Mini Trip

Zoomed home to my parents on the weekend. It was a crazy fast trip, there and back powered by ice cream, Tim Hortons and chocolate mini eggs.

Zip! I saw a moose but I was too slow.

I spent my weekend lounging on the deck with my parents, soaking up that tiny sliver of time in Northern Ontario that you can be outside when its warm and the bugs are not biting you yet. I even ate a hamburger from the BBQ, which is the thing I pine for the most each summer. I don;t even care about meat at all, but the BBQ smell and the summer feeling just makes me so happy.

Their lawn is a mass of these tiny flowers. They look so organized in batches of colours...Love them. I think everyone agreed it was a shame to mow them, so no one did.

So you can see that I obviously didn't get any work done.

I am continuing to work on my second Etsy shop items, I keep having to push back my shop opening date and its making me grumpy. But it will happen soon. I will finally commit to a day and start sneak peeking items. Just not today. :-)

Now if the delivery man would arrive with the supplies I ordered, I can get to printing cute creatures!

Sweet Secrets...

I mentioned in my last post that I am working on opening a second Etsy shop...

Its still not open, because I want to have a nice little starter set of items to stock it. I also am working on the branding, graphics and other things that ones worries about.

I can give you some sneak peeks of my progress though...

Cakes!

Strawberries!

And doodles!
(You have no idea how many time I have held up these guys and said "SO KEY-YUTE!!" I am in love with them.)

I think the shop might be open next week. I have to buy some specific supplies to finish some items and its my dudes b-day AND a long weekend with lots of plans, so I don't know how much time I will have available to me. So I am not giving an opening date yet. But its coming!! :-)

I call him Lefty.

So my work-on-stuff-and-post-it plans got a bit messed up when my dude decided he is a sports superhero and dislocated his shoulder.

He tells me he was making a totally amazing catch in softball and somehow fell. So Lefty and I spent time at a tiny walk-in clinic (which was majorly depressing and full of sad poor people.) I have been babying him a bit evn though he isn't even being a baby about the whole thing. he is just kind of useless at doing anything!

But he is back at work with flashy red arm sling, so I can work again.

I finished my calendar (Which Cathy totally guessed it would be!)



I decided to add colour after all and I think I like it. If you are not a "write stuff on a calendar" type person, I have also made one without the grid, which I will be listing tomorrow. It has a slightly different colour scheme.*EDIT* Here!

I also snatched up a second Etsy shop username, which I am going to start planning on setting up and filling up in the near future. Its still sort of a secret I guess. ;-)

Working on something new...

Spiders like flowers.

Can you tell what it will be?

I had this illustration board hanging around that is not the usual surface that I like to paint on. Its slick, and even has a bit of a shine. It seemed perfect for ink.

The surprising thing is that I actually did a pretty organized and complete sketch. I often just go "EH, I will figure it out as I go" and that is sometimes a horrible idea. I then decided to use an ink pen instead of the acrylic ink and brush I have been favoring lately.



This is actually a test print of the drawing, after it was scanned and Photoshopped. I was going to add digital colour, but once it got to the completed ink stage, I just liked it as is. Its not a secret that I always like line art better then the coloured versions. I bet I had a lot of blank colouring books as a kid.

I am not even going to pretend that this is going to be finished before monday. Its the weekend! No one wants paper goods with Cheetos fingerprints on them. :-)