Happy New Years! WIP

Posted on January 1, 2017 by Scribbler

Happy New Year all! So…2016 was certainly…something…wasn’t it? 2017 will be better…theoretically…I choose to be optimistic!

That said, here’s a bigger WIP of the dogs I’ve been working on. For the record, your dogs are now well on their way to becoming fabric. I’m fairly pleased with how they’re turning out, but I’ve got a long way to go before I’m done. So hold your horses.

I feel like I should have (not set, have…goodness, if I just randomly decided on goals this morning that would end BADLY…and QUICKLY) some goals going into 2017, and I do, it’s just some of them will probably be completed today (if I get on it!), so I don’t know if they’re really goals or just moments of “Angela, stop being lazy.”

So…my 2017 to do list (for those who are interested):

Put all of my items up on my Etsy site so that people can actually buy them without having to call me and say “Hey, I want that.”
Finish drawing doggos.
Make a Facebook business page (can you hear me groaning? I’m groaning).
Make new business cards.
Design some sort of postcard flyer to tuck in packaging and hand out at craft shows.
Draw out some of the greeting card ideas I have floating around in my head (coloring cards, of course).
Apply to more craft shows (Don’t worry about that sound. It’s just me groaning again. And my wallet groaning. They can do that).
Make better poetry to put inside the greeting cards. Or worse poetry. Or puns…I like puns.
Finish up the manuscripts I have sitting around.

Short list…yeah…should knock all that out in no time. 🙂

Wishing you and yours a wonderful 2017 (and promising to get back to blogging regularly)!

-Angela

Cupcakes: Fabric Making is Hard

Posted on September 25, 2016 by Scribbler

If you’ve had the joy of talking to me these past few days, you probably know that I’m sick of looking at cupcakes. As in positively disgusted with them.

In my defense, I think every artist goes through this with any project. I’ll call it, “I’m so sick of looking at this” syndrome. It isn’t that I don’t like what I’m working on–I wouldn’t be working on it were that the case–it’s that I’m temporarily out of the fun part of drawing and now I have to do all the technical stuff of fabric making and that…well…is hard.

Worth it, but hard.

Because everyone knows how excited I’m going to be when I finally get this pattern figured out properly, and how loud I’m going to squeal when I get the package in the mail.

So, what I figured out yesterday: Manga Studio has this lovely grid feature that can go behind your drawings(that I wish I had known about sooner). Sounds handy, right? Oh it is.

After trying and failing with the offset feature in Photoshop, I decided to try doing things a different way. Unfortunately, in trying out my different way, I discovered that my cupcakes would never align properly because I had created one row too many on the left (I erased them and transplanted the prettiest toppers to other uglier cupcakes). Then I went back to Manga Studio (which is such a lovely program compared to PS) and created my grid. The purple lines are based off where the cupcakes should sit in relation to each other. There was much more math involved in this than I really would have liked.

Now I’m trying to complete the tedious process of shifting (scooting might be a more appropriate term) cupcakes into their proper spots. You can see a few duplicate cupcakes, gaps between cupcakes. The one second from the right on the very top gives you a pretty good look at how far some of these have to move.

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9/26/16 Update! I’ve now officially scooted all of the cupcakes!!!!!

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Hopefully this works and I can grid them together. This is so insanely tedious. Oh. My. Goodness.

I’m going to have it done by Wednesday’s post. I’m determined!

If you’re interested in patternmaking on your own, and don’t know where to start check out these two links:

Julia Rothman’s Tutorial on Design Sponge

Rothman shows you the basics of how to do it on an actual sheet of paper (and by “do it”, I mean the fancy thing that the offset feature in PS will do for you). It kind of blew my mind and the whole process made so much more sense to me after reading this tutorial.

The Jungalow’s Tutorial on Reapeating Patterns

This is the method I’m currently trying out. Justina Blakeney (Jungalow founder), even recommends the Design Sponge tutorial. Blakeney’s tutorial is very simple, and I really do get the theory of it. My only complaint is that I wish she told you exactly where the buttons she was clicking were on PS. Because I am waaaay behind the times on it.

(P.S. Check back on Wednesday, I’ll be posting the new embroidery designs Becky and I put together!)

Tulip Fabric Markers–Worth it?

Posted on September 7, 2016 by Scribbler

DragonCon is over…AWA is yet to come…and I no longer have a pressing cosplay to finish (unless you count Megumi from Food Wars…but I’m not going to call that pressing), which means back to making things for Holly Days! They officially accepted me last week, so it’s really going to happen! (November 10-11, mark your calendars!)

Instead of stressing out, I’m trying to figure out all the bits and pieces I’m going to need to bring with me, and I need fabric markers if I’m going to make stuff out of coloring fabric.

These are Tulip, and I’m regretting not buying the dual tip ones. This pack was $20 for 20 markers (at Joanns, I used a coupon), but the dual tip ones come with 14 colors for the same price. I thought more colors would be a better deal. I may have changed my mind.

As you can see, they bleed–my mom and I colored around the edges of my test strip. Once I got the hang of it, it wasn’t so much of a problem, but certain colors (like blue) bled more than others and I really had to remind myself not to color too close to the lines.

I also felt that the color was a bit too wishy washy. I got over it after a while and pretended it was watercolor–but then I discovered that you can layer them! Please keep in mind that you still have the bleeding problem, but it is possible to make the color stronger. The purple and red lolipop on the left is probably my best example of this. The light red and purple are before, the dark red and purple are from the second layer.

You can also layer different shades together to make a better color. The half of a green lolipop in the middle/bottom was closer to the light green of the candies on the right. I then layered neon over the “dark green” and voila! An actual, honest to goodness, saturated color.

I’m going to keep playing with it. I’ll probably end up buying the dual tips to test out the fine points (they have really thin points on the dual tips), because I feel like the markers do what I want them to do. Just not perfectly. And if I’m going to bring some to my booth to sell, I want to make sure I’m bringing something I would use myself, that I can instruct someone else on how to use.

I’ll be trying out the “Colore Premium Fabric Markers” 20 pack in a few days–more reviewers claiming that they don’t bleed. I hope I like them better!

Visit my Etsy shop here to buy a downloadable PDF of Coloring Bookmarks Eat Sweets! (The candy pattern on the bookmark)

I’m slowly but surely putting my DragonCon pics up on Instagram ( scribblerex ), so follow me! (And let me know who you are, if I know you!)

Look What Showed Up in the Mail!

Posted on August 24, 2016 by Scribbler

All I can think is, “Ididit!Ididit!Ididit!Ididit!” to myself over and over. In case you can’t tell from the photo…that’s fabric. I designed it…and I’m feeling rather pleased with myself about it.

I took the design from the candy bookmark (here!), made it a million times more complicated (it took about 2 weeks of grumbling to finish–I’m very sorry about that to anyone who had to listen to the grumbling), and used Photoshop to create a repeat pattern (which is, in all honesty, pretty much the only thing I currently know how to do in Photoshop). And it worked! On the first try!

I’ve stared at it long enough at this point to feel comfortable saying that everything lined up just as it should. Gah! I’m so happy with it.

And now I get to order more and make stuff with it (stuff–a technical term) as I only ordered a fat quarter initially. Hopefully my next pattern will come together much quicker than this one did (cupcakes next!).

Now what to make with it first?

P.S. I feel like I should just come out and admit to not ironing before photographing…everything is far less bendy in person, lol. I realize there’s some weird stuff happening in that photo.

Fun with Cupcake Earrings!

Posted on August 10, 2016 by Scribbler

Adding fun into the title clearly makes EVERYTHING more fun. True story.

And now for my face:

Becky and I came up with 2 different earring designs based on my brand new coloring bookmark set–> Coloring Bookmarks Eat Sweets! Pretty spiffy, no? The ones I’m wearing in the photo feature a tiny stack of 3 cupcakes. Which means that when you wear them you are literally hanging 6 cupcakes off of your ears. Lets see Chuck Norris do that!

Now lets see my face again:

Bam! My face.

These are the singles. As it turns out, I like both of them equally–which is only odd, because I was really, really, really determined at first to have a stack of cupcakes because in my crazy cupcake obsessed mind more cupcakes are ALWAYS better. As it turns out, they are pretty stinkin’ cute, but the singles have the added bonus of being able to see the detail a bit more, so hooray for that.

As with the cherry blossom necklace (scroll down, I promise it’s in there), I created the lineart and Becky worked her magic to digitize it for the embroidery machine. They take a bit of trial and error to get right, and then they take a bit of prayer–because I really am terrified of fire, and melting the edges so that they don’t fray is utterly terrifying.

The purple cupcake stack and the blue cupcakes on the right are actually the original design. Can you tell the difference? The finished ones on the left look so much cleaner and nicer because we removed some of the detail. The poor yellow cupcake in the middle bit the dust–I think the embroidery machine tried to eat it…it happens sometimes.

So, what do you think? They’ll be available for sale soon…hopefully! We’ve got a few other things in the works as well, so keep an eye out.

And if you didn’t follow that link above to go buy my coloring bookmarks, go here! They’re pretty! They’re inexpensive! You can color them! And think how happy your very favorite Angela will be if you buy a set! (BTW, thank you for everyone who HAS bought a set, I really do giggle like a little kid every time I sell another one!)

Dessert Bookmarks–Almost There!

Posted on July 17, 2016 by Scribbler

Almost done! One left to finish!

I thought I’d try coloring it for a second to see what it would actually look like…and then I got hungry and had to stop. You seriously cannot stare at a chocolate colored strawberry without wanting a chocolate covered strawberry. You know?

That said I hope this is my only food themed art…ever…I think I’ll gain twenty pounds if I try to do this again!

So many exciting things coming up this month, so stay tuned. Hopefully by Wednesday I’ll have a new embroidery project (earrings!) or Harry Potter project (potions bottles, Hogwarts robes!) to share. Did I mention that we’re doing a midnight release for the new Harry Potter script at the store? I’ve got three sets of Hogwarts robes to make. I think I can do it!

If you haven’t seen my other coloring designs yet, go check out my Etsy shop–> here

I’m going to work diligently to (hopefully) get “Coloring Bookmarks Eat Sweets” finished and up by tomorrow. Then on to “Coloring Bookmarks Cast Spells”!

Week in Review: Updates and Fun Things

Posted on July 11, 2016 by Scribbler

Hello All! It’s been a crazy busy week, so we’ll call this more of a “check in” than a blog post.

I know I posted the WIP last week, and I’m happy to say that the candy coloring bookmark is FINALLY finished. I was up until about midnight trying to get it done last Wednesday–so basically, I showed you guys the lineart and then sat there for 3 more hours making it all fancified. I’m really happy with how it turned out. Some of you may have seen this photo up on instagram–I’ve finally started coloring some of my own designs–is it weird that I haven’t until now? I really like making lineart more than coloring…I can’t help it! (If you’re not following me, I’m scribblerex on Instagram!)

Saturday night, Katie, Sean, Stephanie, Simone, and I went down to Duluth Square for their free “Summer Concert Series” to watch an 80’s cover band called The Breakfast Club play. The band was good, the music selection was fantastic, and altogether it was just a really fun concert. Duluth Square is really set up to optimize a gigantic amount of space. Even if you’re far away you can see and hear really well–and I’m only saying this because we got there a bit late, it was insanely crowded, and we still got a great spot.

Duluth actually has 2 more free concerts lined up: Drivin N Cryin on August 13 and On the Border on September 10th. If you’re interested head over to the City of Duluth page and don’t forget that you also live SOMEWHERE! Most cities host something free over the summer, so google your hometown! There might be something free and exciting going on nearby.

And there are about 12 Pokestops surrounding the stage…I really did try to catch ’em all Saturday. Received my first PokemonGo injury Saturday as well. Walked into stairs, stubbed my toe, it was gross–I was in flip flops, the steps were brick, I wont go into details. Watch where you’re going everyone! Don’t be like me!

Lastly, here’s an update on the embroidered necklace front:

I bought bigger jump rings for it (They’re actually chain mail rings which are a million times easier to use than jump rings. An actually million, not just an imaginary million.) so it lays much nicer than it did before. I’ve also switched out the chain for ribbon for 2 reasons: 1. The chain didn’t actually fit the style of the necklace, and we think the ribbon looks prettier, and 2. The ribbon is super easy to adjust. The necklace is intended to be worn higher up on the neck, and everybody has different sized necks so it just seemed logical to make it so that it could fit as many people as possible. Plus you can tie it into a cute little bow in the back!

Alright, well that’s all the updates for today. I’ll be back on Wednesday with more bookmarks (most likely).

P.S. Going to be starting on some Harry Potter robes soon! Guess what comes out at the end of the month!

Candy Coloring Bookmarks

Posted on July 6, 2016 by Scribbler

I’m mostly (haha…okay, that might be an exaggeration…) done with the next bookmark, and I needed a breather because I looked at what I did and it’s way crazier looking than I thought it’d be going in.

Yep…that’s a lot of candy.

I have learned (after a few fails) to print these guys out periodically and make sure they’re actually possible to color. I’m happy to say that most of it is. I’ll have to make a few things bigger as I start with the line art, but in the grand scheme of things it isn’t horrible.

Another thing I’ve learned is that they’re all going to shrink once they’re printed out for sale/digital. (converting to pdf does that…) My flower bookmarks are there for a comparison. They’re not too much smaller, but that’s almost a full inch. An inch matters a good deal when it comes to teeny tiny little shapes. My goal is to make a product that can be colored–not just one that you’re going to stare at in frustration.

I am happy that the two I’ve finished so far look so very different!

Thanks Amy and Puvi for the ideas! I’ll decide once I’m done with this bit.

And I still want a cupcake.

Cupcake Coloring Bookmarks WIP!

Posted on July 4, 2016 by Scribbler

I’m starting up another set of coloring bookmarks. “Coloring Bookmarks Eat Sweets” or something to that effect. I’m terrible at titles.

I left the purple sketches in just to give you an idea of how these things go together. I do draw each one individually, however, with this one anyone, I sketched out the cupcake I wanted and then copy/pasted and arranged them so that they made a decent pattern. I then went and added the cupcake linings, erased the corners of the cupcakes where the tops were and now I’m icing the darn things.

It’s amazing how freakishly hungry staring at cupcakes for several hours makes you.

Becky and Mike were kind enough to humor me yesterday. We made funfetti cupcakes with blue icing and fish sprinkles. Yes. You heard (read?) me right! Fish sprinkles!

Hopefully I’ll be done with these guys by tomorrow and can get started on the next set.

What are your favorite desserts or candy?

Novel word count: 55,653

New Coloring Bookmarks! (and Brand New Etsy Shop!)

Posted on March 29, 2016 by Scribbler

For the record, I generally reserve my exclamation points for moments when I really need them!

I’ve been working my tail off for the past few weeks to get my blog updated, to finish more bookmarks, and actually start an Etsy shop. I’m happy to say that I’m slowly working down my to do list and that things are coming together. Meanwhile, I had to show these guys off. Some of you may have seen the earlier draft of them that I made to use at the bookstore. I originally intended to do a little refining and then sell them, but then I started working on them and went a wee bit crazy. I’m really happy with the result.

My other exciting news is that I finally put up an Etsy shop. It isn’t fancy yet and I’ll probably re-announce its existence once I finally get a few more things on it and it looks like I want it to. Until then, I have both my current bookmark sets (Bookshelf Cats and the Space set) up for sale as PDF files to download, and I’ll have some baby quilts up in the next few days. I appreciate everyone’s support as I get all this put together; everyone needs to be told they’re doing a good job once in a while, so thank you friends and family for giving me that little bit of encouragement. I would absolutely appreciate anyone actually buying my bookmarks (and leaving a nice review so that people know I’m a real person). I’m new to this whole selling things online game, so advice is welcome.

Check out the shop: The Scribbler Experiment on Etsy

An art, craft, literature and anything in between blog.

Tag Archives: Adult Coloring