February 2016 archive

Tiki goodness

| Art, Creative process, Lettering

Since I don’t do client design jobs anymore, one of my favorite endeavors is the design work I am asked to do for my church’s local congregations. I don’t get paid for the work in *moolah*, but I get paid in more beautiful ways like I did with this design job.

I was given complete creative control over coming up with a poster and flyer concept for a luau fundraiser for the young men of our congregation. It’s really fun when I get that much creative freedom. It gave me the chance to try out a new medium for drawing some Tiki graphics. I hadn’t anticipated that my new set of Tombow brush pens would be so fun to work with. Boy, was I blown away with what I could get out of those things! I was pleasantly surprised at the wood grain effect I got out of them.

Now I’m finding myself looking for an excuse to use them again. *hee hee*

After scanning in the drawing of the Tiki guys and the monstera leaves, I combined them with vector graphics I drew in Illustrator for the background and the word “LUAU”. To round out the whole thing, I found a fun font called “Tiki Tropic” at dafont.com that fit with the playfulness of the design.

And here’s the finished design…

YM-Fundraiser-Luau-web-graphic

Materials used (this list contains affiliate links through Amazon Associates):

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Little black dress

| Art, Lettering, Shop

I did this hidden lettering piece after I saw today’s challenge prompt “Little black dress”. I was channeling Audrey Hepburn the entire time I rendered it.

After I got done with it, I liked it so much that I decided to scan it and bring it into Photoshop for a quick clean up so I could then take it into Illustrator and make it into a super-clean vector graphic. Once I had the vector graphic done, I brought it back into Photoshop to lay it out into a pattern for leggings and an all-over print t-shirt for my Society 6 shop. I think the leggings and the coordinating white tee (bottom left) would look really cute worn together.

Little-Black-Dress-apparel

 

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Watercolor hearts

| Art, Shop

I used watercolor pencils for this doodle I did based on a challenge prompt on Instagram (click the image above to go to my Instagram post to find the prompt link). I liked the end result so much, I decided to make it into a pattern for an all-over print t-shirt design on my Society6 shop.

All over print watercolor heart tee

Then I thought that the shirt was so cute, I made it available on other products. Click on any of the thumbnails below to go directly to my shop.

Watercolor hearts phone case Watercolor hearts wall clock Watercolor hearts shower curtain Watercolor hearts mug Watercolor hearts laptop sleeve Watercolor hearts tote bag Watercolor hearts throw pillow cover Watercolor hearts travel mug Watercolor hearts duvet cover

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Pink ruffled camellia

| Photography, Shop

 

Pink-ruffled-camellia

I love that camellia season here in the San Francisco Bay Area coincides with all the pink and red hearts of Valentine’s Day. I took this photo and shared it on social media. After I did, a friend suggested that I make it available to buy in prints. It is now available at my pixels.com shop.

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Ornamental pear trees in bloom

| Inspiration, Photography

Right on schedule, the ornamental pear trees are in full bloom and laden with white blossoms. We found a whole parking lot full of them. I had to take a pic with the street lights shining through. Being under the canopy of branches felt like being in a magical wonderland. It reminded me of what Anne Shirley in Anne of Green Gables called “the White Way of Delight”.

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