St. John's Wort

On my morning bike rides to work, I am constantly noticing (even recognizing!) different plants in yards, parks, and any other landscaping I pass and getting inspired. I've been thinking we need some nice ground cover in our yard and I keep seeing this St. John's Wort all over the place. It is hardy plant, flexible with sun or shade, and fits into the natural woodsy yard that we have. I love the yellow flowers, aren't they great? Tweet Follow @kellymedina

Illustration Friday - Canned

It is always a good idea to have some extra canned dreams, love, and luck (to name a few).

I wanted to participate in this weeks IF and this was the first idea that I drew in my sketch book.

Thanks for visiting and I look forward to reading your comments. :) Tweet Follow @kellymedina

Farmer's Market

I went to the Farmer's Market today and got all sorts of great veggies and some honey. Being that C and I want to have our own chunk of land to grow our own food someday, this was very inspiring and it just felt great to buy locally. The prices were quite comparable to conventional produce at the stores. It was a lot of fun to fill up my re-usable grocery bag.

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Finally!

I had a rubber stamp success! I have struggled a bit with figuring out my best method to make stamps. I mistakenly bought the wrong type of material and my tools were all wrong. I finally picked up the right stuff and was determined to make something I really liked. I still have much practice ahead of me to get the clean lines I desire though. But I was very happy with this little bunny.

The illustration for the stamp. Tweet Follow @kellymedina

Plant Parts

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Bug

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Illustration Friday - Foggy

Faugh the Dragon loved his afternoon naps, but little did he know that it made the small town below foggy every time.

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This is the topic from last week. I had this illustration done, but I didn't have time to color it before Friday. I wanted to color it and post it anyways. I've been playing with several styles and really like having one style that looks hand drawn, rather than totally drawn on computer. Keeps the hand drawn feel, right?

I played around with Illustrator and Photoshop to color and create lines for this. I am really happy, because I feel like I am getting a bit more experience in using Illustrator and Photoshop together. I used to be a Macromedia Freehand girl (the program I used in school) for design and illustrating. I was always frustrated with Illustrator and Photoshop - that is not the case now! I really love the two programs and think CS3 made some great fixes to make the programs so fun to use.

So glad it is Friday tomorrow.. now time to sleep. Tweet Follow @kellymedina

Bright!

Now that is some bright yellow and orange!

I was working on an illustration but didn't get it finished before bed time. I should have it for tomorrow... I hope! Tweet Follow @kellymedina

Cactus

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Thank You Tags

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I made

this and loved it. Recipe here. Tweet Follow @kellymedina

Bookmarks

I have been very into reading the last few months. I decided I need more bookmarks for all the different books I tend to reference for gardening, cooking, inspiration, sewing, etc. These are them! I'm quite happy with how they turned out. I adhered a solid color on the back to add some stiffness. I have been toying around with doing a give-away at some point and think I will add this to the package. Tweet Follow @kellymedina

Brillante

I was nominated for this award by Carli, May, and Kstyles recently and it just made me beam with joy. Thank you, thank you! :)

So now I need to nominate 7 bloggers. It wasn't easy and there are many folks who have wonderful blogs that I probably forgot.

1. The three ladies above who gave me the award are givens - they all are talented and inspiring artists.

2. Flora at Happy Doodleland - she is one of the first Illustration Friday folks I met and her talents inspire me daily.

3. Linda at Sketched Out - she is so talented in illustrating and writing. She leaves me impressed from every post.

4. Juliette at Chickpea Studio - an amazing talent with a sewing machine. She has great tutorials and photography that keeps me inspired to keep at my sewing projects.

5. Curt at While Walking Duncan - one of my oldest friends and an amazing writer. It all started with a soap opera (imagine: Dynasty, Dallas and a titch of Falcon Crest) when we were 15 years old. He has a second blog here, though incomplete, this is a fun read.

6. Danielle at Red Dog and Jude - she hasn't been blogging as much due to her busy life as a freelancer and day job, but she still always inspires me with her Monday Inspiration posts and her colorful illustrations.

7. Pink Penguin - who I only recently found and have been inspired by her sewing talents since. She has great tutorials and a shop with her wonderful work.

8. Christine - Wonderful collage artist and sweet person over all. Very inspiring with her cooking and knitting/felting talents.

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The rules of accepting are as follows:-
1) Put the logo on your blog.
2) Add a link to the person who awarded you.
3) Nominate at least 7 other blogs.
4) Add links to those blogs on yours.
5) Leave a message for your nominees on their blogs. Tweet Follow @kellymedina

Overly Confident Ice Cream Cone

Obviously, I am on an ice cream kick this week.

The last two illustrations have been from a work project and didn't use. Tweet Follow @kellymedina

Girl + Ice cream

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Me, a self portrait,

... that is, if I were a daisy on a hot day. I'm not much of a hot weather person. I love brisk air, a slight breeze, blue skies with a spattering of clouds and I don't have a problem with rain at all (makes sense I live in the Northwest, I suppose). So as you can imagine during the hot months I become like this sad, wilting daisy. It was the only one like this out of the other daisies and it caught my eye. I hear so many people say they love the hot, stale air and burning (my words) sun on their skin - yah, not so much - but hey we all get a turn to enjoy our time of "perfect" weather.

Stay cool everyone :) Tweet Follow @kellymedina

Illustration + Tangent + Inspiration

For a quick illustration tonight, I played around with using my mouse and brush to make shapes, instead of my usual pen tool in Illustrator. I'm wanting to start using my Wacom tablet in the near future, but I still find it so awkward. Baby steps. Okay, slight /tangent, but whenever I say "baby steps" I always think of What About Bob , have you seen it? If not, you should. Bill Murray is so funny!... /end tangent. :)

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Check out this talented illustrator I recently found in the March/April 2008 Communication Arts, Jessica Hische, great illustrations and typography. Tweet Follow @kellymedina

Fleet Foxes Video

I stumbled across this stop-motion animation on Graphic Design Bar and knew I had to share it. I love animations and this one is very unique and I like the music. Check it out.

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Lovely Snail Mail

I received a very creative package from Christine. She sent out packages to all the folks that participated in a guessing game on her blog several months back - which I guessed wrong - it ended up being this cool bag. I was so surprised that she was going to send me something just for guessing! Too sweet, thanks Christine.

She made these lovely, little stamps and card - I'm always so impressed with people's stamp making skills - great job Christine! Here are all the stamps she made to send out - so cute! Also, the colorful and wonderful samples of Christine's collage work were a nice surprise.

The icing on the cake was receiving some new stamps for my collection. I really love the simple, single color Denmark stamps. Yay!

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Where did the week go?

It's felt like a busy week, though it is one of those weeks where I can't quite recall exactly where all the time went. But regardless, I am happy it is the weekend! I don't really have any plans (just the way I like it), but I want to get some reading and drawing in. I will hopefully have something to share.

The picture above is an electric box and wires I saw while on a walk and I finally got around to playing with it in Photoshop. Tweet Follow @kellymedina

Flower Bed

A little something I created for a project at work today, but didn't end up using it. I liked it too much to not do something with it. For now just sharing and I will have to figure out how to apply it - bookmark? stationery? note pad?

It is a scorcher here today - I hope everyone is staying cool. Tweet Follow @kellymedina

I heart biking

I am on my 3rd week of riding my bike to work! I am riding every other day and I really love it. I've always loved riding bikes since I was a young girl. It's nice to get back to my favorite type of exercise. So I was so inspired I decided it would be my illustration for tonight. Tweet Follow @kellymedina

Illustration Friday - Sour (Grape)

One winning grape and one sour grape.

Thanks for visiting and I look forward to reading your comments. Tweet Follow @kellymedina

Made Cupcakes

Made some cupcakes, you can get the recipe here. Tweet Follow @kellymedina

Shape Play

I was at a loss on what to create tonight, so I decided to play around in Illustrator and see what came to me. I got a shape going and it became a challenge to create something with just the shape. It ended up being a pretty simple illustration, but I like it.

the shape

the illustration using the shape and adding some texture.

Woohoo! 3 day weekend! Tweet Follow @kellymedina

Owl - Quick Draw

A quick draw for tonight. It has been pretty warm here, so think that is why I ended up with some snow - ha! :) Tweet Follow @kellymedina

Illustration Friday - Fierce

My submission for Illustration Friday's topic: Fierce.

Thanks for visiting. Tweet Follow @kellymedina