Rocko the Cat

Rocko the Cat learned a new trick. He has decided he no longer meows, he just squeaks.

This is amusing because he is a massive fat man cat.

Fearsome, no?

Happy Friday the 13th. :-)

Christmas already?

I am so not in the Christmas mood yet, but I am actually late on all my Christmas items this year! Being a Canadian selling mostly to Americans and overseas, means Christmas is actually super close!! Eeep.

Hope this isn't a sign of how this Holiday Season is going to unfold. Must organize!

I put the Spooky Christmas Pin Set back in my shop.

I often get a request for it about this time of year and go "Oh yeah!" to myself...

I also made two sets of gift tag stickers this year from previous years illustrations.

In an effort to make them as affordable as possible, I chose to laser print them this year on glossy sticker paper and they came out great. I wanted to do a bigger set, because everyone hates scrambling for labels while you are wrapping. There are 28 stickers in each set.

Spooky but subtle.

You could use them on Grannies gift and she would be ok with it, right?

And a "Bad Cat" set for my second shop, Blackforestcake.

I am not sure if I will do any more "Christmas" themed items this year. That might be it. Unless the Holiday spirit somehow infects me. ;-) You never know, I am already dying to bake Christmas cookies and cakes and cupcakes...But I have to wait, as I still have Halloween baked goods!!

Tonight I am off to see AFI and Gallows. Um YAY! Hopefully everyone is 15 and short so I can see something. *Off to find tallest boots I own.*

Halloween's over. SADNESS.

It hardly seems like it happened at all!!

It was a whirlwind this year for sure. Usually we have a big party to go to and have worked on our costumes for a little while. But this year was a bit different and we weren't even doing costumes for a while, then just pulled it together the last day. W then drove 5 hours, party, then got up at 9 am and drove 5 hours back. Plus we got burritos and Ikea and went to the outlet mall to buy cheap duds. PHEW.

Black Metal.

We had this book to use as a reference, True Norwegian Black Metal.

Note: There are NO black metal girls for me to emulate. Girl black metal fans just look like girls with black clothes. I guess I am dressed as a black metal man.

Nathan was a natural. He does have a lot more studying it under his belt. ;-) Plus he is a natural poser.

We even played brutal beer pong. Brutally. See how tortured we are?

I am just glad that between the two of us we own 20 studded belts.

Oh yeah, there were also a bunch of kittens.

Now to recover. Should only take a week or two.

I have some other pics at my Flickr. In typical Tara fashion, I wore a camera all night and hardly took any pictures. Guess I was too busy being a bringer or doom or whatever.  I didn't even take pics of my bat cupcakes!

Bye Halloween. Miss you.

New on Thursday

I am super lucky, and was chosen to be interviewed on a blog!

To check out my interview, go on over to To Paraphrase, or click here to go right to my interview...

Its always nice to have someone be interested in your work, especially other artists. (And especially ones who understand when you take forever to do the interview!) I think she made me look good, choosing really nice images of my work. Thanks so much!!

Also new today, added a item to the shop.

Meghan is now a bookmark!

I worked on how to crop this painting for quite some time, trying many different shapes. I think the slender oval with a border suits the image and I am very happy with how it came out. And the glossy lamination really makes the colours look rich. :-)

Its so close to Halloween I am vibrating with spooky happiness. I started making cookies (multiple kinds!) and I might get to visit with foster kitties on Halloween too. *Plus* I might even get to go to Ikea to feed my buying-jars-to-put-baking-ingredients-in fetish. Busy!!

New print!

A new matted print in the shop today.

Meghan. A 5 by 7 inch print in an 8 by 10 mat.

There are parts of this painting I looove, and parts I haaate.

Her face in the original is so pretty with such subtle layers, and some of the background splotches are so perfect...But she has major proportional problems. Haha. I don't feel bad about tweaking her a bit in Photoshop, because I like the final outcome. I think the print looks great. The colours look really rich and warm in the off white mat.

I am also assembling some bookmarks this afternoon with this image on them, and they look really nice so far. Will probably post them later today.

And, I started a winter/Christmas/Holiday project! It was hard to do it before Halloween, but I am responsible like that. ;-)

Friday is not a day for stress

Sewing sucked my will to live.

So I moved onto something else.

Sometimes your plans change. I was struggling with sewing, and everything was going wrong. So I just put it all away for another day and started something new. Much better!

We shall see how this goes...

Sock thing.

This is a sock creature being born in my studio.

What will he be? His little personality is forming...Life as a pair of pink socks can't be easy, he might be a tough-ass. haha

I will see what he wants to be tomorrow morning.