My favorite books

It’s been to many years since I’ve had these books in my hands. I finally unpacked them from storage from my parent’s attic. This is not quite all of them.   Yes they are children’s books, but to me, they are beautiful. I love the illustrations, the little details and how the pictures interact with the type.  As I study these, yes study, I get more and more excited about working toward my goal of illustrating a children’s book with the hopes of one day being published.  

At least half of my books came from books signings I’ve attended throughout school and a few after.  I’ve met the top pop-up books artists, my favorite illustrators like Chris Van Allsburg and even Julie Andrews (I Know!!!). Hearing all of them read their books and answer questions afterwards has always been inspiring.  I’ve never met a children’s book author or illustrator that didn’t love what they had accomplished. And to me, that is important in any dream/goal that you have in mind.  

 

My mother's doll house

My parents started building this dollhouse from scratch when I was really little. Literally from a sheet of plywood. We recently set it up again after many years. My mom had it turned around so you could only see the outside of the house. We had gotten some dollhouse furniture at an auction years ago that we hadn’t looked at yet and we found lots of treasures. There is a small fortune in this house but it’s been almost a 30 year project.
My parents cut all the shingles, all of the working windows and moldings, and sand paper bricks on the outside. My mom has knitted sweaters with string and tooth picks, and if you look at the one photo with the sewing room, she created the half dress too. You can even see the pins she made from really sewing pins.
They say they aren’t artists but they just do different art than I do. Someday, I will create a children’s book from this and it will be epic.
 I asked my mom about this tonight and she said she can remember snow white was always playing in the back ground on the tv when they were building it. And to this day, when she hears that movie, all she can smell is saw dust and hot glue. 

Paint-Your-Pet

I’m hosting a Paint Your Pet event soon so I am working out how I’ll do it. Everyone who signs up will need to send me a photo of their pets. Then, before the event, I’ll need to draw everyone’s pet on a canvas. I can’t teach this one step by step, but I can give advice, like starting with the background so that later, they don’t need to paint around their pet. Here is what I’ve done with my dog, Remmy.

Procreate - Not just a word to Giggle at

When I first heard of the app I won’t lie, I just giggled at the name of it.  That put aside, so far I’m really enjoying this drawing app. I’m also new to drawing on an iPad. Mind. Blown.   I have not created much with it yet. My experience so far has been trying all of the brushes and movements with the Apple Pencil. I’ve gotten lost for hours with this. The smoothness of writing on glass gives a whole new experience with hand lettering.  Although I miss the aroma of markers and ink, practicing on the iPad is very convinient. I can save my materials for hand made items and not waste them on practicing new shapes, letters and doodles.

The things I’m most excited about with this app so far are-

1. The vvariety of brushes and how you can alter your brush so it’s just how you want it to be.

2. That you can organize your projects in the gallery. For example, I have one project labeled “Instagram” and I have been placing everything I’ve made for Instagram in it. 

3. I can easily switch and alter layers.

4. I can zoom in and rotate the canvas!

Although this is probably the most expensive app I’ve ever bought, I think it with be insanely useful and I’m very excited to be able to create with Procreate.

Couple Tattoo

Sometimes I get on a kick of wanted to get a tattoo. I have ideas, all I think I could live with. But that’s usually as far as it goes. I think this is something I would like to play around with some more. My husband is an obsessed fisherman, and I do the whole art thing. So I think this is a super sweet way of getting a tattoo together without putting our names on it.