My Secret Santa Solution

I play  Bunco, we do a secret Santa yearly and this year  I picked my friend Liz to buy for. I wasn't sure what to get, and then viola, I had a good idea.

I saw this at Joanns

Hmmm what to do, Liz works for Victoria Secret and has wonderful ugly sweater parties. So the fun began. And this is what I came up with....

And then inspired by last years party I found little lights that I fit in the victoria secret inspired bag.

And it lights up. I hope she likes it.

My Hidden Pictures arrived today..

 Look what I got in the mail today. I did several hidden pictures for Highlights Magazine, I really enjoy creating these drawings and appreciate the fact that they send the illustrators the printed copies.

Its always a challenge, the best advice that I was given  was to create the illustration first and then find the hidden picture opportunities.

My fun with digital color..

I was asked to do a coloring book page with my other PictureBookArtists friends. The theme was outdoors, I love lakes so I did this.

When it was all done I decided to finally play around with the digital brushes that I bought from Kyle Webster. It was very fun and I loved playing with all the textures, my next challenge will be creating the art without the line.

A book proposal in 30 days...

In June I attended the SCBWI conference here in Orlando Florida.

The project was to come up with a wordless, or limited word picture book, I had this idea for a while, 

the challenge was to pull this together in 30 days. I got some worthwhile  feedback from the editor Martha Rago, which I appreciated.

Card making

As of late I have gotten interested in card making. This is a card I made from papers I had in the studio. I made it for a friend that just had their first child.

I bought punches from Fiskars, I have to say my favorite card making supply is my Fiskars rotary cutter that folds up. I would love to eventually design my own papers to use in my card making.

An Alligators Valentine

Here is a promotional piece I had done for Valentines Day. After moving to Florida, Alligators have been more on my mind. Happy Valentines Day

My First Highlights Cover

Here is my first cover for Highlights Lets Play Series. Also, one of the first times I sent the art in digitally. I was nervous and very happily surprised when it came out.

This is the digital copy I can see the colors changed a bit, but I am very happy with the cover.

Also very relieved to see what was printed was close to what I saw on my screen, thanks John Nez for the calibration advice. This is the thing I love the most about this digital age, being able to send my art via my computer, just amazing.

This is the house my sister gave me. She found it at a tag sale and she had it for a while, I fell in love with it, then it became mine.
 In this picture it is dressed up for Christmas. I imagine some German grandfather working on it for his grandchild.

Still a work in progress but this is how far I have gotten. I painted some furniture, decided to not put in a kitchen and a bathroom so I could add the studio and another bedroom. Two more interesting rooms.

 This is the fun part, I found great canvases at Hobby Lobby, and had so much fun imagining the artist that would be painting in her studio. I made a fun flat file from matchboxes and scrapbook paper. And I loved doing the miniature paintings. The trash thing in front is from church when my husband received communion. I love the fact this is a work in progress. And who knows maybe when the time is right I may have some little ones playing with this.