IF: Shadow

Another Illustration Friday post! This week is "shadow" and my immediate thought whenever I hear the word shadow is of my former shadow, Dragon. She's my tiny little black cat and she used to follow me wherever I went. Nowadays, she's much happier to wait until nighttime to be with me, when there are no little hands trying to grab her tail or little heads trying to use her as a pillow. Instead, she sleeps upstairs during the day, maybe appearing once or twice to eat or use the litter box.

So here's my little shadow, sleeping on the arm chair in our bedroom last night. This is my first attempt at sketching, scanning in the sketch, redrawing with illustrator and painting with photoshop. I kept it all very simple, but I really like the effect.

Logo and "Mascot" Characters

I'm working on a new logo and a couple of little characters for Striped Turtle Studio! It's a little slow-going since I don't get a lot of design time on the "good" computer these days. It's in the basement and since there are two little monsters running around the house most days who can't be contained down there, it's hard to get into the basement to do anything productive.

I did get some progress done this morning while Babyman was at school and Tinyman cooperated by playing somewhat quietly and non-destructively. Then he decided he wanted to sit in my lap at the computer and play on the keyboard, so that ended computer time fairly effectively.

So sorry, but I can't give any sneak peeks until the new designs are done. But I think they're going to be really cute - I'm loving them already!

IF: Asleep

This week's Illustration Friday topic is "Asleep." (Can you believe it? I'm finally doing an IF entry! Woohoo!)

When I saw the topic, my immediate thought was of my little guys sleeping. It's always such a wonderful thing when they sleep, whether it's a nap (rare) or at bedtime (when Mommy and Daddy sigh in relief). I have tons of pictures of them sleeping since it's the only time they are still enough to get the perfect shot easily, plus they're just too adorable when they are all peaceful.

So I decided to create two images for the topic, one of each of my guys. Both are digital photos that I played around with in Photoshop Express and PSCS5. My PSE is super simple, on my iPad, so I played around to see what it could do. I liked the results, but they weren't exactly right. So I brought them into CS5 to go a little further. I love playing with the artistic filters, it was neat seeing the effects I got on top of the PSE files.

So, without further ado, here are my sleeping angels. Just for the record, that's probably the only time I'll call them angels, when they're sleeping. ;)

My little guy sleeping on Daddy's arm, where he falls asleep almost every night.

My big guy with his multiple bedtime friends. One of these days he's going to end up looking like ET in Elliot's closet of stuffed animals.

Click the pictures to see them full size - the details are much better full size.

Pre Madonna

Nope, I'm not referring to the era of music just before "Material Girl" and "Like a Virgin" hit MTV (back when MTV actually played music). I'm actually referring to the latest (and possibly the best) malapropism I've seen in a long time. Facebook tends to be good for that kind of thing and today was no disappointment.

In referring to one of the NY Housewives (Ramona, I believe), someone stated in the comments section that on their Morocco trip she was being a "real pre Madonna." I'm pretty sure they meant to say "primadonna." Now I have to admit that one of my biggest pet peeves is misuse of grammar and incorrect spelling, though I'm not one of those people to correct a friend or acquaintance (my kids and husband are a different story, lol). In fact, most of the time it makes me laugh, especially on Facebook. And "pre Madonna" definitely made me laugh!

Crayons!

I've been learning the ins and outs of molding crayons, and I'm really enjoying it! It's a lot of fun finally using all my chocolate molds for something other than candy that no one is going to eat. I made a whole bunch of different sets of crayons, with more in the works, but for right now here are a few of the current sets available for sale in the shop.

Party Planning

My focus over the past few weeks (months?) has been my little guy's 3rd birthday party. I still can't believe he's 3 years old now. 3! Craziness.

So after we decided on a theme - Dinosaur Train - I got to work on the invitations. Next up were the goody bags.


Then t-shirt decals. And cupcake toppers.


The cupcakes were inspired by Confessions of a Cookbook Queen and were sooooooo good!

I also printed a bunch of coloring sheets for the kids and set up our Crayola table and chairs in the kitchen to the kids could color and play with Play Doh.

We finished off the decorations by keeping it simple - green and orange balloons, streamers, paper plates and napkins. Green and orange because Buddy, the main character on Dinosaur Train, is an orange T-Rex with green markings.

Babyman LOVED it! He was so excited about his "Dino Train" party. My only wish is that the weather had been a touch better and we could have dug for dinosaurs too - I bought small dinosaur toys that we were going to bury in the boys' sand table and let the kids go to town with the sand toys, "digging for dinosaurs." But no one was the wiser (nor did anyone realize that there were a few more items I had planned to make as favors and goody bag items, but just didn't have the time) and the party was a lot of fun.

I'm hoping to add some fun items inspired by the party to the shop - cupcake toppers and goody bag decals, maybe even the iron-on t-shirt decals too. But first up is getting a bunch of crayons molded and packaged.

Next big project coming up: planning Tiny's 2nd birthday party!

The Voice of Color

A friend of mine had this color test on her blog and I just had to give it a try. I agree 100% with my result: Water Beads.

Heavy Fog

Driving down to Cape May this morning, I just barely caught a glimpse of a sign through the fog. It said, "Caution: Heavy Fog."