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 :-)

What are you most proud of in 2008?

Have you looked back on your blog posts in 2008? Its very interesting to see what happened in a span of a year. Thanks to Anette over at our Illustration for kids forum for suggesting this great topic: "What are you most proud of in 2008?"

Highlights of my year:
-Attending the SCBWI winter conference in February.

-Meeting many blog friends in person!!! Hello Alicia, Kim, Leeza, Courtney, Gina, Deborah, Edrian, and fellow Illustration for kids member Jenn!

-Seeing my book, The Haunted Ghoul Bus at Barnes and Nobles front and center. Truly a dream come true.

-My Scholastic's "I'm Reading Now!" series coming out, seeing it in the book club catalog. I was working on this non-stop for a year. So good to see the fruits of my labor!

-Doing a signing at the Friends of lulu/MoCCA table at the NY ComicCon. I felt so cool for an hour...hehe!

-Attending my rep, MB artists' party and meeting so many clients and fellow artists. Such a treat for a freelancer that works from home!

-Getting many interesting and full filling projects, which I can't talk about now, but many will be out in 2009.

I can't mention highlights of this year without also mentioning about getting engaged. :-) Also, the trip to France and San Francisco was also wonderful. I love traveling.

My goals for 2009:
I'm going to keep it short this year....since there are lot of things that will be going on for me personally.

I'm planning to just CREATE.
-write and illustrate- finish one dummy book
-create artwork for licensing/products/greeting cards
-re-vamp and update my website

Happy new year to you all! What are some of your highlights of 08 and goals for 09? I would love to hear about it.

Roast Duck and Asian American Children's Books

Its MY Roast duck restaurant!

I've been wanting to do illustrations that have anthropomorphic animals in an Asian type setting for a while now. I don't see much of that in American children's books and I miss that. Usually when there are any type of Asian American children's books, its usually to teach Americans about Asian culture, so they don't use anthropomorphic animals. Its usually happy Asian children celebrating some sort of Asian holiday.

I was looking through my Japanese children's books and was so pleasantly surprised to see animals eating noodle soup with chopsticks...its just so cute and fun. I guess if it was anyone's responsibility to incorporate that in their work, its me.

Of course, I wouldn't have the evil butcher guy to the right in a children's book and give little children nightmares. Or would I!?! (insert evil laughter here)

Christmas Stickers

Here are some Christmas stickers I designed for the greeting cards class I was taking at School of Visual Arts with Cheryl Phelps. I became one of those students who showed up with very little work....which defeated the purpose of taking the class in the first place. I've been pretty busy (very thankful right now in this economy.) It was a great class though and I felt very inspired. Cheryl is a great artist and very open and generous with information. (thank you!) I would love to take this class again.

I'm off to San Francisco for Christmas! I definitely need the warmer weather and a change of scenery. Happy holidays to all of you!

Chicken....I mean, Christmas...Tree

Its been very busy here but I managed to get a mini Christmas tree and put up the few ornaments that I have....yes, thats right- chicken ornaments. Friends always manage to get me all chicken things- and ornaments are no exception!

I hope I'll post some more before the holidays. I want to thank you Edrian Thomidis for giving me an Uber Amazing blog award and Vela over at Little Star Soup for tagging me. I've been meaning to use the tag to do a favorite podcasts list....hopefully I'll get to that soon. In the meanwhile, keep warm :-)

HighFive Magazine and Scholastic book club

A few things printed recently:
My spread from this month's High Five magazine.

And here are my I'm Reading Now! series in Scholastic's Firefly book club catalog, November.

Yay! :-)

PikaPackage #5

Just wanted pop in here to quickly mention that I am in this month's PikaPackage giveaway and a little interview in The PikaPackage Zine....along with alot of other fabulous artists! Head over for a chance to win the giveaway here, and you can download the zine here.
And my contribution to the PikaPackage! If you don't know what a PikaPackage is, head over to Pikaland.com for more details.

Thank you for all the comments on my holiday cards this year. I'm busy trying to get them together to send to friends, family, and clients. More later!