fairytales & meetings

a few photos from my sketchbook of the things i've been doodling (mostly during meetings). i can't remember why i was drawing the three bears, but alice was inspired by my niece-to-be (i've been thinking about what artwork to make for her), and the three little pigs were inspired by oscar (sam loves to hear oscar tell about the little pig). i think i'll have to keep working on these fairytale drawings, as i seem to have a theme going here.

what to do with your junkmail

for the past few years i've been pulling the stamps off most of the mail i get (both at home and at work).

over the weekend i finally had the chance to sit down and sort out some of the better looking ones. i organized them by theme, and mounted them on some illustration board, and after it was dry, i slipped it into this frame we got out of the discount pile at the local craft store.

easy peasy, and i think it makes a fun display for the table where we normally put the mail for sorting.

my mother doesn't blog

we interrupt project week to bring you this special update:

my mother (despite much poking and prodding by her daughters), does not have a blog. so on her behalf i'm posting a couple of photos of sam's wonderful, gorgeous, fantastic "grandma quilt".

i thought other people ought to be ooo-ing and ahh-ing along with me. feel free to join in any time now.

we went by the house today to pick up dad/grandpa for a playdate at the park, and mom/grandma said we could take possession of the quilt with the stipulation that i take some good photographs. i took many.

now i just need to remember to burn them to a cd for her.

thanks grandma! it will be well-loved and well-used.

photoshop is my friend

here's another example of something i did for work using photoshop.

the headers for our advent series of igniting readers & leaders newsletters were constructed and illustrated completely in photoshop. with this year's illustration, i didn't even bother to scan a sketch, it was all photoshop all the way.

photoshop

photoshop

photoshop

(had to add a few more for good measure there)

if you can't tell, photoshop is my friend.

photoshop isn't just for photos

until i started blogging, i rarely used photoshop for altering or correcting photos. most of the time it was my go-to choice for making illustrations that i needed for projects at work.

this is an illustration i did recently for a new book on our spring list. it may or may not make the cut, but i like the way it turned out (in its comp stage, anyway). we'll see how the review goes in a few days.

project week

in an attempt to prove that my world doesn't completely (just almost completely) revolve around sammy, i'm instituting project week. all this week i'll be posting about things i'm doing that have no (direct) connection to sam. i'll be showing some work things, some stuff i've been doing around the house, some doodles from my sketchbook, that kind of thing.

however, it probably won't be a complete "sammy-free" week. afterall, how could anyone survive that long without sam?

happy halloween

a quick shot of our pumpkin (carved by yours truly)

we had a good halloween weekend. we started of on friday with a trip to mike's office. every year they have a halloween party for all the employees and their families. this was the first time we've attended, and it was a lot of fun. sam was rather impressed and did a lot of commenting on the monkey (person in a gorilla costume) and the rabbit (person in a bugs bunny costume).

sam running around super fast in his "supersam" costume.

sam had a really good time with trick-or-treating this year, or at least much more so than last year. he seemed to enjoy running around being supersam, but was mostly interested in all the kids that were showing up at our doorstep and walking around the neighborhood in their fancy outfits.

as far as actual trick-or-treating was concerned, he walked himself to all the houses on our street (i guess that turned out to be about five—mike took him while i manned the door). he was pretty interested in his loot (when it was chocolate), and was pretty certain that his tootsie pop was "daddy's candy". in fact, he didn't really get many things he is allowed to eat, but we swapped some of his contraband for a small bag of m&ms and a roll of smarties that he ate with two-fisted gusto.

the details of sam's superhero costume—side and back view

in general, i was pretty proud of sam's costume. we had the long-john pants and sweatshirt which came as hand-me-downs ($0), i bought the red shorts on sale at target ($1) and two yards of red fabric ($4.50) from the fabric store, the felt was from my stash, and the biggest purchase was the pair of red converse one-star sneakers ($18) from target (which i had planned on buying anyway, because i just adored the pair his cousin oscar had).

we got several compliments on how cute the costume was, and i have to admit, sam makes a pretty adorable superhero (he's been practicing being super cute for quite a while now).