new background

i'm playing around with my blog design today, because I found an awesome background generator called Japonizer that has some cool patterns and you can change the color and size to create a pretty background. of course this means i'll now have to update my header, but that was long overdue anyway, my entire shop needs a makeover.

I found Japonizer by going to the blog Pugly Pixel, which I found by reading my google reader post from oh my word. Pugly Pixel found it via @smashingmag's twitter feed, which has some good design resources and is worth following. i love days when i just get to surf the internet, finding interesting people and pretty things as i click along.

so which ones do y'all like?  i'm trying to keep them pretty neutral so they're not so busy.  plus i'm loving yellow and gray these days so i might do something with a gray background with yellow accents.

Random thoughts of the day...

Hi everyone! How was everyone's weekend? My bff Lindsey and her husband Matt came to visit (they attended a wedding on Friday night, so they stayed with us).  You saw my pic from Friday night- we played whirlyball! And boy am I sore! My husband has serious bruises on his foot and his stomach.
Here's a video if you've never heard of Whirlyball- you are basically in bumpercars playing basketball with little scoops and a plastic ball.


It's pretty crazy and REALLY HARD to score, but it was a good time.  There's a bar right next to the court, and what is interesting is that as everyone drank more, we got better at whirlyball.... coincidence? I think not!

Since my friend was in town, we went out to dinner a couple times - Twisted Taco and Ippolito's - and played Cranium!!! and some Wii bowling and tennis.

And my husband and I crammed in the entire 3rd season of True Blood in 2 days and watched the 4th season premiere on Sunday... I've read all the Southern Vampire Series books, and they are taking serious liberties with the story, but I think it's an interesting twist that it jumped forward a year.   I think it'll be interesting that Bill is now the snooty politician, and I sooo hope they'll go ahead and let Sookie & Eric start their love story! 

So, that was my weekend... has anyone else played whirlyball? And what did you think about True Blood?

Friday night fun!

Whirlyball!


p.s. does anyone know why my pic has little squares all over it? hmmm.  wonder if it's a blogger phone app issue.

The Process - From Concept to Final Product

I've really enjoyed reading some process posts by other designers, and learning what goes into their craft.
I think the first one I read was by Jan of Daisy Janie, where she posted about how her doodles transform into fabric designs.  She also linked to Jessica Swift, who showed how she turns an illustration into a colored print using photoshop, and to Stephanie Corfee, who showed how her doodles become prints. 

So, I've decided to show what goes into my artwork.  I mostly use Adobe Illustrator.  The main difference between Photoshop and Illustrator is that Photoshop creates artwork with pixels, Illustrator creates artwork with vectors.  So if you draw a line in Photoshop and you zoom in really close, you'll be able to see the different pixels, but if you create a line with Illustrator, no matter how much you zoom in, the line looks the same - crisp and straight and not blurry.  With illustrator, when you create a shape, you can make it infinitely larger with no blurring or separating, whereas with a picture, for instance, which is made up of pixels, if you make it larger than its set resolution, you will begin seeing blurriness and if you keep zooming you will see each separate color pixel.

Anyway, enough about that, on to the process!

I start out with a concept in my head, and a rough idea of how I want things laid out.  Then sometimes I might go straight to Illustrator to start drawing shapes, but in this case I was at my day job and when I get bored I doodle on notebook paper.  I am by no means a good drawer.  I even had to take some sketching classes in college, and it just takes too long to do good sketches for me- I don't want to bust out a ruler and the little curvy ruler thing they made us buy.  The only thing I was good at that was drawing-related was charcoal drawings, and the way I made them look cool was by making everything look really blurry so you could tell what it was from far away but up close it was just some blobs.  So basically, precise drawing is not for me.

I get so off-topic when I write.  But its also the way I tell stories, so imagine how my family/friends feel when they just want me to get to the point.

Anyway, so I make a drawing, and that's basically just a reference for me to start from.  I then go into Illustrator and start drawing.  For this piece, I liked the way my handwritten words looked, and I knew I wouldn't be able to replicate it with a commercial font, so I decided to draw my letters using the pen tool.

So after I played around with the thickness of the letters,  I drew my rainbow and started playing around with fonts and the placement and colors of my "over the rainbow".

Then I made the rest of the letters and played with the sizes to make everything fit in there.

Then I started playing with colors to see if I wanted a background design or just a plain color. I thought yellow would be a good color since it's like the sun, or a sky blue.  (that green line down the middle is my guide for making sure my 'sunbeams" were in the middle.

I'm thinking I like the blue more than the yellow.  And then I decide since it's supposed to be a sky, maybe I should add some cute swirly clouds to the background, so I drew one and took a pic with my phone.

And this would have been a million times easier if I had drawn on plain white paper, because then I could have just used the "live trace" function and Illustrator would have done this for me, but next I used the pen tool in Illustrator to redraw the clouds.

Then I placed the clouds in the background of the image and moved them around a bit and resized them until I thought they looked good, and I also had to work on how the script font flowed together.  When you type on a path (in this case I used a curved line that matched the shape of the rainbow), it rotates the letters, so you need to change the font to outlines and reshape the tails of the letters so they connect smoothly.  Here you can see how they weren't smooth:

And after fixing a few of my drawn letters that I wasn't happy with, I now have a finished print!  To go from an illustrator file to a jpg, I save it as a pdf, then "place" in photoshop, then do File/Save for Web and save it as a high quality jpg.  And voila!

I also decided I think it might need a little less busy-ness going on, so I made a white version also:

Print available in the shop here: http://www.etsy.com/listing/76516510/8x10-print-birds-fly-over-the-rainbow

I'd love to see some other process posts, no matter what your craft is! Please post to any process posts you find in the comments!

Featured on PrettySouthern

Thanks to the awesome Kat of HeartandCrafts for doing a featured post on Priss Designs over on PrettySouthern!  It's all about how my southern roots influence my modern design.  Check it out!

DIY Frames from Inexpensive IKEA Mirrors

Just a little note: I’m playing around with settings on my new phone, trying to figure out how to make my pictures look good.  Obviously I haven’t quite gotten the hang of it, so bear with me.

In 2010, I purchased this beautiful calendar from ChelseaVictoria on etsy.  It has been on the wall in my husband’s office and I finally decided to take it down since it has been out-of-date for a good 6 months now, and I wanted to frame the pictures and hang them in a grouping.  Each month was printed out on 5x7 photo paper, and the pictures themselves were 5”x5”.  I wanted to hang a grouping of 9, so I went to IKEA in search of frames.  I knew they had square frames that were matted to 5”x5”, so I looked there first, and I couldn’t believe the IKEA Ribba frames were $10 each!  I’m pretty cheap, and there is no way I was spending $90 on frames.  So I looked around, trying to find some cheaper frames.  I found several that were $5, but no square frames.  I had pretty much given up on my IKEA frame search and was wandering into the mirror section when I saw these MALMA mirrors for only $2.99 each. 

I estimated that the mirror opening was about 4” wide (I could’ve gone and gotten one of the handy dandy tape measures, I know), which means I would have to trim a bit off the pictures, but at $3 each, they were definitely budget-friendly and I loved the big thick black frame that would surround each little picture. 

So, I got 9 frames for less than $30! First, I measured the square opening (which actually ended up being closer to 3.75” square) and made a template out of chipboard that I could use as a cutting guide.  I then cut around the chipboard guide after I determined how I wanted the picture to look, since I had to cut off a good bit on each side.  

All the pictures cut to 3.75" squares.

Next I had to add the hanging hardware that came with the MALMA mirrors.  They come with two little eyelet screws and a length of white string, and I didn’t want to hang mine by string, so I just measured the middle of the frame and used my drill to make a small starter hole (I have no idea how you would get the screw started if you didn’t have a drill, IKEA always makes things difficult), then inserted the eyelet screw. 

Then I fit each picture to the opening of its specific frame (some needed to be trimmed a little more to fit) and just attached them to the mirror with painter’s tape.  So if I decide to change the pictures or if I want the mirrors intact, I won’t have an issue.  

I decided to hang the pictures on an empty wall in my bathroom.  I used a level and a tape measure to hang the nails 14” apart (if I had it to do again, I probably would’ve done it an inch or 2 closer).  Since I just used the one eyelet to hang the frames, they were pretty crooked to begin with, they didn’t want to hang straight, so I used some painter’s tape on the back of the frame and used my level to make them straight and stuck them to the wall.  One has already come loose, so I may need to use some Velcro or something with a little more friction to keep it in place.  

 And, voila! I paid $15 for the calendar (it was on sale), and around $30 for the frames, so I got a whole wall of art that packs a big punch for $45!

What I Want Wednesday!

It's Wednesday, which means "what" and "want" make for some awesome alliteration, and I want to share some things that I've been coveting recently.

Feather Tea Towels from MichelleBrusegaard on Etsy.  I love the color!

Pad of Paper shaped like an iPhone! from becksorange on etsy.  So creative.

Patterned Notebook in Scallops by inkwhimsy on etsy.  Only $5!

Yellow grid-printed pillow from wickedmint on etsy.  Love the chair too! Read how she found it on the side of the road on her blog.

Rain Drop Coasters by Bonni1982 on etsy.  So cute!

Hope you guys are having a great week, our air conditioner is broken in my office, so we're sweating it out to avoid having to mingle with people in the other parts of the office that we may not be too fond of.  But on the upside, we get to wear tank tops to work!

"like" me?

I'd really like it if you "like" me on facebook, and i will like you forever!
I'm hosting a giveaway for two free art prints, and all you have to do is become a fan on facebook to enter!
Good luck!

fill in the blank fridays

1.   This weekend I'm       hosting a couples baby shower for our friends beth & be.  they're our first friends to have a baby, so it'll be interesting to see how this shift to parents affects them so we'll get a glimpse into that world - which will probably affect whether or not we decide to have kids.

2.  My last vacation was   at the beginning of May we went to the Dominican Republic!

3.  My next vacation will be     who knows... before this last vacation we hadn't really been on a vacation since our honeymoon 2.5 yrs ago...

4.  My favorite way to relax is   just cuddling on the couch with my doggy, watching tv or reading a book.

5.  When vacationing one should always     wear sunscreen! geez, I say this every time - we're gonna be good about reapplying sunscreen so we don't get burnt - and it never fails that we get burnt.  

6.  When vacationing one should never      worry- just relax and forget about life for a bit.

7.  The best part about a vacation is      getting away from work for a little while.  

The Story of Me

OK this is seriously long. 

But it takes a long time to tell why I am the way I am, haha.

If I had thought 10 years ago about where I would be today and what I would be doing, it would definitely not have had the words “design” or “artist” anywhere in the mix.  When I was little, I went through phases of what I wanted to be- I have them written down each year in a “Through the School Years” scrapbook my mom had bought.  I had quite a range of aspirations, which included dance teacher, author, tornado chaser (I kid you not, I really loved the movie Twister), ghost hunter (yes, I was weird I guess).  In high school, I loved math and science, and by my senior year I had decided I wanted to be an engineer.  I loved space, so I decided I wanted to work at NASA and the best way to do that was to become an Aerospace Engineer (AKA rocket scientist!!).  So I left Albany, GA for the big city of Atlanta and Georgia Tech.  Side rant: Which, by the way, is the Georgia Institute of Technology, just like MIT, not a technical college, which apparently some people think when they hear Georgia Tech.  It is ranked #35 in the country in universities, #7 among public schools, and #4 for engineering.  Apparently some people think it is a school for remedial technical majors.  Ok rant done.  

My friend Holly and I (I'm on the left) before a football game.

                So, I got to college, pledged a sorority (Zeta Tau Alpha), became a cheerleader, started hanging out at fraternities & partying, started dating my now-husband, and didn’t put going to class at the top of my priority list.  I went from having a 4.2 GPA and being in the top 10 in my class in high school to a 1.95 GPA after my first year of college.  I got a D in my Intro to Aerospace class, and had decided about halfway through the semester that I wanted to switch majors – everything we were learning about was airplanes, and while it interested me a little, after finding out you only take one class in 4 years even related to space shuttles, I decided rocket science was not for me.

                I started looking through the GT Course Catalog for something that interested me, and there wasn’t a whole lot to choose from after you decide you don’t want to be an engineer.  I read the description for Industrial Design, and decided it sounded exciting.  This is what the course catalog says now, so it was probably pretty similar at the time: “Industrial design is the professional practice of creating products that enhance the function, usability, value, and appearance of products with the goal of benefiting the user, manufacturer, community, and the environment. Also known as product design, industrial design education prepares students to design systems and tangible artifacts including, consumer and recreational products, business and industrial products, medical and computer equipment, and transportation and environments. Both generalist and specialist, industrial designers tend to be part artist, part entrepreneur and engineer.”

                Now, just so we have this straight, I never considered myself “artsy” – I was an intellectual, not a creative.  I had gotten through school with flying colors on the basis of my ability to cram information in my head then spit it back out at test time.  I was on the Math Team, for crying out loud!  So I’m not entirely sure what possessed me to go into a field that was all about design, but I think I had always had a secret part of me that wanted to be artistic.  When I was in 5^th grade, every night I drew pictures of horses.  I seriously had an entire wall covered with drawings of horses.  They were not particularly good, but I don’t think they were too terrible, either.  I think I was obsessed with the book Misty of Chincoteague.  I took one art class in high school, but I was a senior in there with a bunch of freshman because I needed one more elective, and I think the teacher pretty much let me leave everyday because I was taking college classes.

So anyway, to Industrial Design I went.  It was in the College of Architecture, so all the majors take 1^st year “Common Studio”, where you dabble a little in Architecture, Industrial Design, and Building Construction.  You do a lot of drafting, some model building out of chipboard, some drawing and basic art classes, and at the end you decide which major you want to be in.    What you don’t realize is so different than “regular school” is that you are literally pulling all-nighters for weeks at a time to get project after project done.  It’s not “hard”, per se, it’s just So.Much.Work.  It’s completely different than anything I had ever been exposed to.  There were no tests, there were critiques.  Critiques where you hadn’t slept in 3 days and you have to get up in front of the class and outside reviewers who have no idea how hard you worked on something and try to defend why your paper model interpretation of the word “hallucination” is the awesomest thing ever.  After 4 years of it, it breaks you down.  You start to think everyone else’s ideas are better than yours… and maybe they are, but the point is you were trained to design things and you have more skills than anyone else once it comes to finding jobs, but since you felt inferior to everyone in your class, it expands to life once you graduate.

This is a hanging beverage cart for airplanes that I designed along with Lauren Duke.  We built the entire interior of the plane and the cart out of PVC and cardboard.

OK almost done, I promise.  Fast forward to graduation, when luckily I had put resumes on a million job sites 6 months before graduation, had gotten a personal assistant job and was going to do that for a bit while job hunting, and a chemical sales company needed a graphic designer to do all their marketing materials, and called me out of the blue.  Three weeks after graduation I started my “big girl job”, and I’ve been there ever since.   I proofread product info sheets and MSDS’s all day, sometimes get to make a brochure or a promotion, but I definitely needed a creative outlet in my life. Oh, and I got married somewhere in between all that!

My husband Conor and I on our wedding day!

So, while trying to find ways to be creative, my friend Rachel and I would get together to make things on the weekends, painting or making jewelry, and we painted a few things one weekend and I decided to put them on etsy.com.  I started out with like 5 paintings in my shop, and I think it took about 3 months before I even sold one thing, and when I got like 10 views in a day I would be so excited.  While browsing around etsy, I found a lot of shops that sold digital art, artwork that they would make using illustrator or photoshop and sell prints.  I started drawing and coming up with ideas, and on the weekends I would work on my artwork.  I finally put some prints in the shop, and started building up my portfolio of artwork.  I asked the printing company that I work with at my day job if he could print my work as it sold, and I would go pick them up a couple times a week at lunch.  As I started getting more sales, I was having to go pick up prints almost every day, and it was becoming too much, and I had actually started making a little bit of a profit, so I finally bought a printer! That’s when I really felt like I had a business.  I finally had a home studio where I could work, and I had my little stacks of envelopes and chipboard backers and thank you cards, and I would print things out and go to the post office a couple times a week.

Fast forward to now, and I am starting to hope that I can really make my business a Business, and I hope if you read this story all the way to the end that I didn’t bore you too badly!