time to celebrate (giveaway)

Awesome fact of the day: this is the 400th post I’ve written on this little blog of mine! I am still shocked at how this space has evolved over the past year and a half and I am so happy to not only have a record of my adventures but to know that there are hundreds (I can’t believe I can even say that!) of people who have been along for the ride with me. As a celebration of this milestone post and as a THANK-YOU to all of my readers for supporting me, my art, my ideas and my dreams, I am doing a big GIVEAWAY! Four lovely prizes are up for grabs: 1. Black feather limited edition hand-printed relief moleskine journal, a Who? HOO! zine, a great horned owl magnet, and a grizzly bear pocket mirror.2. Falling Feathers limited edition hand-pulled screenprint moleskine journal, limited edition hand-pulled screenprint on balsa wood, a great horned owl magnet, and a chipping sparrow pocket mirror.3. Molecular Bear limited edition hand-pulled screenprint moleskine journal, a Figuring You Out zine, a great horned owl magnet, and a grizzly bear pocket mirror.4. Cross-Bearing Ram limited edition hand-pulled screenprint moleskine journal, an I Remember You zine, a great horned owl magnet, and a chipping sparrow pocket mirror.

To be entered to win one of these four fabulous prize packages, all you have to do is be a follower of this blog and leave a comment below. If you aren’t yet subscribed to the blog, you should be; I am always posting new, fun and creative things that will hopefully inspire you (plus I’d love to have you stop by and chat more), so go ahead and just click the button over in the right hand side bar to join the party and leave a quick comment to be eligible for these super rad prizes. The giveaway closes on August 30st, and the winners will be announced and contacted on August 31st. If you can’t wait to get your pretty little paws on some of these treats, they are all available for sale right now in my etsy shop.

more pretty plumes in the shop

After creating a unique journal for a mail art reply for my friend Carol using my plate from “yin-yang I & II“, I realized that my feather carving fit perfectly on the small cahier moleskine journals. I just had to make some for the shop and for OOAK and so a small limited edition of 20 are now available here. Remember, you can still save 10% off everything in the shop until December 4th with the coupon code STUFFINGSTOCKINGS.

patterns & paws – progress 2

I surprised Anika Starmer (@aisforanika) by mailing our collaboration to her without warning her. I hope she did a little surprised happy dance at the post box! I kept the envelopes contents simple, because the real gems are inside the sketchbooks. I wrote Anika a short note on a rad Gama-Go postcard and sent along 2 weiner dog stickers (one for otto and one for kasi), plus of course, our 2 EPIC collaborative sketchbooks patterns & paws all housed inside a stay flat mailer covered in sweet stamps. If you haven’t seen the inital post about this project or seen the progress 1 post, I suggest checking them out! Below are all the snapshots of my recent additions to the fabulous ‘patterns & paws’ sketchbooks. So far in the project, this was the first time that I got to respond to imagery that Anika had made. It was really exciting to have a bit of inspiration to draw from. The first set of images she drew detailed this lovely swooping pattern. I remember watching this “style” develop when Anika was working on her 20 in 20 giveaway. I saw these swooping patterns as perhaps scratch marks, or digging marks, and thus continued the line work over into my metallic paws. Her side of the next set of diptychs, featured this interesting pattern done with intricate line work. I noticed that each little “square” of color was made up of 7 lines. 7 is known as a lucky number, and rabbits are known for their lucky paws. It seemed to fit perfectly. Next was the first 2 page spread, where our imagery mixes instead of staying split between two pages. Anika’s patterns on both spreads made me think of sky and sea colliding, and so I created some wicked transfers of birds & fish from some vintage 1970′s illustrations I’ve been collecting. These spreads also make me think of a happy ending to the metaphoric question “a bird may love a fish but where would they build their home?” In the patterns and paws sketchbook of course! The next set of spreads were my first shot at starting a two-page spread. In my last mail art package from Anika, she sent a pile of different graph papers and said she often uses them as a base or a template for some of her patterns. So I figured I would washi tape them in, and apart from using my existing imagery as a starting point, she’d also have the familiarity of graph paper to draw from. I used black ink to doodle in some of my favorite textures from the animal world; “patterns” per se, that are on paws such as fur, scales, and skin. I created a tile pattern & left the same amount of blank spaces for Anika to use. The following pages were for me to begin 2 diptychs. The first pair of images were inspired by my love of snail mail. Canada is lucky to have tons of gorgeous wildlife, and I am so proud of the stamps CP produces that honor these adorable creatures. Two of my favorite stamps issued are the white-tail deer and the walrus. The original stamp sheets also have these little paw corners and small silhouettes of the wildlife. Postal and script washi tape plus my local post office’s stamp were added to expand the paw mail theme.The last images I added to the books this round were inspired by some gorgeous found illustrations of paw tracks of both a grey squirrel and a cottontail from a hunting guide. I glued the collected paw ephemera vertically on the left, and added a delicate graphite portrait of each furry creature to the right of it.For your viewing pleasure, I decided to include a few of my favorite detail shots:I am already so proud of our progress with this collaboration and really, we have just begun! I hope Anika is super motivated to ‘reply’  to my additions and I also hope our readers are inspired by this unique project! Thanks for reading, your comments, reactions and feedback are always welcome.