DIY Envelope and Cards

I've made a few doodles lately that I have made with the intent of making cards out of them.  AND I actually have.  Here is one doodle and three options of text (thanks to my friends on facebook who liked my facebook page)

 I hope it was otter this world.

 I am otterly astonished!

 ...I miss floating around with you.

I have been printing two to a page of 8.5x11" paper. With my new printer I can actually print things that have no border which makes figuring out image sizes a lot easier.

However I still needed envelopes. I checked online to see what size would best fit and found that the size is actually an A2 envelope. It is sized just large enough for half a piece of paper folded in half.

I checked prices and even looked for a template but the ones I found were not large enough, or I had to pay/sign up for something to get them (blech!). So I took it upon myself to make my own template that I could print out and cut out myself. It is 8.5x11" so if your printer prints without a border just print away.  However you may need to do some math to crop it properly and print if you can't print without borders.

Download Template

Just cut to the inside of the black lines and fold along the dotted lines. Glue the larger tab to the small side tabs only up to where the long angles begin, then once your card is in, fold the top tab down. Notice there is no dotted line by the top tab, that is so that you don't have an ugly black line visible when it is opened.

This is the up-side-down view of the envelope template....I am too lazy to change it on the computer since it doesn't matter when you print it! I know it is nothing fancy and you can make one just as nice, but it's already scanned in and ready for printing for whoever doesn't want to waste the time to make their own. ENJOY!

And if you would like already made cards visit my etsy shop!

Horsing Around

I was given some amazing gifts from my parents for my birthday this past month. Pretty much anything of value that we own comes from one of the sets of parents. Mine gave me a fantastic printer, and my in-laws got me a matching scanner (that can even scan film!! so freakin' sweet)

I was also commissioned in the past month to do a horse painting for a friend. The original is the green/teal one below, but thanks to the use of my nifty scanner and photoshop skills I can now do prints of all different hues!

The original above, a photoshopped version below. So now if anyone desires a horse of any color, I can provide prints.  

More Characters

Meet Maribelle (left) and Willow!

Willow is your more modern hippie. She runs her own shop online and sells headbands and jewelry that usually include natural items like feathers or leather....yes she weeps for the cow, but believes it's better to honor their hide with continued use than to throw it away.  She enjoys drum circles and dancing.  She is very much into folk music and that which is inspired by it. 

Maribelle is a classic. She is the epitome of a flower child and spends much of her day gardening (when she is not at the local animal shelter). She cans her own tomatoes and is learning traditional Japanese methods of natural fabric dying. What you wouldn't have guessed is she loves science fiction. 

Prince Xavier is the best friend of Esmera. Although he is royalty he rather likes 'slumming it' with the local merfolk. He thinks it fun to mess with the sharks, tickling them with his trident and challenging them to a fin-race (no foot-races in his part of the world).  He's a good mer-boy and has far too much fun in the depths to desire life on land.

Dwight Schrute lives on Schrute farms which reaps a bountiful amount of beets. (This is fan art of The Office, do excuse the un-original character) Of course there is a lot of borsch cooked on the premises. Beet farming is no joke to Dwight and he fancies himself the best beet farmer to ever live. 

Couples Portraits!

 I haven't been able to post these because for one, I had to wait for the save the date to be sent out, and the picture below was meant to be an anniversary present for the middle of this month, but oops, someone got too excited and gave their gift early! 

This is actually cropped from the original. this is about a 3rd of the painting, the rest was my attempt at a South African landscape, luckily I had their pictures to construct it from.

The above picture was my first couples portrait commission from etsy yay! It was a birthday gift for the young lady, so yet again I had to wait to post it on the VERY slim chance that she might see it.

I've been having a lot of fun doing the portraits, even though they are rather time consuming for what I charge. Still I hope I keep getting people who want them. Get yours quick because the price will only go up, heh heh heh, (Stephen told me to up it 5 dollars every time I sell one).

Characters: My Watercolor Children

 I don't know how I didn't start this earlier, but I am now doing a lot of characters. One of my friends, Ndeme, said I should make a profile for each of them so here it goes.

"Aloha, My name is Sachiko Nakama. My parents moved to Hawaii before I was born, so I am American even if my name is Japanese. They did try to teach me all the kanji and writing, but I like time in the garden practicing making my own kind of banzai trees better. Kawaii usagii, ne! (cute bunny, huh! for those of you who aren't bi-lingual)."

"Hi! My name is Angelic Ferraro, and yes I know my last name sounds Italian. Actually a long time ago my great-great Grandpa who came from Italy married my great-great Grandma who was from Haiti.  But who cares about silly history, wanna see my birdie?!  I don't like cages, but my lil' bird seems to think it's home so I keep it anyway. He can fly away if he wants, but he loves me so he doesn't."

 

"Hiya. I'm Peter Bittinger. I really hate this costume, but my mom thinks it's "soooo cute!" The only good part about it is my parents let me go fishing when I wear it. I love fishing. I love the hooks, and the bobbers,  and the cool lures! My Dad is really good at fishing, he once caught a fish the size of my head! I feel real hot right now."

"Anyeong! My name is Simeon Ha. I am from Korea, but my father moved here for his job. He helps me with my robot. We built him and like to take him to competitions. He is a winner and his name is Chamchi. It means tuna and that is my favorite food, but it has to be mixed with rice and kimchi to be my very favorite. I know it sounds strange but it is delicious! One day I want to make robot cars that take us everywhere and do our laundry for us when we aren't inside them and run on sunshine and rain."

Flowers and More Flowers: Paintings

Well I have been at it again. I didn't really know (because I don't usually paint flowers), but I REALLY like painting them. I feel so satisfied when it looks pretty at the end and flowers are almost always pretty.

 

The Lily of the Valley is actually the flower of May, so Happy May!

My Mother wanted a painting with a blue bird in it. I found I am much more comfortable with painting sitting birds, flying is much more complicated. Irises are one of my favorite flowers, so sticking with the trend of painting my favorites I threw them in with the blue bird.

 I enjoyed the irises so much I did a small one too.  It's funny, I painted the shapes of the petals and didn't worry too much about making them look rounded or getting the shadows right, and although my irises don't look particularly like the pictures they were done from, they do look like irises. I think irises are just such a bizarre flower and shaped so differently that you don't really have to be super perfect to portray them.

I did a fourth painting but it is a gift so I don't want to spoil the surprise in the off chance that they check my blog.

Till I have more to blog, tata!

P.S. Check out my Etsy shop I'll be posting some of my latest paintings so if you love them you can buy them! 

Inspired Spring Paintings: Layered Painting

So I found this artist on Etsy named Julie Fillo, if you click on her name you will see the image that inspired me. I really loved her painting, and I didn't know if it was the flowers or the birds, colors or the style, but I knew I wanted something in my house with more muted soft colors so I thought I would make a painting.

So when I looked at the painting again, after a failed attempt to make something 'pretty' I realized what made the painting different. Everything in it was outlined with a red color and she didn't go in and outline it. I realized she most likely painted the whole painting a solid color and then went in and laid down her flowers/birds, THEN she went back in with a new background color, carefully going around all the flowers and birds and letting the red peep through around the edges.

 I tried it and it worked! At first I kinda hated the above bird, image, but after adding the nice pastel green, the outline really made the simple painting pop. 

The above images should give you a little more of an idea of what I did, if my written description didn't. I actually loved this painting with the navy blue background, so I took a lot of pictures in case I botched it up. Still, I think I love it even more with two colors (although I'm sure my Mom prefers the all blue). Part of the reason I was hesitant with this second one was that the original painting took so much longer! Where the first painting took about 3 hours total, this one took closer to 10 total.

If you were to try this yourself you need to remember that you are not painting the lines, you are painting a little in reverse. This actually often makes for cleaner lines and thinner. I still messed up a number of times, accidentally painting over my dark lines with white/light blue (or even the salmon later), but I kept some navy close at hand so that I could quickly with my smallest brush go back over any mistake. 

I definitely felt more at ease with the second one and more free to experiment more with this technique. Although it is extremely time consuming I think the effect is beautiful! It's also rather fun to paint in reverse and a bit challenging to the normal process of thinking when painting.

Both paintings are 11x14 inches, painted with acrylics on canvas board.