Nand

I made this for the baby shower of a little fellow named Nand. It features all the star signs he was born under. I framed it with an explanation of all the elements of the illustration on the back. Those being:

• Gemini (the two moons), his starsign
• 2013, the year of the snake in Chinese astrology 
• his birth tree is the fig tree 
• his birth stone is pearl/moonstone
• his spirit animal acording to native American astrology is the deer.

I don't believe in astrology myself but I do always find it highly entertaining to look these things up and know what my signs are (just in case I got it wrong and it turns our there is some truth in this stuff, you know. At least then I'll know where to look for it. ;p) So I made the assumption that this is the way a lot of people feel about astrology and therefore it would be cool for little Nand and his parents to know his sings. And if not.. hey, then it's just a cute picture, right? :)

I like that it's fun and colourfull and the style's a bit different than what I usually do.

You can come to my party!

I made a book!

My little niece turned four recently, and I try to make her something unique every year on her birthday as a special gift. I worked on this for some months, and the hardest part was coming up with a good, simple story. I really wanted it to be all about her on her special day, you see. The pieces all fell into place when she hit her Disney princess phase. Hard. She already had some princesses merchandise before but she's just now getting to the age where she's starting to see the actual movies for the first time. She's been on a Snowwhite kick for months now, and recently I let her pick a movie to borrow from my Disney dvd cupboard (which she treated like the Holy Grail it is, bless her) and she picked The Aristocats (my sister nearly had a heart attack when she then later announced auntie Cilla had let her 'bring kitties home' :p)

I can relate to being under the Disney magic spell, having never truly outgrown my princess phase myself ;) And so the idea for the story came easier after that. It's about her fantasizing about getting to be a princess for the day, and all the fun things she would get to do with the Disney princesses. Because it's her birthday, she gets a crown, making her a true princess for the day and so her wish comes true. The title comes from what has become her favourite catchphrase. For the entire year now she's been inviting people to her birthday party, and uninviting us again when things don't go quite her way, and then inviting us again, and so on, and on, and on... :)

Here are a few pages, and some pictures of the finished book. I'm rather proud of this project and I might attempt one again in the future. Something that doesn't involve copyrighted material so it could possibly be pitched to a publisher? Who knows :) Needless to say the princesses are, off course, copyright Disney.

 

Sleigh Ride

HAVE YOURSELVES A MERRY LITTLE CHRISTMAS
♥

Good Morning

I treated myself to one last holiday present. This one was from me, to me! :D My little wacom tablet that could just... couldn't anymore lately. It took me ages to finish anything just because most of my time went to working around it's ever growing stack of little defaults.

So I got me a new one!! Woohoow!! I'm so happy with it, I couldn't stop cuddling it.

And of course, I needed to test it out right away, which is how the above sketch happened.

Happy Birthday Lenn

My niece turned 2 yesterday! And we had a wonderful garden party today to celebrate it. The day started of a little clouded but in the afternoon there was sunshine galore, woohoo!! I wanted to give her something special and after seeing this entry on one of the illustration friday prompts a few weeks back I just knew I hade to do the same: custom made puzzle blocks!



I found this wooden box at the art supplies store and it turned out to be the perfect fit! Painted and decorated it, then gave it a coat of varnish. Now for the actual puzzle. I couldn't find the right size blocks at the art supplies store, so I payed a visit to the hardware store instead. Bought a square wooden beam and had them cut it up into cubes (the clerck's face was hilarious "you want me to cut up this whole thing into tiny blocks ?!" When I told him what it was for though he thought it was really cool and totally got on board with the master plan).



Gave them a thorough sand down and they were ready to go. I went for stickers instead of painting them. I guess stickers wont last as long but I wanted quite detailed images on there (I incorporated her birth announcement card and such), so stickers seemed to be the more practical option in that regard. We'll see how long they last, otherwise I will just have to make some more next year I guess!

She got a truck-load of presents today. There were just far too much goodies there for her to be able to concentrate on a small box of wooden blocks. But I'm sure she liked it! :)