Second Promo Poster

This is our second giveaway poster. None other than our Baking Bread collaboration as a 13x19 print! These posters are not for sale, and never will be. So this is your chance to win them! If you haven't checked out our page, here's the link. https://www.facebook.com/chuckletree

ChuckleTree Social Network Promo

We've just printed our Monkey Island fanart illustration - poster size! This one here is 18 x 9.5, and is the first of our promo set. The photos really do not do this print ANY justice. The prints actually look better than what the digital file looks like on screen.

The promo is to share and like our ChuckleTree facebook page to win the posters. If you haven't been to our page, go to https://www.facebook.com/chuckletree and like, and share our promo with all your friends!

Taryn's Wedding Illustration

I have stopped taking commission work because I usually have other projects that I have to be working on, but I was recently asked by a former coworker Taryn to illustrate for her wedding. Instead of having a traditional guestbook like everybody else, she had an idea to make little heart shapes for the guests to write on. She would then stick those heart-shaped messages around this illustration and get it framed for her house. It sounded like such a great and inventive idea, that made me want to illustrate for her and her future husband.

She always had photos of cars on her facebook page, so I decided to go along with a car theme. The car is 1971 XY Ford Falcon GTHO. Her partner's favourite. He was very specific about the colour because that's the signature for the model. The orange made the illustration really pop out and appealing. I really like how the car turned out.

I wish the couple the very best for their wedding. And I look forward to seeing more photos of it once she has all the hearts glued on it.

*Edit: Taryn has put it all together and sent me photos. Click here to see them*

Sad Christmas Ornaments

I am not known to be traditional. While my husband's been creative with his ornaments, I decided to stick to a snowman and a gingerbread man - but with a twist! They are sad because these things happen.

Peed-On-Snowman on Etsy

Broken Gingerbread Man on Etsy

Football Zombie Prints

The Football Zombies are now available as prints! Woo! We are still trying to figure out international shipping for items larger than "letter size". Hopefully we'll get it going pretty soon.

In the meantime, here is the link to buy this print: Click here!

Christmas Cards

I finally got some good paper to print Christmas cards on at Red River Paper. I am so happy with these prints. They look even better than they do on my monitor.

I will definitely be returning to Red River Paper for more products. I am also looking for more recycled envelopes and paper too. So contact me if you sell any, or know anybody who does.

Also, these are for sale at our Etsy store. Cardinal cards are here, and the duckling cards can be found here.

Squirrels and Nuts

Finally! The squirrels are done. Whew. These took a while to finish. These can be purchased at >> our Etsy store << They are very firm due to layers and layers of paper and glue. And they come in 2 different shades. I just wanted to have something as our "Fall Collection".

Christmas Card - Experiment

More experimenting with paper. I am hoping to start printing out Christmas cards soon. Since our printer is so picky, I need to find the perfect paper for it too.
The paper I used in this photo is Canson Infinity Montval (Fine art). It's a bit too thick to be folded into a card. And it's bloody expensive!

The difficult part about buying a new gadget is that it hasn't been around long enough for people to have solutions posted all over the net. But I plan on doing more research to find something perfect!

Happy Halloween!

Squirrel's Acorn - WIP

These are my work in progress squirrels. Trying different paper and different colour settings to get the right shade of brown. The one on the right was printed on glossy photo paper, but using really light colour settings, and the one on the left was on matte photo paper using the original colour settings. Colour-wise, I like the one on the right. But I like the paper texture on the left.

I shall work on these a bit more when I get more time this weekend.

Sticker Paper

We've been buying a few different types of inkjet paper for our prints. Some of them are sticker paper. I've been printing out a few stickers. I'm usually not a fan of glossy paper, but for stickers it looks good.

These are Dan's awesome character designs. On top is a witch from his Halloween Monster collection, and the rest are his Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle characters redesigned.

New products on Etsy

Vintage car cutouts for sale! They're good to be placed in a 5x7 frame. If you're interested, here's a link to our Etsy shop.

And another brand new product: English Breakfast cutout. This one is framed in a 10x10 shadowbox.

Etsy Shop

We have opened our own Etsy shop!
Our first set of products is bat magnets designed by my husband. They've been selling like hotcakes. The first set sold out within minutes of posting it online.

The second set was posted just yesterday and it's almost sold out already. Our ultimate favourite is those albino bats. They're so funny looking! There's only one left at the moment. Be quick!

My Boys

I came across this photo while I was digging through an old folder. I love it. These are my favourite boys, and they're enjoying their favourite activities. Dan - reading, and Vern - sleeping. This was at Dan's parents' cabin in WA. It's so cold there in winter!

IF: Onomatopoeia

A quick cutout of a duckling for Illustration Friday. The word of this week is onomatopoeia.

Friends

I just felt like drawing this week, and by the time I was done, the characters I drew looked a bit like the people I knew. I'm so creative!

English Breakfast

Here it is. Finally finished and finally uploaded! Dan and I talked about doing a cutout of a meal, and since I've been missing English breakfast (that I can no longer get since moving to the US), Dan decided it would be a funny cutout art.

As per usual, Dan's the concept artist, and I think I did the rest. I have been having the hardest time with the colour settings on this machine. And after days of trying, I surrender! I might try reinstalling Photoshop because the same image would show different saturation depending on what software I'm using. Bah!
Anyway, I think this came out ok... I think.

Spot The Difference - Halloween

Here it is, another spot the difference - Halloween edition! See if you can spot all 12! (Sketch, and flats done by my better half)

The answers can be found here

And here they are, printed. Not to shabby, huh?

Baby Chameleons

My husband loves Chameleons and he wants to get a terrarium one day to raise a few baby chameleons. We still want to find a more permanent place to live, and until then, he will have to be happy with these cutouts.

Printer Colour Calibration

I have been working on an English Breakfast cutout piece for a while. The colouring and shading is now finally finished. And I now have to spend hours trying to set the colour settings for the printer and see which option gives me the best result. Oh fun times... That and trying to align it correctly for the Silhouette to cut these shapes out is going to be a challenge.

Check out the finished cutout!

Male Wingtip Shoe Cutaway Cutout

Here's another cutaway cutout of my duckling series. The flat illustration can be seen here. It had to be changed a bit so it could be constructed with paper.

Dan's Presidents

After over a year Dan has finally completed his 43-presidential-caricature-sheet. No matter how much he sped up during the last few days, the style remains the same, and he has captured their essence in the simplest forms.

The best thing about this of course is that it's educational. And that you can see every one of them in one specific style (and in colour!). Dan has also been learning more about them as he created this series. You can read his trivia on his blog here.

Personally, I like how this sheet shows the trends throughout history. Long hair, facial hair, big collars, small collars. Bow ties, regular ties...etc. And he did such an awesome job with the likeness of all of them (except for Reagan, eh Dan?).

New Gigantic Toy - Canon Pixma Pro-100!

Oh yes. A NEW toy. Silhouette Cameo wasn't enough for us. After doing research on printers for about 2 months I got this baby for about $200 this week. Woop woop! And this printer is the biggest "desktop" printer I have ever seen. It's about 27 inches wide. Just look at my phone I placed next to the box as a comparison!

 I had to rearrange our apartment just so I could fit this fat thing near our computer desk. And look at how impressive our bookshelf looks now. Most of our books are now in the bedroom - they're no longer wanted!

 This is the very impressive looking view of the ink tanks. They come with lights! It's just like Christmas!

Well, it took about a whole day to rearrange the apartment and the rest of the evening to set up the printer, so I haven't had any time to print anything out yet. But I'm just happy looking at it.

My Mum's Birthday Card

All in the new cutout style! My mum loves flowers and pink. And because I've been buying flowers for every special occasion, I thought I'd try something different this year. And boy, was it different. It took me so freakin long to complete this card.

For some reason, I decided to do this freehand. There were bits that went missing, some parts were coloured completely wrong, and the overall composition looks a little crooked. But I hope it looks good to a set of fresh eyes. And to my mum of course. And she liked it very much.

My gosh. This post looks so out of place on my blog.

Shawn's Family Portrait

Recently I got to work on a family portrait for Shawn. His wife Kelli told me they wanted a beach theme for this illustration. So I went with the Beach Boys.

Dan's Bat Mobile

My husband is so clever. He comes up with some of the funniest ideas. I swear, more than 50% of our conversations start with "Wouldn't it be funny..."
Anyway, here's his newest conversation starter:

Sketch of Our Love

I did this sketch a few months ago of our affection. Obviously we can't keep our hands off each other. "What do you wanna do?" "I dunno. What do YOU wanna do?" "I dunno. What do YOU wanna do?" "I dunno. What do YOU wanna do?"...etc

Zombook!

Remember the football zombies I created for a book last year? Well, it's published, and is finally in my possession! Mwahaha. Thanks to Allan, I was able to check out some awesome illustrations by other artists. Here is my baby on page 13!

If anybody wants to get more information, here is their website.

Duckling Cutout - Woman's Wingtip Shoe

So I finally got around to creating a cutout of my duckling shoe. When I worked on a cutout piece years ago, it was a little stressful because I never knew which part went where. But I think I figured out how to make this process a lot easier. And it was fun!

Here's a close up. Enjoy!

Hopefully I'll get to work on the other Duckling series and turn them THREE DIMENSIONAL! Dun dun dunnnnn.....

T-shirt Design for Jason

This is a really bad photo of a recent gift I made for a friend, Jason. His wife is a derby chick, and he has been (involuntarily?) made their photographer. My husband and I both made him a derby-photographer related T-shirt each, using our new toy Silhouette Cameo. I don't know what I was thinking with all the crazy details because I ended up spending the whole day working on it. There were many failed attempts.

Hopefully I will take a better photo with a proper camera (I am dumping my phone) of it as well as my husband's design. But for now, here's the crappy photo.

And here's the digital image:

Duckling Cutout Sample

Here's a little Silhouette Cameo experiment I did while my husband was away protecting the environment. I wanted to see how my style would transform into a cutout paper craft.

New Toy - Silhouette Cameo

It's been a while since I posted anything. We've just had a lot going on. Dan has finally finished his Masters Degree in Wildlife Management (I'm so proud). We then moved back to Auckland to stay with my parents while waiting for my Immigrant Visa to get approved. Once I got my visa, we moved to Ione, Washington to stay with Dan's parents while Dan applied for jobs and I waited for my Social Security card to arrive. We then moved to Boise in May where Dan got a job as a Wildlife Biologist. We've just been working like crazy. So that sums up the missing 0.5 year of this blog.

I have been watching my calendar religiously until this moment. I rarely get excited over technology, but this is one of the most important gadgets in my life - Silhouette Cameo.

After reading reviews and watching youtube videos of this product with my husband for about 2 months, we finally decided it was a safe bet to buy one for ourselves. Dan makes a lot of cutout crafts, and I try to - I'm just not good with blades in my hands.

Anyway, here it is! Our brand new toy. We're very excited about it. And check out all the boxes it came in! It's gotta be good, right?!