Illustration, photography, and all-around geekery
Just a quick note to say the Calobee Doodles shop has been updated with lots of new stuff, and I’m writing about them in the Calobee Doodles blog.
We’ve had a rather lazy weekend here… lots of playing with Miss Ellie (and by “playing” I mean “reading the same three baby books over and over and over”–at least it makes her happy), some Wii, and more doodling on my part. The rainy, overcast weather is starting to get to me, but at least it’s relatively warm!
And the mania subsides… hopefully not for good. I finally reached a point last night where all I wanted to do is collapse into bed super early and sleep. I decided this is a good time to start writing, pricing, researching, and all the other mundane things involved in running an online shop.
In the meantime, here are the fruits of the week’s labor:
[flickrset id=”72157623506124976″ thumbnail=”square”]
Some of these are new, some old, some repurposed. I’m starting three new sections in my shop that I’m excited about–three new sections means three new products!
Last weekend was a whirlwind of creative energy. So many ideas! So many new things I want to try! I’m blaming the strangely warm weather we’ve had this February. It’s pulled me out of my winter funk and straight into spring mania (I don’t have the heart to tell my muse it’s not really spring yet).
First things first–I got new glasses on Friday, and I am in love with them. They are purple and just geeky enough to be “me.” I tried to get a self-portrait but I am so out of practice I couldn’t do their awesomeness justice, so I’ll have to wait until Tim can help me. In the meantime, these are my new frames–I think “spiffy” is the appropriate word here.
Second, I’ve been doodling like mad since last Wednesday, and I’m ordering no less than 15 test prints from my printer this week (!!!) That’s an insane amount of new work for me. I wrote about the new “numbers” colorways (above), and I took a few minutes to put up a new banner in the Calobee Doodles shop. There are several new prints and products coming soon, too! And I’ve been chipping away at custom orders amidst everything else, so all in all, I’m kind of floored by my own productivity. Where did this crazy-high-energy person come from? Can I keep her?
Finally, on Sunday we hung out with our long-lost friend Danielle and played lots of Wii. Tim picked up Super Mario Bros., which brought me back to my childhood–I spent many hours watching my brother play Super Nintendo, all the while yelling at him to go left, right, go back and get that coin, you missed a pipe, etc. I’m not only a backseat driver–I’m a backseat gamer. I can’t boss Tim around like I used to my bro, but it’s not for lack of trying.
All this fun and I didn’t even have to leave the house! Now, I must keep up with this productive streak and get back to work.
I collect links the way some people collect magazine clippings for an inspiration board, and Google Reader allows me to star and share interesting tidbits I find as I’m reading. Here are some of my recent favorites:
Find these and more at my shared favorites on Google Reader!
A couple weeks ago I started to notice odd things happening with WordPress when I’d try to create a post… images wouldn’t upload properly, I was getting odd error messages in bright red text–not good! After talking with my husband (aka the WordPress Genius) we determined it was because I was attempting to run two separate WordPress sites from one host. Apparently that’s not a good idea. Who knew?
So I’ve moved Calobee Doodles over to WPWebHost.com, and so far, so good. No more errors, and this new host has a great setup specifically for us WordPress geeks. Sixhours.net is still hosted with 1and1, but depending on how things go, I might just move it over, too.
All this tech-babble to say, I know I’m a bit late in getting a February desktop wallpaper out there… but here it is! And this whole thing got me thinking, at some point I may just remove the calendar part completely to make them seasonal (and reusable!) instead of straight calendars. Until then, I have a slew of custom orders to work through, and I should really get started on a March wallpaper to avoid being late again–the end of February always sneaks up on me.
Something I’ve been meaning to do for a while is illustrate a calendar, and I figured the easiest way to do this would be to make a desktop wallpaper with a calendar each month. I’ve posted January’s at Calobee Doodles:
I’ve been so caught up in family drama and sickness the last few days that I almost forgot about the giveaway! Eee! Today I sat down with my e-mail inbox and sorted all the entries, removing duplicates and checking to make sure everyone was accounted for. The end result was 87 total entries between blogs, Facebook, Twitter, and comments–wow! I plugged that number into Random.org to generate the following sequence:
I then counted back through the entries and matched them to the 5 winners.
The winner of the poster is… JenniferB who said: “I like the numbers print from your Calobee site.” Thanks, Jennifer!
The four runners up and gift certificate recipients are:
I’ve contacted all the winners! Thanks to everyone who entered and spread the word. 🙂
Just a reminder that the Alphabet Soup poster giveaway ends on Monday! Which reminds me, I need to doodle up a cute graphic for the gift certificates.
This weekend is shaping up to be a busy one. Tim, Ellie and I will be hanging out with some good friends, taking photos, meeting Santa and enjoying the local holiday festivities on Saturday. Once I’m fueled on Christmas Spirit (and perhaps some other spirits of the alcoholic variety, if Ellie goes to bed early) I just might be ready to tackle all the cleaning and decorating I’ve been meaning to do. I also have a gingerbread house kit to attend to, and I want to get a jump start on a new doodle project. We’ll see how much of this Her Majesty actually lets me do, of course.
How’s about you?
I’m having so much fun making snowflakes in Adobe Illustrator, I thought I’d create a quick tutorial to show how I do it!
1. Create a new document in Illustrator. If you want your snowflakes to be white, it’s helpful to set a background color so you can see what you’re doing. I usually drag a quick rectangle shape to fit the document, set the fill to my color of choice, and lock it by selecting the rectangle and going to Object -> Lock -> Selection.
2. Draw the first “leg” of your snowflake by creating an elongated shape or pattern of some kind. I do this mostly using the line and circle tools, but you could experiment with any shape. This is the shape that will be repeated in a circle to make the snowflake.
3. Once you’re satisfied with your shape, click on the Rotate tool. Hold down the Option key on your keyboard and click on the bottom center of your snowflake’s first leg. This will bring up the Rotate dialog.
4. The angle of rotation should be set to a number that, when repeated, adds up to 360 degrees. I usually go with 30, 40, or 60. The lower the number, the more legs your snowflake will have.
5. Once you’ve set the degrees to rotate, hit the Copy button. You’ll see one repetition of your initial pattern appear… if you don’t like what you see, hit Ctrl+Z to undo and repeat steps 3 and 4 to try a different angle. In this case, I initially set it to 40 degrees but decided 60 would look better.
6. To finish off your snowflake, simply hit Ctrl+D to repeat the pattern until you complete a full circle. Voila, you have a snowflake!
7. You can play around with different angles and shapes to get the look you want. For smaller or more detailed snowflakes, you’ll probably want thinner lines. For larger snowflakes, thicker lines look best. It helps if you group your final snowflake (select all the pieces, right-click or Ctrl-click, and hit Group) so you don’t lose bits and pieces as you create more and move them around the page.
The nice thing about holidays with the family? Well, besides the turkey, stuffing, good company, good music, pie, copious leftovers… OK, so there are a lot of nice things about this time of year, but one of my favorites is lots of helping hands and extra entertainment for Miss Ellie.
I even had time to complete this cute holiday doodle… and in the process, I discovered how to make pretty snowflakes in Illustrator. Now I’m kind of obsessed with them. I may have to make yet another desktop wallpaper…
This gingerbread duo and the snowman design will soon be available as postcards in the Calobee Doodles shop!