When Life Gives You Gloppy Frisket...

Use Illustrator

I love the idea of frisket, my problem is that it glops up too fast and buying it is a waste of money. Even though I seal the bottle in two zip lock bags and carefully clean the lid and lip of the jar the cap still manages to seal itself shut like a vice grip. After about ten minutes of working at the cap and finally getting the darn thing open I found that my frisket was a gloppy mess as usual. After having removed most of the gooey-ness I began a painting that I woke up with in my head of a little fish.

I love batik and I used to do it all of the time in high school way back when, I love the way it looks and at first I was going to create my very first design of a stork among tropical foliage. Painting a sort of faux batik using watercolor and friskit but somewhere in between it turned into a tropical fish that I must have dreamed about the night before.

Now the original painting was good with exception of the above mentioned friskit. The lines were just too much of a mess to fix and I found myself getting annoyed beyond anything. I was about to scrap the whole idea when I thought "Why not take it into Illustrator and make the lines there and add the painting to it afterwards?"

That is exactly what I did and I think it came out successful. I scanned the original painting into Illustrator and cleaned up the lines by drawing them from scratch. I then moved it into Photoshop and scanned in four sheets of hand-painted watercolor, one each of yellow, green, ocean blue colors and purple. I placed the appropriate color behind the different sections of my new drawing and digitally cut it out. The end result is very close to the original painting only much cleaner. Maybe I shall recreate my very first batik just for the fun of it

Batik Fishy Print

Halloween Patchwork

Halloween Patchwork Candy Corn Button

I spent yesterday on another Halloween design that is less bold and more subdued called Halloween Patchwork, inspired by an old pair of socks I used to have. I worked the new design the same as I did "Halloween Stripes" and used Illustrator.

First I created a checkered background and played around with the colors. I settled on tans as this made a good neutral background. I created the stitching lines simply by using the line tool and selecting "dashes"

For the Jack O'lantern, well he may look familiar. I opened the one I made from Halloween Stripes and added color to him with a slight black outline. I wanted to give him a bit of a different appearance so I squashed him down.

The candy corn was a simple triangle I drew freehand. I added two extra anchor points on each of the sides and duplicated the triangle twice. I changed the top triangle to white and "cut" the bottom off so the triangle had a white cap on top. I repeated the same thing with the yellow bottom. I "grouped" the triangles to make a candy corn and duplicated another for the set.

Taking all of the artwork into Photoshop I applied "texture/burlap" to give it some interest and there you have it, enjoy!

Halloween Patchwork Pumpkin Magnet

Halloween Patchwork Candy Corn T-Shirt

Halloween Patchwork Mousepad

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New Halloween Design

Halloween Stripes Trick Or Treat Photo Bag

Well I had fun today! I decided to rely on my good old standby when I am dry for designs and that is Halloween and Samhain. I absolutely love Halloween/Samhain. I love the colors, the smells and scaring the trick or treaters and their parents when they come to my door. (You have to work for your candy here) and most of all remembering loved ones that have passed from this world.

To begin the design I started out in Illustrator and made a striped background of orange, green, black and purple. I opened it up in Photoshop and though I am not a big fan of filters I started to play around with them. First I added some "Noise", then I used "Sprayed Strokes" and added a "Burlap" texture to it. This added some interest from just plain old stripes.

Still something was missing so I went back into Illustrator and drew a simple little spider. I started with an oval, drew each of the legs on the left side, copied the legs and pasted in place then reflected the new set of legs and placed them on the right side of the spiders body. Then it was simple ovals for the eyes and a string to hang from. I placed him against the background but one big spider got quite lost so I shrunk him down and duplicated him until he ran along the green stripes of my background.

Liking where I was heading with this I opened Illustrator and drew three ovals, one a bit larger than the other two. This formed the Jack O'Lantern's body. I freehand drew the stem and mouth with help from the swirl tool for the ends and added triangles for the eyes and nose. I then added him to my background in Photoshop as I did the spider.

For the witch hat I took the stem from the pumpkin, added a few anchor points and disstorted it a little bit. I put an oval along the bottom and added some stars using the "Shapes" tool. It was then ready to add to the background.

To add to the designs I could make on Zazzle I repeated the process with the filters for a green, a purple and an orange background. I also saved copies of each drawing. I uploaded all of them into zazzle and well, you can see for yourself the designs that came about. Also you might want to take advantage of the back to school sale on bags. I have a few trick or treat bags for sale, some of which you can add your own phtots to.

I hope you like the new design, I have another idea I may work on tomorrow, Until then, enjoy!

Party Invitation

Photo Magnet

Table Tent

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