tree pieces back to back. In order to give them a nicer finish, I made them a little wider on one side so that I could line them up on the left side and cut off the excess on the right side (did that make sense!?)

I've always thought that it's interesting how my design work tends to be very simple and flat (not very layered/dimensional) but I find it easy to work in 3D. I have a really easy time picturing it in my head before I make something and this pretty much turned out the way I envisioned it. I totally attribute the 3D ability to playing with wooden blocks and Legos A LOT as a kid. But that's a story for another day.

My original plan was to have three layers of cork. The middle layer (the one I didn't include in the end) was going to be a simple rectangle that gave the illustration more depth. I eliminated that layer in order to avoid being too rushed in the end.

The biggest obstacle when working with cork was its inherent property to hide cuts (hence making it good bulletin board material - duh!). I had to keep a close eye on every cut and know where I'd been so that my shapes where accurate.

I still have to package all the ornaments and mail them out tomorrow - one day shy of the deadline - whew! ;) Sorry about the photos. The glitter and bad lighting made it more difficult to take decent ones.

Holiday spirit in full swing

I hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving! We sure did! :)

The holiday spirit has definitely filled the house! We decorated this past weekend and I FINALLY got an idea I settled on for the ornament swap I'm participating in. I had a bunch of ideas coming and going all last week and I'm kicking myself because I had them all in my head and didn't sketch any of them for future reference. I do that a lot. Bad habit!!

I finally came up with something that I think meets all of my own requirements. I wanted ornaments that were different, mailable (didn't want them to arrive crushed) and I wanted to use an unexpected material. I thought a lot about sewing something but like I've mentioned before I'm no sewing expert and just the thought of the production process stressed me out. I'm good with my hands and I'm good with an x-acto knife so I stuck with that. These are some shots of my process so far. I'm waiting for a second color of paint to dry now so I've done more than I'm showing you here. I hope to finish them tonight and hopefully mail them out in the next day or two. A few more pics are here.

I feel like such a slaker!! People have already mailed out their ornaments and here I am still in the final stages of mine. I will meet the deadline so I guess I'm OK! ;) If you'd like to see what everyone else has worked on check out all the wonderful ornaments here.

BTW I have a new interview up on Crafty Synergy. I took a little break last week because of the holiday! ;)

Illustration Friday - Thanksgiving

It's been a crazy week but I've managed, really quickly, to do a little something for this week's IF. It's a combination of vector art, hand drawn illustration and scanned texture/fabric.

Thanksgiving is about being with family and what better way to do it by sharing a great meal together... We're going to my parent's house this year so I'm sure it'll be delicious! :)

Christmas tree cards

My Christmas tree block print cards are up. I was over thinking my previous designs and scrapped a couple of them because I wasn't happy with the way they turned out. I wanted these cards to be simple and a little different then my other illustrations. This design wraps around to the back of the card and the ink is actually a dark forest green (it looks black in the photo doesn't it?). They are available in sets of 8 cards and matching envelopes.

A Little Hut cards on HGTV!

I missed it!! I had no idea that my That's Clever show would rerun today! Did someone catch it? I was vacationing out of the country when it ran in the summer.

I've been crazy busy starting all sorts of projects, sketching others and rethinking others. I'll be back with pictures before the end of the week.

I hope everyone had a great weekend! :)