allsorts

Loopsie loops

Thanks everyone, my headache finally abated so here is the first of the two promised posts for today...

Okay, so I exercised my prerogative, changed my mind and now this is my etsy shop-in-the-works... Loopsies!  My thanks and apologies to those who favorited Allsorts Workshop, but it was just a bit too boring a name. It's been bothering me since I set it up, so I decided to switch. This is more me, hopefully, and reflects the sort of things I'm planning on posting there, sort of loopy and fun. I've already made up a set of embroidery patterns, and am in the middle of a series of dolls that are so cute, they've totally taken over the worktable. So now this is the new shop banner...

And avatar...

More later today...

Cheers,

Jenny

Mulligan

Ugh. I have had the worst headache all day, so I'll have to take a mulligan on doing a proper post today. How about if I promise to do two tomorrow?

Cheers, (ouch)

Jenny

Happy Mother's Day!

Happy Mother's Day to all, especially my own sweet Momsie!

Cheers,

Jenny

Here's Betsy McCall

A quick post and quick walk down memory lane. Betsy McCall paper dolls...

I found these on Flickr here, here and here. I especially love the two little rag dolls in the last one. Wouldn't they be fun to make? I love their little jumpers in red and teal.

Cheers,

Jenny

Friday archives - Faces

There's a new meme in town, all about dusting off old images from our pasts, started by Claire, who provided a handy button for participants...

I had a great time looking through long-neglected image files, searching for something to share. The faces above are from 2002, during a brief but passionate affair with real paints and canvas. They have a significance which I will get to in a moment. I had this nutty idea that I wanted to paint 1000 faces. I even registered the domain name 1000-faces.com. I was fascinated by the variations in features, and arrived at a sort of visual shorthand to capture the nuances in a graphic way. I'm embarrassed to admit how few I actually completed... I think it was a couple dozen or so. The reason I got sidetracked is the significant part.

For my regular illustration jobs, I was using the computer then, but I hadn't yet gained any confidence using my graphics tablet. I still did sketches in pencil, drew the line work in pen, scanned that and added color in Photoshop. But I thought for the faces I could use the computer to work out color and such before picking up my brush. (I really wanted them to work graphically as a group, its the designer in me I guess)  One day while working out some color ideas, I started sketching on the tablet and realized my synapses had made the connection and I could sketch freely on the tablet while looking at the screen. At that point my focus wheeled away from paints and brushes, to pixels and bytes, and I've been working totally digitally ever since.

But not before painting this sweet lady:

She's kind of special. I blogged a bit about her story here.

Anywho, that's todays peek into the archives. I hope everyone has a great weekend!

Cheers,

Jenny

The wonderful world of Etsy

Well. Today I did some poking around on Etsy and I was blown away by how gee-normous and jam-packed with resources it is. I feel like the last one to the party because I had no idea!

I especially like these downloadable sidebar buttons...

...and the nifty bannerator for generating a shop banner using one of their desgns:

...there are even "street teams"... I'm not exactly sure what those are but there are tons of them with many many members, and their own workshops.

You can even search for items by color! Hm, what color should I search for?

I'm getting the impression that there is an entire Etsy Universe to explore, and I've only scratched the topmost part of the iceberg (I'm going for maximum metaphor mixing there).

Shoot, and I still don't even have anything to sell yet!

Pardon me, apparently I have work to do...

Cheers,

Jenny