Spring Promo

The obsession continues-this time is Springtime ABCs!

What I have so far:
Animal ABCs
Christmas ABCs
Valentine ABCs

Have you send out your Valentines yet?

I've been a bit obsessed with the ABCs lately. After such great feedback and response from the Animal ABCs and Christmas ABCs, I took on the challenge to do Valentine's day. With a little help from my husband ("Q" and "Z" was quite tricky), it was fun coming up with this and using a distinctive vintage color palette, thanks again to colourlovers.com.

front

detail from the back

Check out all the ABCs I have so far over at my flickr set.

Christmas postcard

Just sent this off to the printers! This will be my Christmas postcard. I've been thinking about what I wanted to do for this year. Since I got so many nice comments about the animal ABCs, I wonder if I can continue it onto other themes.

There are some tricky letters but thats the fun part, figure it out. Even though I felt like I'm cheating a little with the letter Z being "zzzz," I'm pretty happy with the end result.

I'm already thinking about other themes already :-)

Illustration for Kids- Fall Mailer

Its that time of year again when we do a fall promo over at Illustration for Kids.

Stay tuned for my post tomorrow on my sketchook project!

Spring Promo at Illustration for Kids

Enjoying the spring weather as I work on my own book dummy and a piece for our spring promo over at Illustration for Kids:
And a thank you to Lori West at Curledupbooks.com for nice review of The Great Matzoh Hunt.

Thats about it around here. I've been taking a slight break from Facebook and Twitter, and giving myself more time for personal projects. Also I need to start doing some research on my upcoming trip to Tokyo. I can't wait!

Moving Postcard-Another Idea

I ended up going with another idea for my moving postcard. This is what I came up with (and printed). But after a few days of thinking about my previous idea though, I want to give the "moving monster" another shot. I received some great feedback to make it better. But since I really should be getting a promo out, this will be mailed out.
Alot of promotion and marketing plans are floating in my mind lately. Personal projects are brewing too. Perhaps my muse did move with me to Ann Arbor...she was just on another flight! :-)

Spring

This is my piece for our spring mailer at Illustration for Kids. I had a meeting with an art director once who told me that the problem with alot of vector illustrations isn't because its digital, but because it is usually very flat in terms of perspective. This is my attempt to take on that challenge and shake things up a bit.

The Licensing promos are here!

Its driving me nuts that my camera doesn't take very good pictures. But I had to post these because I'm very excited about them. I just got these postcards from the printers to promote my art for licensing.
I had a wonderful meeting last week with my Surtex partners about setting up our booth. Right now we are trying to figure out where are the best places to print vinyl banners. It will be my first time printing up something as large as 3' x 7'...if anyone has tips on that, I would appreciate it. But I guess right now, I need to figure out exactly what art I will put on there!

Goodies from France!

Bonjour! I'm back from my trip to France and had a great time! We visited Strasbourg, which was about a two and a half hour train ride from Paris. My deary was a on a business trip there, so what a great excuse for me to tag along :-)

I LOVE the French illustration style and aesthetic. In particular I was looking for this book by one of my favorite illustrators Marc Boutavant:
I've been wanting this book for so long now! Its very hard to get it in the US (it is on ebay, but very $$$). What a beautiful book!!! Then in another store I found stickers by Marc Boutavant too:
And the cutest little notebook and Christmas Alphabet postcard by Illustrator Marion Billet:
I love "Fake ads" -Postcards by illustrator Amandine Piu:
And of course how can I resist this one (also by illustrator Amandine Piu):
Our high school French got us around ok but I must admit it was mentally draining afterwards. Having a language barrier is a handicap and there were a few awkward situations. Then I thought about all the non-English speaking people who are brave enough to come to the US to make a life for themselves (including my parents.). Props to them most definitely!

Anyways, I already miss the cafes and pain au chocolats. Strasbourg is a very quaint city to visit. Too bad I didn't get to see much of Paris, only the airport and the few blocks around the train station. Next time!

New art for Promotional postcard

I am about due to send out another promotional postcard. Here is a new piece of art I just finished for it. What do you think? I am trying to keep up a regular schedule with sending stuff to keep my name out there...my goal is to at least send something out three times a year.

Speaking of promotion, I wanted to mention a few blogs that I've been checking out thats helpful:
The Marketing Mix- I've been enjoying the small bites of info and tips there....very easy read and not overwhelming. I've picked up some great ideas there.

Living the Creative Dream- a great inspirational site with everything from creativity to promotion by the super-talented Holli.

Website finally updated!

Wow, I didnt realize its been a while since I posted. I've been working on updating my website and its finally done! Please visit and let me know what you think. I am not the most web saavy person in the world, so updating my website really means redoing the whole thing. Now that I have that done...
To promote the site, I also got these postcards made at psprint...I am pretty happy with them. (The color is a bit off because of my camera and poor picture taking skills). They have the option of a short print run (starting at 125 cards) which is way better for me.... the prices are reasonable and they have sales for different products every month. I also like Modern Postcard-very good quality, but the problem is that their printrun starts very high and I have way too many left over, enough to cover my walls.
Here is the actual illo, some of you may remember the sketch. Thats about it for me here. Busy working on a book that I am excited about. Its a secret right now but more soon!