a very birdy end-of-year giveaway!

It's that time of year again! Post your comment here from now until January 1st at midnight and enter to win a tote and a tea towel calendar. Both are designed by me and are on sale on Etsy.
There are some consolation prizes as well.
Happy Holidays!

mini home studio test with mini home model

just a little setup so I can take better pics for this blog and other places
(end-of year-giveaway tomorrow - stay tuned!)

Eep Cocoa

is the name of the design of the fabric I bought from the wonderful Skinny Laminx. It came in so wonderfully wrapped that I had a hard time opening it. Im going to make curtains out of it. Never made curtains before but how hard can it be right? ...right?

how great is this sofa?

Tea towel - day 3

I am exhausted and splattered with turquoise ink from head to toe but second color is down! Few little misses here and there (adds character) but the transparency works and over all looks great. Only 2 classes left so Ill try and come in to do the last color this week. Can't wait to see it done!

Tote bag!

I wanted to try this for a while - a trial run of 15 tote bags by myself available now on etsy. Free shipping anywhere in the world for a limited time. If this will work out I will have more bags and designs soon.
Have a look here

15 available

Happy Thanksgiving

Two Thanksgiving illos of a traditional meal and a (rather hungry looking) girl and turkey. They are part of  the American Girl book Take the Challenge (coming out very soon). Have a very happy holiday if you are American and if youre not - back to work!
Its the middle of the week for crying out loud.

Happy Holimaze!

This is one of my favorite projects of the last few years. Its a maze for the special Holiday Issue of American Girl Magazine. It shows a forest in winter full of woodland creatures and a little hint of Christmas. It is very detailed and took a whole week to draw. I really love the way it came out, hope you do too.

P.S. can you help the squirrel find the acorn?

Tea towel - day 2

Printed first color tonight. It looks perfect. Super hard
work though my back is killing me! Here is a picture of the towels drying on the rack. No class next week because of Thanksgiving so can't do anything till the 30th. Very frustrating I'm dying to see
them finished...

2012 Calendar Towel

My new 3 colors + transparency design for a screen printed tea towel. It is inspired by the time honored tradition of calendar towels during the golden era 1950s-1970s.
I'm starting to print a small edition of 20 towels on Wednesday. Very exciting!

some examples of tea towel calendars on ebay right now

ETSY store open for business!

Huzzah! it only took me a year :)
My Etsy print shop is open! Right now I only have a few digital prints. All high quality archival prints, signed and numbered by myself for (what I hope is) reasonable prices. Im starting with really small first editions of 15 prints or less (because I don't have enough faith in my selling power yet) so this is your chance to own a low numbered first edition print.
8 prints are there right now and more coming soon. Hand printed silk screens coming in December
Hope you'll like them.

2-colors transparency

This was hard! I got a lot of prints wrong. The point is to print with 2 transparent colors and where they overlap they create a third color. Here is the original design:

I've tried 2 color combinations: magenta and cyan and bright orange and turquoise. the second option is more successful i think

If the 2 colors don't align slightly it looks charming and hand made but some of them came out completely misaligned which looks like this:

I've got some good prints out of it but not a lot...
might have to try again later

More mermaids

These cheeky mermaids are my project 2 in silk screen class:  2-color print (in black and gold). they are based on my more-simple block print design earlier this year. After trying silk screen I may never block print again... Its just SO much more fun not to mention easier and with better results.  I'm still glad I got that amazing German press though. This original hand-made print will be up for sale in my etsy shop in December. My next project is a  2 color print with overlapping transparency. Yay! cant wait

Sherlock Holmes

New promotional illo for my agent's 2012 calendar.
The subject this year is London. Mine is of Holmes, Watson and Baker Street. Lots of cool new Holmes around lately but I decided to go classic.

Screen Printing

Today was our first actually-printing silk screen class and it was really fun! we started with the most simple - one color prints. Mine is of a design I made of birds in a tree. It came out really well in dark olive green on really nice heavy rag paper. Next week I will start my 2 color print - It's of my second favorite motif - mermaids!  I cant wait. At the end of the semester I will put them all on etsy all signed and numbered and very reasonably priced. I might also have a little giveaway before Christmas again so stay tuned.

The Judgement of Paris

It has been AGES! I know I know I'm sorry. I have been super busy working on projects I can't share with you yet unfortunately. As I write this I am on a mini holiday in Philadelphia relaxing on my own after a couple of intense months. When Im back in NYC Im starting a silk screen class. I can't wait! I wanted to do this for a while my flat graphic style is ideal for silk screen and I can finally open my etsy store.
More about that soon, meanwhile, here is a new addition to my long neglected series of Greek Mythology illos. You can see the previous ones here, here and here. I really want to try and silk screen them. I usually quote from the original text but I'm too lazy to scan the entire Iliad for it so here in a nut shell is the story of the judgement of Paris:
So all the gods are invited to a big wedding except Eris the goddess of discord. Offended she shows up anyway and rolls in a golden apple with the inscription "to the fairest of all" Obviously all the goddesses want it but the three finalists are Athena, Hera and Aphrodite (Minerva, Juno and Venus to you Romans). After Zeus (cleverly) refuses to be the judge he sends them to the Trojan mortal Paris who proved himself in the past to be a fair judge. The goddesses, who feel no need to play fair themselves, all try to bribe him. Athena promises him wisdom, Hera promises power and Aphrodite  the love of the most beautiful mortal woman in the world. Paris (of course) chooses Aphrodite and claims his prize. His prize is Helen of Troy and she is already married to another. Yadda yadda yadda the Trojan War starts. Another war starts by vanity. Nothing changes.

Cinderella

Some illustrated spreads from "Traditional tales: Cinderella" From Oxford University Press' Reading Tree series.
Out in September

Swedish birds

If you know me, you know that when it comes to design, my favorite things are: Mid-Century Modern, textile, Scandinavia and birds. So when I find on ebay such a perfect combination of all four naturally I have to buy it. Look at these lovely 2.5 yards of fabric!
Its by Stobo of Sweden, around 1955, very rare and in perfect never-been-used condition. Not sure what I will do with it yet but I think its absolutely fabulous. I stretched it on my couch this morning and my usual model Oliver immediately hopped on, ready for his close up. Look at the birdie, Ollie!