Chicken eggs and wedding invites, oh my!

Thank you for everyone's well wishes from the last post! Things are still crazy here as I now have the Surtex show in two weeks. Doing a trade show and getting married all within a month of each other = absolute craziness!

I wanted to finally post my chicken wedding invitations though! As many of you who might be artists/designers/illustrators, the first thought after getting engaged was...not the dress, or anything else, but....oh what am I going to do in terms of the invites?!? I had so many elaborate things going through my mind: sending everyone bound books, or a box, or a poster in a big tube. In the end, I wanted to keep things simple and sophisticated. Hard to do because I realized I struggle with doing anything sophisticated.

I ended up doing a tri-fold invitation, which gave me the story book feeling but much more simple than actually doing a book. The concept was (of course, us designers had to have a concept for an invite, haha!) a path on which we went from the streets where we first met to St. Thomas for the ceremony, and back to New York for the reception. Here is a picture of my "assembly line":

To finish my theme of a chicken wedding, we had plastic egg favors filled with chocolates tied with a matching blue ribbon, thanks to my mother-in-law (again)!
It was very easy to come up with some matching thank you flat cards afterwards.
Thanks again to all the well wishes, I'm off to do some Surtex stuff and hopefully survive the next two weeks. Back again soon!

A Beachy Chicken Wedding

Last week will be forever in my heart. Starting with a trip to St. Thomas, Virgin Islands, where Math boy and I married in a private ceremony at Magens Bay Beach between two palm trees. It was peaceful and serene, with only the minister and a photographer present. It was unfussy, focusing on what really matters... everything I wanted it to be.

We stayed at the Bellavista Bed and Breakfast in St Thomas. (hello, Wendy!!!) I wanted give this place a mention since Wendy the owner is a wonderful lady who took incredible care of us the whole time we were there. Highly recommended!

We came back to NYC for a reception to celebrate with friends and family....and the theme for the party? Chickens, of course! And the star of the show:
My chicken wedding cake!!! Made by my incredibly talented mother-in-law!!! I couldn't have dreamed of a better cake!!! It was so personalized (she based the chickens off of my illustrations) and I had no idea what it looked like till the reception. I was completely floored.
I'm not the type of girl who thought about their wedding day since they were little. But this chicken cake is definitely a dream come true. Words can't really express how much I appreciate the time, energy and love that was spent making it. Thank you, my new MIL!!!

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!

Work Space

I recently took this pic of my work space for a book I'm contributing to. The picture is only of my desk since I literally don't have a "real" space to work. I've been working in the corner of my living room for over 3 years now. But I'm so happy to announce that I will be getting my own room as my studio (i.e., four walls and a door!) very soon. More on that later.

The count down for my wedding is less than a month away. I'm also working on some designs for Surtex, which its so hard since I can't show everything I've been doing here. But a sneak peek...notice whats on the screen in the pic? Thats a piece for my postcard. I'm waiting for it from the printers...I'll show that here once I get it.

Illustration Friday-Intricate

Hello, Illustration Friday! Oh how I've missed participating. I've been working on a fresh piece that will fit the theme...sort of. This was an expansion to a piece I did a while back here. I could go on and on and expand the town!

I'm planning to use this for next year's Picturebook directory. A good break from all the licensing stuff I've been trying to do.

Surtex Shuffle and card ideas

There were some changes going on over at the Surtex show in which all the booth numbers had been re-assigned. Now we are in booth #552. Luckily, I haven't had any printed materials made yet. The group I am with is Vivid graphics and there are 5 of us. We'll be meeting soon to discuss the displays in our booth. Exciting!

I've been feeling very overwhelmed lately. So much so that I feel like I haven't been very productive with my time and energy. I haven't spent much time working on my licensing portfolio but instead feeling paralyzed and guilty. Last night, I finally stayed up to work on a few pieces:
I've been doing some research on licensing, and there are great resources out there such as the art of licensing yahoo group, Tara Reed's ebook on doing trade shows, and my fellow illustration for kids member Holli Conger documenting her Surtex show planning on her blog.

So far, I've had mixed feelings on licensing...such as doing art work on spec, artwork being kept in a private gallery, etc. which is very different from doing illustration. I am learning alot so far, and we'll see where this journey takes me.

And the Winners are...

The winners of the Chickengirl Design/uprinting.com giveaway are...

#41 mkdubose, who will receive the 1000 business cards

and

#44 Karen, who will receive the canvas print!

Thank you to all that dropped by and entered. I wish I could give all of you the prize. It sounds like we can all use some new fresh business cards. In case you were wondering, I decided to use a random number generator to pick my winners. (Its easy and its fair!) Congratulations to the winners! I'll be in contact with you shortly.

Thank you to Uprinting.com for sponsoring this giveaway :-)

Giveaway!!!

A while back I won a giveaway over at Vectips, and the prize was 1000 free business card printing from Uprinting.com. Now I am so thrilled to be partnering up with UPrinting to host a giveaway of my own here, to give my dear loyal readers a chance to win too! With these crazy economic times, we can all use some free promo materials.

One reader will receive 1000 free business cards printing and one reader will receive one 18" x 24" canvas printing!

If you don't remember, I ended up printing these wacky coupon/business cards, which I will be using at the Surtex show:
The quality was wonderful and I loved how I had the option to make it an unusual size (more coupon size like). I'm very happy with them and plan on printing some postcards next.

So, alright, on to the good stuff!

How to Enter

1. Leave a comment at the end of the blog post, describing what you would use the free business cards and/or prints for.

Prize

1000 free standard size business cards for one reader and 1 free 18 x 24 canvas print for one reader.

You can choose from any of their stocks for these items.

Rules

Winners in the United States and Canada qualify for free shipping. Shipping fees will apply to winners outside these areas.

I will pick 2 winners randomly on Friday, March 6th. Please make sure that I have a way to contact you if you win. Good luck, everyone!

Vector book Love

I realized if someone asked me what is the one thing I can't live without, and the answer might possibly be "Adobe Illustrator." So here is a book that gives vector art all the love, and I'm a contributor for it! Its called Vector Graphics and Illustration, A Master Class in Digital Image-Making by Jack Harris and Steven Withrow.

I'm in the pictorial narratives section, with a write up under "Chickengirl and Children's books." I was pretty amused by that.
There are also some tutorials and artist profiles (which I didn't get one, I must say I had to pick my ego off the floor from that!) But I am very honored to be with a bunch of fabulous vector artists-one of my favorites is Catalina Estrada-she is so amazing! There are very few books on vector art in comparison to books on photoshop and other programs, so this is a gem to me. Thanks to the authors Steven and Jack for letting me be a part of it!

And hey, I'm on the back of the book! There is my pirate bunny!

Thoughts on The Creative Genius

Alicia posted a wonderful video of writer Elizabeth Gilbert and her thoughts on creativity. I'm a big fan of her book, Eat Pray Love. I highly recommend watching it for inspiration here (thanks, Alicia, for the great post!)

Picture Book Directory 2009

Yesterday I received my copy of Picture-Book for 2009, A directory of Children's Illustration. And what is the first thing I do? Flip through and find my own page, of course!
And then I get that same feeling I always seem to get when I look at my own piece in Picture-Book: "Oh man! I could of done better than this!"

These ads for the directory are always done over a year in advance. Alot of time goes by before you can see it in print- along with alot of other talented illustrators in the book. I'd like to think I've grown with my art since a year ago.

So what do I do now? Make a better piece for the 2010 Directory.

Small Update to Website

I'm pretty guilty in not updating my regular website. But in preparation for the Surtex show, I've added an extra page for my licensing endeavors. You can see it live here.

This makes it more "real," doesn't it?!

As for the rest of the website...its literally 2-3 years old. I haven't done much updating in a very long time. If only I can find some...time!

Invites and Surtex

My wedding reception invites in pretty blue envelopes. I'm sorry I can't show the actual invite now- I will later and I promise there are some chickens involved!

Things are super CRAZY here with too many things going on, and I find myself not handling the stress very well. With work, a wedding, and now I added on another to-do: I will be exhibiting at the Surtex Show in May-exploring art licensing opportunities with a group of other artists. I'll post more as I get more info, but right now I am trying to build my portfolio. This is something different than children's books and right now I feel like I'm going into it blindly...but I am very excited at the same time!

I want to thank everyone who has tagged me, given me awards, mentioned me in the blog world. And the comments too! I've been very frazzled lately so I just want to let you all know I appreciate them even if you haven't heard from me in a while.:-)

SCBWI Conference

Just wanted to pop in to say that the NY SCBWI (Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators) conference was this weekend. I didn't attend this year, but you can read all about it at the Official blog here. Alice Pope did a wonderful job with the live blogging. If you are interested in children's books, you should definitely check it out. Hope everyone is well!

Happy Lunar New Year!

Happy Lunar New Year! Here is a piece I did for Time for Kids magazine. I'm celebrating by eating alot of my mom's food....she came over a few days ago to stock my fridge with lots of yummy Chinese food.
Things are busy here as I am managing work and also some wedding-related things...which is only a few short months away now. I've been hand assembling my invitations for the past few days and I can't wait to take pics and show it off here (the fruits of my hard labor!) but I will have to keep it private for now.

Anyways, I hope I will keep up with the blogging but I've been distracted with so many things going on personally....and sometimes wonder how much of it I should share here. Ever since I quit my job 3 years ago to become an illustrator full time, I've been focusing on my career. This is one of those years where I need to focus a little more on my personal life/goals. And hopefully, I can share a few things as I go along. More later!

My First Graphic Novels-Stone Arch Books

I was feeling like I had nothing interesting to blog about lately and then this package came yesterday.
I worked on these two graphic novels for kids last year- T-Ball Trouble and Lily's lucky Leotard, written by Carl Meister, published by Stone Arch Books, both are available now. The designer did an amazing job with the cover....I love the look of them.
I've dabbled in comic books personally on my own but doing this job gives me a whole new appreciation for graphic novel artists out there. Each panel is a piece of art in itself...thats a whole lot of work.
There has been a trend of comic style/graphic novel format in children's publishing. Its alot of fun to see and I hope it sticks around for a while.

Updating my portfolio

So I was looking at my coroflot account and my portfolio needed some serious updating. Funny how I haven't been posting much work from various jobs lately...I've been working though! Digging around my "2008 illustration jobs completed" folder, here is some art for an educational book called Kitty Breaks the Bank.

It is about a kitty who saved up money in a piggy bank and goes shopping at the mall.

She looks and looks, but couldn't find anything to buy.

She goes home in tears. But in the end, she gets a hug from her mother...and its free!

This job was the perfect match for me- I love drawing anthropomorphic animals and store scenes.

Inspiration while on Vacation

Over the Christmas break, Math Boy and I stayed in an awesome hotel in San Francisco's Japantown called Hotel Tomo. I first heard about this hotel through Tokyo Bunnie's blog, and I was sure I needed to go there. I didn't get to take a pic of the entire room (above is a pic from their website.) But that is what the rooms look like, so modern and quirky with a Japanese pop art mural in each room. Everything about this hotel was fun and fresh.

This was the mural in our room. LOVE!

This was the hotel info booklet they had in the rooms. Check out their logo!

The interiors: ooh! Illustrations! Yay!

And look- these are suppose to be the "do not disturb" signs:

There were alot of fun little details in this place that was great eye candy for me. It was a good balance of quirkiness and playfulness without feeling childish. I love places like this. I want to go back already!

I've been a good lil' chicken this year

Some eye candy and inspiration from Sarah Kelly aka Spadazzle...Thank you, Sarah! She is so generous in sending me all kinds of to-die-for goodies from Japan...like a my very own Kawaii fairy Godmother! :-) I'm really speechless. Here are a few things from it:

I know its already January, but really- can you resist this tofu santa plushie?!

tofu disguised as a reindeer?

Kawaii heaven....
The perfect calendar for me.
Sarah's awesome collage work- I especially love the piece on the right which is an actual mini canvas with wonderful textures.
She also told me about Design Festa...which is an art and design festival in Tokyo that is held twice a year....Can we all say a "wahhhhh I wanna go! I wanna go!" She sent me the oh-so-tempting brochure for it. It is definitely a goal I'm shooting for. I won't be able to go to the one in May...but maybe the one in November?!? I might possibly overdose and explode from all the inspiration there.

Thank you again, Spadazzle! I treasure everything you send me. I'm one lucky chicken!

Prezzies!

I've been getting so many lovely gifties...thanks to Ellen Crimi-Trent for sending me one of her fabulous chickies for my Christmas Chicken Tree. Woohoo! Check out her tree full of them! I love it, Ellen- thank you for being so thoughtful and thinking of me :-)