One World One Heart

Hello all and welcome to my blog.  This post is all about One World One Heart in which I am participating.  Welcome and Hi if you are coming here because of this event and if your already a bloggy friend and have not heard of this lovely gathering of bloggy people check out the linky link or click on the picture.

One World One Heart is a coming together of bloggy people from all over the world.  It's so you can meet new people and make some connections and friends, so you can connect with me and what not here's some info about, well, me. 

I'm a wannabee children's illustrator

and writer extrodinaire!  I've written and illustrated my first children's book, I just have to find a home for it.  I'm a big fan of cute (check out The Brigade of Cuteness pages at the top).  I find great joy in drawing and writing.  On my blog here you will find some illustrations, illustrated stories and a comic or two.  To the left I a put together a little collage of a few of my friends I have created during the duration of my blog.

As a special treat and as a part of One World One Heart I am having a doorprize giveaway.  What am I giving away you ask?  Well, some notecards with matching stickers, see below.  If you are a blogger, all you have to do is leave a comment below and make sure I can get a hold of you.  The drawing will be Feb. 17th and I will announce who won and then you can e-mail me with your info, sound good, allrighty then.

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And now a few more things. On my blog I also have printables and downloads from time to time. Some examples are: coloring sheets, digital stamps/clipart, um, hmmm, oh, desktop wallpaper for your computer, oh and stickers! I almost forgot, I am a sticker making enthusist! If you look through the post labels, I think it's under crafts, I have a sticker making tutorial. Oh yeah, and on occasion, I make a tutorial.

So, I am going to try my best to visit the blogs of everybody participating and hope to make lots of new bloggy friends. Can't wait to meet all of you!
Oh, if per chance you have some sorta personal vendettea against notecards and stickers and still want to leave a comment on this post without being entered to win the notecards,/stickers, just say so in your comment.
So browse around my blog here and have fun!

As a side note, Blogger wwas going wonk-a-do, so most my pictures are small, a couple of them you can click to see larger, but the one with the notecard boxes comes up as unsafe when you click on it to make it larger, don't ask me why.

Oh dear, I almost forgot to mentintion that whoever wins get boths sets.  In each notecard design (which is two) you get 15 notecards and in each set of stickers (which is also 2) you get a total of 12, 2" inch stickers with 4 of each design (there's three designs).  Okay, bye again. 

Sunday Sketches

"You can't have another juice box until there is nothing left on your plate," I told my one young son while we were having lunch.  Then I turned my back for a second and he took all his food from his plate and put it on his brother's plate.  "Can I have a juice box now?"  he asked.  "There's nothing on my plate."

This was lunch the other day at my house.  Boy kids can be smart alecks.

The boys do sit in the kitchen at a small table with chairs and the legs really do look like pencils.  This is my illustration for Sunday Sketches.  It's the one year anniversary over there, so go check it out.

My Blog Got a Makeover!

If you can't tell, or if you're new here (hi my couple of new friends!) I gave my blog a little makeover.  I got tired of looking at the old one, my blog banner wasn't reflective of the work I do, but I think the new one screams me!  I don't want to toot my own horn, but I quite do like my new blog stylings.  I also made my Twitter so it'll knida match my blog, above is the pattern I used as my Twitter wallpaper.  If you don't know my friends there, I'll introduce ya.  The bird is Doris, she's from the story I wrote, the yellow teddy bear is Jan (pronounced Yan) he was dancing in the forest with his friends.  Heloisa is the racoon, she's from the story I recently started on my blog and the boy is Emile, you guys met him a bit ago with his twin sister.

I also want to say thanks to Tera from Olive Hue Designs for giving me the Stylish Blogger Award.  Check out her blog, she does awesome work.  I also want to thank Christie from Christie's Scribbles and Stitches cuz she also gave me the award, but I don't think I ever thanked the poor girl.  Check out the cuteness on her blog.

Also thank you to those who reciprocated the award back to me after I gave it to them.

One last thing that has nothing to do with my blog, but I might be turning into Ned Flanders (that's the Simpsons neighboor with the moustache).  My two boys were fighting with each other and here is what I said to them, "Cheese and rice, what in the Sam heck-a-doodle is going on here!"  I've lost any edge of cool that I might of had, well, that's if I had any to begin with.  I've had to learn to censor what I say.  No parental advisory is advised!

I'm done babbling now, bye!

Illustration Friday: Dusty

"Hello my friends.  I'm Dusty, Dusty Roads actually, that's my full name.  I still haven't fully forgiven my parents for that one."

One of my neighbors when I was younger was nicknamed Dusty because his last names was Roads, true story.  This is my Illustration Friday entry for the theme of dusty.  My friend Dusty here is in a little indie record shop flipping through the dusty old vinyl.  He's looking for The Unicorns (that's an actual band).  One thing there's not enough of anymore is indie record shops.  The internet is a good thing for discovering music you prolly woulda never heard of before, but there's nothing like taking that trip down to your favorite record store to find some CD of a band that you and like only five other people have ever heard of, with downloading music I think you lose that connection somewhat :( 

Oh, and another new animal for my slowly growing animal repertoire, if per chance you can't tell, Dusty is a beaver.

Sunday Sketches: Tereza

Whatever the swirling rain was, it got Tereza just like it got Jacob the day before.  They were all frozen in shock as they watched her scraft while it slowly flitted to the ground.

Hello all! This is my entry for Sunday Sketches this week.  It's the continuation of an illustration I made the other week.  I kinda liked the story, so I continued to carry it on.  Come back soon to see what happens next!

Here is the first illustration:

"Deja-vu," Umberto whispered under his breath as he, Lila and Cal neared the edge of the clearing. The others were only a couple feet behind them trying to keep pace.

"No, not again," Heloisa then said sobbing into her arm after she saw what was happening.

As you can see from the two illustrations that Heloisa (she's the racoon) is very emotional and dramatic, but I think I would be too if two of my friends got sucked into a vortex of swirling rain.  I sketched out the second one originally for Creative Tuesday for last week where the prompt was scraf, but I didn't have a chance to finish it for that, but I got it done for today!  The full first illustration actually came from a smaller one I did for Sunday Sketches, so these challenges work hand in hand and keep my inspiration going, so thanks Sophia from Sunday Sketches and Mr. Toast from Creative Tuesday!

Meet My Friend Doris

Have you all ever met my friend Doris?  I don't know if I ever formally introduced her.  My early blog followers might remember her, but she's been in hiding.  She's on my side bar there, but hasn't really said hello recently.  Say hi Doris.

"Hi everybody!"

She told me to take her out of hiding and that it's time to get my butt in gear cuz she wants people to read her story, so I said, I'll see what I can do.  Perhaps her story will be coming soon somewhere, but for now I'd figured I start with an introduction.

Creative Tuesday: Scarf

 Hello my Creative Tuesday friends!  I know it's not really Tuesday yet, but life has gotten in the way and I won't be around much Tuesday, have a bunch of stuff to do.  I didn't even get a chance to do Sunday Sketches and as you can see, I did this with a ball point pen and a spiral notebook I had in my bag. I didn't even scan it!  Just took a picture.  This drawing was inspired by my boys, (I actually have  a picture of the two of them in front of the tree like this) cuz after I took everything off the Christmas tree they knocked it over.  It wasn't a real tree, but for my drawing's sake I'm pretending.  I prolly won't do any blog visting during the day, buy should get to it late night Tuesday sometime, okay?  Bye for now!

Blue Manatee Children's Bookstore

 

The past couple of days I can't stop reading!  Once I get into it, it's hard for me to stop, so I have no new illustrations at the moment, but I am going to show you pictures of a delightful children's bookstore to go on my whole theme of reading.  It's in Cinicnnati and called Blue Manatee, not enough places exist like this anymore and it makes me kinda sad.  Here have a look.



Sorry if the picture layout is crazy, that darn Blogger again.

Blue Manatee also has a cafe which makes it even more delightful!

Illustration Friday, CED 2011 and We Love to Illustrate

"Deja-vu," Umberto whispered under his breath as he, Lila and Cal neared the edge of the clearing.  The others were only a couple feet behind them trying to keep pace.

"No, not again," Heloisa then said sobbing into her arm after she saw what was happening.

Download this illustration for your computer wallpaper! Just click what size you need and then right click and select save as desktop wallpaper, or something along that line.

1280x1024| 1680x1050| 1920x1200

(my computer uses the middle size)

This is my entry for Illustration Friday where the theme is Deja-vu.  It is also for the We Love to Illustrate for Children where you get get free computer wallpaper!

I'm also participating in the Creative Everyday Challenge 2011, where you guess it, I'm supposed to be creative everyday, which I usually am, but I'm also using it to keep me a bloggin cuz on Mondays on the CED blog you post an update kinda thingy of what you've been up to all week.  And for the most part of this week I've been all about my favorite band in the whole wide world, Bright Eyes.  My illustration above started out as just the raccoon which I drew for Sunday Sketches and I thought I'd give her some friends and this was all inspired by my Bright eyes tee-shirt (see it on the right there).  If you go and click on the Home button at the top of my blog you can see all the other posts I made this week.  So, that's it for now.

I swear, I won't mention Bright Eyes again, well, for at least a post or two.

Bye!

Sunday Sketches and Bright Eyes

Hello my friends.  It's time for Sunday Sketches.  I just did a quick one.  My illustration is the one on the right inspired by my Bright Eyes tee-shirt on the left.  Yesterday in my post (go check it out) I was talking about my absolute love for the band Bright Eyes (I even put up a video), so I went and dug up my old tee-shirt.  I can't wear it anymore more cuz I tragically shrunk it, but I still keep it around.  This is the first time I did my interpretation of something illustratively (if that's a word), but my love for Bright eyes is strong.

Ooh, I'm a Stylish Blogger

Ooooh, word on the street is that I'm a stylish blogger, at least that's what Pavinee from Have a Merry Day and Anne from My Giant Strawberry say.  They both gave me The Stylish Blogger Award.  Thanks you two!  It's almost like a, Hey, I like your blog chain letter cuz when they give you the award you pay it forward to fifteen others, so it's like a chain letter, but a big fun happy one, so I decided to play along.  You also have to say seven things about yourself.  I liked that part cuz a while ago I had a couple meet the blogger posts and in those posts you learned twenty slightly odd things about me and I never carried it past that, so NOW here's seven more!

One:

I love Aardman Animation!  They're the makers of Wallace and Gromit, Shaun the Sheep, Rex the Runt, the movie Chicken Run.

Two:

Some of my favorite smells; Crayola Crayons, Scotch tape, fresh cut grass and a new paper back book.

Three:

I think two great band names would be; Tuna On a Cracker and Kajabas.  Why you ask, well, today I was eating tuna on a cracker and thought I'd like to say, "Hey man, I'm going to see Tuna On a Cracker play tonight at the Double Door (club in Chicago)."  And Kajabas cuz that's how my three year old says pajamas and I think it's cute.

Four:

I once worked in a shoe store.  I was normally the cashier, but the one night we had a last minute customer and nobody else wanted to help her cuz she appeared to be quite crazy.  She was, the whole time I helped her she leaped around the store with the shoes she was trying on.  Right before she went to the counter to pay she said, "Open up your pocket I have something for you."  I was a little worried, but out of sheer curiousity I did.  Into my pocket she slipped an eight count box of Crayola crayons and taped to the front was a piece of paper decorated with black and lilac swirls with a matching swirly border and in fanciful writing it said: Good Stuff. 

Five:

I so badly wanted to be in a band even though I lack any form of musical talent, my total lack of musicability could be catergorized as disabling, but despite this fact I signed up for guitar lessons.  Well, in was apparent in my lessons my assumptions were correct, but I kept going back cuz my guitar teacher was this cool kid named Sam and we would just sit and spend my fourty-five minute lesson talking about music and concerts we've been to, I didn't learn how to play the guitar, but enjoyed my non-guitar guitar lessons anyways.

Six:

Car washes use to scare the living bageezus outta me!

Seven:

This might be the most important fact about me ever!  I so totally, totally love the band Bright Eyes!  You can say pretty much anything Conor Oberst touches, but my love for Bright Eyes is the strongest.  I can't go on long enough about how much I love Bright Eyes.

This is a picture circa 2003 maybe, wearing a Bright Eyes tee-shirt (don't ask what I'm doing or why this is the seond post with a picture of me, see how long my hair use to be).  This was like a day after one of the times I saw them.  And I'm seeing the again soon!  Everybody, buy a plan ticket, fly to Chicago and go see Bright eyes with me!

Well, those are my seven things for now and here's a list of the fifteen blogs I'm paying forward The Stylish Blogger Award to.

One Red Fox

Le Grand Lapin: Illustrations by Shayla

Heather Foust

Tropical Chicken

Susi-Art

From Jen's Pen

My Picture Garden: Illustration by Hannah Sommerville

Clip Art and Scrap

Softpencil

Wright Story

Ghost Kitten

Rose Hill Designs

Heather Sisson

Have a Merry Day/ My Giant Strawberry

(two different blogs, they're the two that were so nice to say I'm a stylish blogger)

Now, please enjoy this Bright Eyes video (first time I ever embedded a video into a blog post)..

Give it a second or two before the sounds starts (it's kinda soft also).

My Children Are Bunnies!

Okay, I think I've gotten to the bottom of why I draw so many bunnies.  It wasn't until I really looked at this photo that I realized my children are bunnies and well, my husband is a scraggly train engineer, so they (my bunny children) must be my inspiration.  I'm pretty blurry in this picture cuz my other husband (the better looking one) took it and sometimes the camera is too complicated for him, but it's okay that I'm blurry cuz if the picture was too clear I might scare some of you off, ha, ha.

Thanks for all the input on my last couple of illustrations.  I've gotten postive responses on the added pattern, so if an illustration calls for it, I think the pattern will stick around.  Thats it for now yo, bye!

Creative Tuesday: New Year

Sailing into the New Year!

This is my entry for Creative Tuesday where the theme is New Year.  In my previous post I mentioned that I wanted to expand my repertoire of critters for 2011, so I added a moose here.  I also got snazzy with the pattern again.  I also want to find more locations for my drawings, usually they're inside somewhere or in the forest, so I mixed it up and set these friends a sailing.  Bunny is a little sea sink unfourtunately.

This is my third post about the New Year (no more after this I promise), not thorougly satisfied with this one, but if I let myself I woulda been messing around with it all day and I have tother things to do, so I decided to leave it be.  Bye for now!

Hey There 2011!

Sufjan, Jaun and Jan made a resoulution to kick back and have more fun!

Happy 2011 everybody!

This illustration is serving dual purposes.  I originally started it for Sunday Sketches and then I thought to myself that it also could be used for Illustration Friday, where the theme is resolution cuz I was drawing a blank, so yeah.  I'm not one for making resolutions, but this year I'm going to expand my repertoire of critters I draw cuz I think my last 50 posts might have all contained bunnies (I'm sure that's a bit dramatic, but...).  I also tried something new and added some pattern to the background.  I think it looks cute, but not sure if it's deviating from my style too much cuz I've been told I have a very distinct style and want to make sure it still looks like me/my style.

As a side note the teddy bear's name Jan is pronounced yahn, not Jan, like Jan Brady.  See how many times in row you can say Sufjan, Jaun and Jan real fast, it's fun.........