Halloween brooches!

I am so excited about these!! My new brooches were inspired by 1930's horror movies, which are my absolute favorite to watch this time of year. If you want to enjoy some truly creepy movies this October, I highly recommend Mystery of the Wax Museum and Doctor X. They were shot in two-strip technicolor, which gives them an eerie green tint that amplifies the creep factor x100. I also love all of the classic Universal horror films like Dracula, Frankenstein, Bride of Frankenstein and The Mummy. You just can't beat 30's horror!

If you're familiar with these movies you know that they have a unique brand of fright that you just don't find in scary movies from other eras. They're stylish and stylized and filled with full moons, lots of fog and a healthy helping of cobwebs. I really wanted to capture that atmosphere in these brooches and I'm very pleased with how they turned out!

Of course I was running behind schedule as usual and didn't get these ready until one month before Halloween, oops! If you're interested in wearing one of these for Halloween festivities please keep in mind that I make all of my items to order and take about a week to ship. The brooches are available in my shop now, right here! Happy early Halloween!

new self portrait

If you follow me on any social networking sites you might have already noticed that I changed all of my icons a couple weeks ago, so this isn't really new news. But I'm so happy with my new drawing that I wanted to post about it here.

I drew the portrait on the left in 2011, and it's definitely served me well for four years. It was actually one of the first digital drawings I ever did when I was first learning how to use a tablet. I still like it, but I really wanted something that reflected my personality more. The one on the left is cute but it's just almost too cute and demure and perfect. It needed to be a little sloppier. I noticed that I tend to make the same face in a lot of my photos (kind of looking off to the side and smirking) so I incorporated that into my new portrait. I think my personality shows through much more in this one now! I also added a decent amount of fly-aways in my hair and my shirt is a little crooked. It was a challenge to figure out how to draw transparent glasses frames but I'm pretty happy with how they came out.

Aside from wanting the drawing to look more like me, I've also learned so much about digital drawing since 2011 and wanted to update it for that reason as well. I feel like the new one looks a lot more like a drawing and not just a digital rendering... I created the 2011 portrait almost entirely using paths and fills and not with actual pen strokes (the only part that I used my tablet for was the lines in the hair.) Whereas the new one was drawn exactly like I would have done it on paper, only with digital colors instead of ink.

Overall I'm really pleased with how it came out, and hopefully I won't need another new one for another four years :)

New vibrant brooches!

I've been trying to come up with a way to make colorful brooches for a while now. My first attempt was to make laser-cut wooden brooches and hand paint them. I really love how they look, but they're SO time-consuming and I still haven't really mastered a good technique for making sure they all come out perfect. There's so many little crevices where paint can get stuck and I've ended up throwing out at least 1 brooch for every 2 that I got right. So days are numbered for my hand-painted brooches. They're still in the shop for now while I work on transitioning all of the brooches to my new style so if you really had your heart set on one this is your last chance to get them.

I'm switching over to a new method that I've been working on instead. It's still kind of time consuming but I feel like the results are way more consistent and I like how they look a lot more than the hand-painted ones. It's basically still laser-cut wood, but instead of paint there's a layer with my printed illustration and then a layer of satin varnish.

I started out with five of my older designs (Liz Lemon, Shark Week, Dinosaurs eat man woman inherits the earth, Clever Girl) as well as the Leslie Knope one that I just released last week, and two brand spanking new designs - my Heathers dinosaur drawing and Movies are my drug. I can't WAIT to wear that one basically every time I go to the movies now!



I'm just so happy with how these look, the color is so vibrant and the print is perfectly sharp. And I think this will make it easier for me to customize colors and text if anyone wants more personalized jewelry. I can't wait to start packing these up and mailing them to new homes :D All of the new vibrant brooches are available right here, and if you wanted to grab one of the last hand-painted ones they're available here.

Leslie Knope is my spirit animal

New brooches in the shop here.

Free tattoo choker with purchase, today only!

Happy Labor Day! For today only, take 10% off any purchase of $10+ and receive a free rainbow tattoo choker (while supplies last) Use code LABORDAY to redeem this discount.

Click here to shop! :)

ps. Don't forget, all US orders over $25 ship free and all International orders over $120 ship free. No code required and the free shipping offers can be combined with the labor day discount.

Chaos is what killed the dinosaurs, darling

I'm now up to three sayings to go with this raptor drawing, I just can't be stopped! This one is a quote from the 1988 movie Heathers. The print is available in my shop here.

Movies are my drug

This year I've been using movies a lot as an escape from reality, watching (and re-watching) favorites so I can slip into an alternate universe for a few hours and leave my worries behind. I was sitting in a theater today, about to watch The Man From UNCLE for the fourth time, when this little image popped into my head (and yeah, it'll also be a brooch soon because I have no self control when it comes to movies *or* turning my drawings into jewelry)

I'm lucky that my drug of choice doesn't mess with my ability to form coherent thoughts and make rational decisions. It's available legally and it's usually pretty cheap. It won't make your teeth fall out. It is, however, incredibly addictive. Some movies (cough, The Man from UNCLE, cough) should come with a warning label: may be habit-forming.

The drawing is available in my shop, here.