Just Married Label

I just finished up the illustration for a wedding gift label. This one turned out especially nice in my opinion (maybe it's the lovely couple), so I thought I would share. Click on the photo above for a larger preview of the label.

Cheers!

The Epic Race: Turtle vs Hare 2012

Once upon a time, there was a resourceful, little turtle who was tired of racing and losing against a cocky, little hare. The clever little turtle took his allowance money and bought himself a bicycle and the rest is history. 

My submission for the Spoonflower Weekly Contest. This week's category: Bicycles (3-color). I thought it would be kind of fun to try to create a bit of a story with the design.  

Name Tag and More! (lots more)

Last month I joined the Portland Modern Quilt Guild (PMQG) — YAY! Exciting! It's really inspiring, there are so many talented quilters out there.... and they're pumping out super amazing quilts like crazy! We meet each month and they're all bringing new incredible quilts to show & tell each meeting. WOW (where do they find the time?)! I love it, the ideas the colors, the fabrics. Last month they kicked off the new year by asking members to make a name tag to wear at meetings. Above is the name tag I made. BRIGHT, Amy Buttler and Anna Maria Horner fabrics - plus I used the sparkle thread I won at the last meeting (I love sparkles even more than bright). Then I ironed on my label I created for my quilts and added some buttons for a little extra touch of cute. The binding isn't the greatest (it's actually kinda sucky because I was in a hurry and it's pretty darn tricky to make a binding for a little tiny quilt) but's it's OK I still like it, even if it's not perfect.

I've been plugging away on my Sparkle Punch Quilt Along. I've got a long way to go, but I'm hoping to finish for my daughter's birthday in April. Cross your fingers for me.

Here's the awesome swap gift I received from my GenQ Valentine Swap partner. It's a lovely little zipper pouch. The colors are gorgeous - scrappy pinks and reds. But my favorite part is the quilting she did on it. Random straight lines, some follow the shapes and others are just on their own. Looks great.

And look at this super cute pin cushion my sweet friend made for me! Doesn't it look GREAT with all my favorite leaf pins stuck in it? So colorful and cute. I love it!! 

In the meantime I've been doing a lot of drawing (instead of sewing). More cartoony caricatures for my friend in the commercial real estate biz. I hope these guys like their funny bottle labels I've been making. Here's the finished project — a custom Maker's Mark bottle— for the last drawing I posted.

It's kind of weird to draw pictures of all these random people I've never met. Here's the next one I've been finishing up this weekend.

I'm working on my watercolor skills with Painter as well. Below is my Christmas card (I know - old news) I drew for this past Christmas. Painter is a little less forgiving than working in Illustrator, so it's a bit of a learning curve. I really love the look though. 

I'm practicing and hopefully I'll get a lot more polished at these cute watercolor illustrations soon.

This Little Piggie is Going to Austin ...

Here's my first swap project - Petunia the Love Pig. Or maybe just Petunia. She's headed to my swap partner in Austin, Texas tomorrow morning. It's the Melly & Me pattern and this is the second time I've made it (I'll probably make it a few more times since I know a lot of little people that like cuddly little piggies).

Petunia made the rounds posing with a few family members before getting stuffed in a box.

Here's an adorable baby announcement I did for an old friend. Look at those twin babies aren't they ADORABLE!

And here's another caricature I've been working on for a different friend. This guy is going on a bottle of bourbon as a thank you gift for a job well done on a big project. Bottoms up!! 

Swap Gift and Graffiti Love Bots

Swap Gift and Graffiti Love Bots — what? Yep, that's right. Here's what I've been working on this past week.

I signed up for the GenQ Valentines Swap. Here's my Valentine surprise I'm working on for my swap buddy. I'm pretty excited, this is the first swap I've done and my partner looks pretty cool. Check out her blog. I hope she likes this little goody I'm working on. There's actually three different projects in the works in this picture. YIKES... I might need to just go take a clean-up break.

And.... I'm really digging the Spoonflower Fabric Design Contests. Putting together a fluid theme and repeat is way hard. It's much harder than I originally thought (all those gorgeous fabrics in the quilt shops make it look so easy!). I'm really enjoying the learning, and the reason to exercise my doodling skills— I get rusty if I don't draw for a while. Really rusty. The image above is my entry for the Graffiti/Street Art contest this week. I call it - Love Bots. Funny though, I don't really love it, but it was fun trying to come up with an idea and illustrate it based on the theme. What would you write if you had to graffiti up a wall?

Spoonflower & Wonky Stars

I've been wanting to join the fun of the Spoonflower Weekly Fabric Contest ever since I heard about Spoonflower. Have you heard of Spoonflower? It's so cool — custom printed fabric! You upload your own designs and have it printed on a variety of different fabrics. AND there's so many talented people uploading their own incredible designs on a daily basis. Inspiration overload! So anyway, they do a weekly contest where they pick a theme and ask people to submit designs based on that theme. This submission is for "Outdated Technology". They specifically said "think cassette tapes" and my mind went immediately to all my old mix tapes! Mix Tapes - I loved them (I also had an obsession with recording Rick Dees Weekly Top 40s every Sunday too)!! And then I remembered my high school BFF who was pretty fond of creating fun mix tapes and adding her own dose of quotes and worldly wisdom in between songs. She was wise and quirky beyond her years in high school. Fun memories.

Other than that I've been cutting and cutting and cutting..... and cutting. I cut over 600 3.5" stars for the Sparkle Punch Quilt-Along. That took me most of a Sunday. I actually watched 3 movies on my computer while I was working on the cutting. Then I started cutting my negative space squares last weekend another 300+ to go. Fun times (mostly).

After a while I decided to try and make a few stars. They are trickier than they look. Elizabeth mentions testing out the technique on some scrap fabric before starting on your quilt fabric. I thought "pssssshhh" that doesn't look too hard and started on my precious squares. Turns out she was right. Figuring out that wonky angle and getting the angles to line up for a straight cut when you square up the edges is tricky! I had a few oppsies and a few seam ripper moments (after I learned to stop cutting the fabric BEFORE measuring to see if the angle worked), but I think I finally got the hang of it. I have five stars done and A LOT more to go.  I'm learning quite a bit along the way on this one. Quite a bit indeed.

Papa's Packing Heat Zinfandel

What else do you give a guy who's turning 70? A bottle of his favorite wine decked out with a birthday label of course! This is the first wine label I've made —usually it's the hard stuff— but I think this turned out really cute. First it's orange, and I'm still loving orange lately, and second, check out the AWESOME pic I had to work with — serious, vintage, pro bowling shot! 

Saaaaaaaa - weet! I totally love old pictures.

The back of the bottle has the logo and a little tribute to the birthday fella. It says "A wine for the master of unusual sports. A champion of pole vaulting, trap shooting, arm wrestling and bowling. This spirit is aged to perfection for a man who is an amazing husband, father and grandfather — Papa."

I had a lot of fun with the typography on this one. I wanted a funky vintage look for this label. I added a toile background to the orange to give it a little texture and I stayed really simple with the colors. The joke is Papa is known for always being armed and dangerous, so they wanted to have a little fun with that — "Always Locked & Loaded" and "Papa's Packing Heat Zinfandel".  He used to be quite the rough and tumble sort of guy and he has a knack for mastering unusual sports like arm wrestling and bowling — he sounds like a pretty fun guy to me. 

Special thanks to my helpers. Josie provided entertainment dancing around the original bottle while I worked on the computer and my dear, sweet, perfectionist of a husband helped trim away the excess pieces on the label. He has the eye for detail and patience for perfection that I am sometimes lacking. You guys are the best :)