With Valentine’s Day fast approaching I realised that over the years I’ve designed quite a few geeky Valentine’s cards and should probably put them all together in one place, and Pinterest seems like as good a place as any! Visit the Geeky Valentine’s Day Cards Pinterest Board or click below:
Whether Pinterest has potential to act as a larger portfolio I have yet to decide. The trouble is that my designs are hosted across the interwebs at Zazzle, Cafepress, Redbubble and others, so I don’t have any one place to showcase all of them. It’s a bit too labour-intensive to add every new design to a WordPress page, so I’m on the lookout for a good solution. Ideas welcome!
One aspect of the Ipswich Library craft fair I rather enjoyed was having an afternoon sitting still. That might sound a bit odd, but I rarely get any length of time to just sit around. Outside the day job, my free time is usually spent on the ‘second job’: graphic design and formatting images and text for Zazzle and Cafepress. Any moments beyond that I can be found dashing about town, seeing people, being attached to my computer emailing people, and trying to be president of a social/charity club. So, I took a sketchbook to the library and spent a good part of the afternoon doodling, which was almost blissfully relaxing! I’d forgotten how much I used to draw at school, where breaks and lunchtimes turned into just such free moments and the computer rooms were always occupied by people playing games and thus inaccessible. I would insert some flimsy promise about setting aside more time to draw at about this point in the post, but I really don’t know where I’d find that time. I’ll have to content myself with carrying a notebook with me, just in case I stumble into a blank hour by accident.
Being a Christmas craft fair, the Krampus was the subject of quite a few of the doodles. I’d started cutting a lino block a few days earlier with the aim of hand-printing some Krampus cards, but didn’t manage to finish it in time for the fair, so hopefully I’ll have some to send out in time for next year. I also sketched out some layouts for some hare-themed lino prints and wintery scenes, so (alongside the actual craft fair) it was a productive day all round.
Doodles from the Library Craft Fair
I’ve not tidied them all up yet, but here’s one using the little Krampus over at Zazzle:
Gruss vom Krampus Christmas Cards at Zazzle
I’ve been interested in the Krampus and other Germanic traditions ever since visiting Austria a couple of times many years ago. We went to two museums: one contained a photographic gallery of the region’s traditional costumes and performances, and the other was filled with wonderful artefacts, including a room filled with huge, hairy, horned monsters, taller than a man and intended to be worn as costumes during such performances (I nearly jumped out of my skin the first time I stepped through that door, they had such a looming presence in the room). Unfortunately my german was not good enough to make sense of all the descriptions at the time, but I believe I took photos in the hope that one day I’d be able to read them. I’d love to go back at the right time of year and see them in action!
For more information about the Krampus and the sinister side of Christmas, visit Krampus.com.
I realised I’ve not posted any of my book-related designs so far, which seems a bit silly seeing as most of my time is spent in the company of books! A couple of new bookish designs this week:
I’m excited to announce that Cafepress have made available various size duvets! I’ve long wanted to design my own bedcovers, and now I can. I’ve created two so far, inspired by vintage theatre poster designs, in twin and king sizes:
Twin Duvet – Vintage Sleep Poster
$155.00
King Size Duvet – Vintage Sleep Poster
$175.00
Twin Duvet – Vintage Smile Poster
$155.00
King Size Duvet – Vintage Smile Poster
$175.00
The designs are also available on other products over at Zazzle:
Vintage Smile Poster
on posters, greetings cards and postcards at Zazzle
Vintage Sleep Poster
on posters, greetings cards and postcards at Zazzle
Happy Mother’s Day to british mums! Having spent the day cooking and washing up for my mum, I started wondering how you could turn helping out into a proper gift that might encorage the rest of the family to help out a bit. I’ve created coupons and tokens for other things on Zazzle, so this seemed the obvious next step!
Give your mum a set of customizable coupons: just write a series of chores in the blank space, and give them to your mum to redeem at her leisure. Personal and useful.
You could add: doing the washing up for a day, hoovering the whole house, breakfast in bed, mowing the lawn, taking the trash out, doing the shopping, cleaning the car, cooking the evening meal… and anything else you can think of.
Because it’ll be Mother’s day in the USA before the UK one comes around again, here’s one for american moms:
And finally, we all know dads have plenty of chores too- so here’s the dad version, and a couple of others:
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