Illustration Friday - Bicycle

Last week's word for Illustration Friday was bicycle. I totally got busy with the usual weekly stuff and projects that I did not get to officially submit and post this until now. Here is my bicycle that I drew and made into a one inch pin back button!


It is fitting that I post it this weekend, cos this is the weekend for the Twilight Criterium bicycle races here in Athens. It is a fun event - we like to watch the cyclists round town, and it is always very busy! I would also like to give a shout out to my mom's place of employment, Aero Tech Designs, where she makes and sews gear for cyclists! She is a great seamstress! Very cool!

Since I can't find any of my Twilight bike race photos, I will just post some of my favorite photos that I took of bicycles!


These are bikes in Shanghai, China. This is near the big walking street, I think it is called Nanjing Road. It is nice there because it is just made for walking, so everyone goes there to shop and walk. You do not have to worry about cars!


This is the bike hitch in Seattle, Washington. I thought it was cute design!


Here is the yummiest bicycle by far! This is a bread bike from ARené-Gérard de St-Ouen, a very cute bakery in Paris, France. All of the breads are made into adorable shapes! I had a bunny when I went.

Fluke 2011

Saturday was Fluke, Athens own mini comics, zines, and self publishing event. We scrambled to get a table, and set up as fast as we could! Here was our set up.








We had a bunch of new stuff, and I did three new zines the day before Fluke, too! I was really proud of myself, as they came together nicely. Raoul had made some new zines, too. Lots of people came by to say hello, which was nice. We met lots of new people, and all of our old friends.






Here is Raoul at our table. It was very busy the whole time, so I only had a small amount of time to browse myself! I managed to get some good comics from some neat artists!


Here I am with some of the finger puppets I made from felt.

Happy Easter!

Zine-ing

We are preparing for Fluke, Athens own mini comics and indie publishing event. I am trying really hard to finish some comics and get old favorites stapled and ready for Saturday!

Easter is on the Way

Are you ready for Easter? Are you over loaded on chocolate? I know I have been lately! I ordered some yummy chocolate from Maison Bouche after reading about these chocolates here.




I was totally lured in by the packaging. I love bunnies and kitties. I also really love dark chocolate, but I tried some of the milk chocolate, too. They are all really good, but my favorites are the Fleur de Sel, lavender, and rose flavors.


Now we are ready for the Easter Bunny with all these yummy candies. Do you have a favorite Easter candy?

Illustration Friday - Journey

This is my drawing for the word journey on Illustration Friday. This drawing makes me think about all the places I have visited. Here is a list.

States I have visited
Pennsylvania
Ohio
Georgia
Delaware
New York
New Jersey
Massachusetts
North Carolina
South Carolina
Tennessee
Washington DC
Washington
Oregon
California
Indiana
Illinois
Maryland
Virginia
West Virginia
Florida

Outside of the USA
France
Germany
Canada
China
Hong Kong

Where have you visited?

How to Make Pompom Peeps

My mom and I made peeps similar to this when I was little. I think she got the idea from a magazine. They are really easy to make! Let's try it.

You will need:


pompom trim


tacky glue - I use Aleene's Tacky Glue


bird seed

Some things not shown that you will need:
scissors
tweezers

Here is what to do:

Cut the pompoms off the trim as shown. This is the head and body of the peep. Cut the connecting thread from the trim short for the beak, and a little longer for the legs. You will see why in the next step. I like to use some of the glue on the parts I cut. It helps the beak and legs from fraying. Let these pieces dry.


Glue the head to the body as shown here. Position the beak facing forward. Position the legs facing down. Let dry.






Next, take a small bird seed in the tweezers. Place a small amount of glue on the seed and place on the pompom as shown here. Do this for each eye. I find that squeezing a little glue on a scrap paper helps me control how much glue is on the seed. I also like to try different size and colors of bird seed to vary the looks of the peeps. Let the peep dry completely.

Repeat these steps to make more peeps!


Hooray! You have made a peep!

I like to use the plastic eggs with these peeps. You can also place them inside the eggs, too, as a cute Easter surprise!

When my mom and I made these, we had better pompoms (this was in the 1980's!) and used a fatter pompom for the body, a smaller one for the head. I was unable to find any size other than small (shown in my photos). Our peeps were lots bigger than mine today! We also had small plastic eggs that they fit in perfectly. Another thing we had with ours were egg shells blown out and dyed, so the peeps could be displayed in the egg shell.

Hope you try this! It is a fun spring craft!

Aw, Nilla

Some Collages

Here are some of my collages I made a long time ago. They are made with cut paper and magazine clippings.

On Glee!

Well, I am not on Glee, but some mugs I designed for my day job were! They are on the Valentine's Day episode. We don't watch Glee, but maybe I will start! Mine is the one shown with the XOXO border and hot pink hearts! In the episode, Blaine, who is in a cafe with Kurt, looks at my mug and says something like, "Don't they have anything in here that DOESN'T have cute little hearts on it?"

Our friend and co-worker, Erin of Luxe and Lace spotted these mugs when she was watching Glee in her downtime on a business trip to China. She took these pictures on her iPod with the screen capture.


So if you look behind the dudes, you can see a brown and pink mug shown, which is made by our friend and co-worker Libby, who is also Daisy Doodles on Etsy, and I also made the black and red design shown in this photo, too.

So go art department! Hooray!

Our New Friend

What have you been doing all week? Well, we have been very busy getting our new friend settled in to our home. We adopted him as a "husbun" for our bunny, Oreo. He came from the North Georgia House Rabbit Society and is a rescued rabbit.


His name at the shelter was Dandelion. We nicknamed him Dandy, but we knew we wanted to change it when we got to know him better. So far, after over a dozen name ideas, we settled on Jumbles. Our pets all have a cookie-theme to their names, and Jumbles are a cookie that I read about in my cookie cookbook.


So far Oreo really likes Jumbles, but we have to keep them separated until they get more used to one another. It is so fun to watch them play together!