(Update…. I won! YAY!)

Ella, ella, eh, eh, eh… OKOK.

For the pre-graduation thingy in Forsyth, soon-to-be grads were invited to decorate these paper umbrellas for a contest. The umbrellas were all varnished and glued and such, so watercoloring them was totally out of the question. I decided to give acrylic painting a shot, without high hopes because I am a dismal acrylic painter. I almost gave up in the middle cause it looked so bad, but once I finished it with black outlines I fell in love. She’s an adorable little trash mermaid!

I used acrylic airbrush paints rather than normal acrylics, and I think it helps a lot to make brushstrokes disappear.  They are very thin and smooth. I highly recommend that stuff!

The winner gets $500, so wish me luck! ( Unless you did one too )

I have no idea what to do with a big ol’ umbrella I can’t fold up after the competition, though… I was thinking of hacking off the handle and hanging it up.

While bidding on different jobs in Etsy’s Alchemy page, I have plenty of sketches drawn for clients who ended up going with something else. So I’m going to go ahead and turn them into logos anyway for my portfolio. I’ve changed the names of the companies, but I figured there is no point in letting a good sketch go to waste!

I did this one today. Can you guess why I was interested in this project?

I got bored today and decided to redo the ugly Wordpress smileys into some ugly cat smileys. I only have a few done so far, but I’ll keep working on ‘em!

I’ve been working with the ladies at Art Beast, a nonprofit children’s center for homeless kids. They needed a mascot/logo for their organization, and it was a lot of fun working with them to create the perfect beast.

The original sketches. They liked number two, so we went with it with some revisions (simplification, etc)

Some of the colors we contemplated (we ended up with a combination of these for the final one, though!)

We ended up going with this beast, but they also wanted a version with texturing, which spawned this guy….

Thank you John Foerster for the demo on texturing in Illustrator!

Phew! It was quite a process, but a lot of fun.

Ack! My poor blog has been neglected recently– I’ve been focusing my efforts the last couple weeks on making a bunch of stuff for the craft fairs that were coming up, and the new SOI shop at the Savannah Mall.  I made so many dolls and was scared they would not be bought, but people seemed to really like them. An unfortunate side-effect is that I’m totally sick of sewing tiny legs and cat ears, but hopefully that will pass soon.

I’ve been wanting to practice my vector skills and expand my portfolio in that area, so lately I have been doing freelance work creating logos/mascots etc. for various Etsy members as a good way to get some new pieces. The fun thing is that via Etsy’s “Alchemy” request section, I can only bid on the requests that actually sound like fun… mainly adorable things! Once I’m totally comfortable with designing little characters and logos in Illustrator, I hope to move on to doing some graphic design projects as a way to get a design portfolio necessary for book design fellowship I REALLY want to apply to this December.

Here are two I just finished, with another on the way!

Finally got these off my boyfriend’s camera! Just a few pics of my setup. The Savannah market Bazaar was a great success! I made a good profit as well as passing out lots of cards and making some new friends.

This month, though, I am going to try to get a spot that’s NOT under a tree! Not only did a bird poop on one of my prints, but those annoying balls of pollen kept falling all over EVERYTHING. Even so, it was a lot of fun. I’ll be back there Saurday, May 9th, so come check it out!

The state of my poor display in the pictures is less than optimal… it was WINDY and dolls and prints were flying everywhere. I eventually had to tape everything down. :I