Illustration Friday: Contagious

I like the concept, but I didn’t really spend enough time on the execution.  I ran out of time. Ergh!

They say its your birthday…its my birthday too yeah

Happy birthday brother, my almost twin, ten years apart.   I hope, for at least today, Glasgow dotes on you.  

Let’s share a cake when you return state-side.  Looking forward to all the “dreadful girls” stories.  

I love you Will.

Where were we?

The garden is 85% there!  We still have a number of seeds to put in.  But under the supervision of our elderly neighbor, (who offered a sledgehammer at one point,) the beds are made!  The lawn is mowed!  The back yard looks tidy, if not very pretty. 

After realizing that 1,000 pounds of soil was not going to be nearly enough for both beds, we decided to have one totally lead free and the other a mix of the old soil, with a bit of the new.  Its not ideal, but as our lead levels weren’t completely through the roof, we can technically plant “fruiting plants” with no worries.  So the squash, tomatoes, etc will be in that one.  But anything leafy, or root-like will be in the lead-free box.

Yes, now we actually have to plant the darn seeds.

Happy Mother’s Day!

Today we tried to surprise my mom with a postponed Mother’s Day lunch.  She made it difficult when she made various other plans, since “nothing was going on Wednesday afternoon.”  My dad ended up breaking down and confessing that he had rounded up three of her four children for an afternoon meal, and that he had made reservations and would she please come.  She decided it would be more fun to go somewhere without “white tablecloths”.  Which is how the five of us ended up at the fabulous Liberty Elm Diner, circled around a table in the back room.  

Once upon a time these, albeit partial, (–we missed you Will–) casual family gatherings were a rare thing indeed.  But my sister has moved to the east coast, and one of my brothers is back for the summer, and now that I’m here as well, meals like this are possible.  Looking around the table at everyone laughing and telling stories, a couple things struck me.  1.  Why don’t we do this more often?  2.  I have such a great family.

 As the eldest child in our family, ahem, has a birthday coming up, my brother Sam pointed out that my mother has been a mom for thirty years!  And that, come Sunday, she will no longer have any teenagers to call her own.   This photo was taken a few days? weeks? after my youngest brother was born.  I think its the first picture of all of us as a “complete” family.   I love you mom.  Good job.

Its Friday.

This weekend is all about gardening.  We’ve decided to go ahead and plant a vegetable garden despite the high levels of lead in our backyard– gross, but common here.  Among other causes, these old houses are smothered in lead paint.  So that means raised beds!  And ridiculous amounts of new soil.  We have taken care of the extremely heavy job of purchasing said soil.  But we still have to build the beds and actually dump the soil in them.

 And you know, plant some seeds.  

Cross your fingers for us.  

P.S. Aren’t those tulips crazy?  We spotted them in McGorlick Park in Brooklyn.

Ducklings

My sister emailed to tell me that there’s a Duckling Day Parade on Mother’s Day in Boston Common.   Shut. up.  (As my friend Mandy would say.)

“The Duckling Day Parade follows the path of the Mrs. Mallard and her ducklings from the book “Make Way for Ducklings” by Robert McCloskey. Kids dress up as their favorite character from the book!  Hello, adorable!”

Indeed.  Will you be attending?

Color Inspiration

 We watched Let The Right One In a couple days ago.  And I loved it.  Which is hilarious as Mr G had to basically cajole me into watching it.  I was balking at the idea of watching some gory slasher film.  Which it definitely had elements of.   But even though some parts were very scary, it was totally worth it.  ( I have a pretty low tolerance for scariness: Reruns of Buffy were making me jump last night.)  

I loved the slow pacing, still atmosphere and the snowy-white Swedish landscapes counterbalancing the viciousness and ferocity of this little girl eating dinner.  But more to the point, for our purposes here, it is visually lovely.  Every shot is gorgeous.  The color palate is perfection.  I could go on and on.  But I went searching and found these stills so you can see what I mean:  

May Goals

Here’s how I did on my April Goals for Modish Biz Tips:

1.  Contact 3 illustration agents in regards to repping me.

2. Go over and update contact list.

3. Finish designing postcard mailer, get it printed and mailed.

4. Email contact list announcing new site and new work, asking if they’d like to be on my mailing list.

5. Get “Hello” postcard printed.

6. List two new items on Etsy. 

7. Outline a 6 month marketing plan for myself.

8. Update my site and Hire an Illustrator with new work.

ehh 6 out of 8 isn’t so bad.  Right?

I did start on an email  newsletter, #4, and went back and forth for a while on whether or not to use an “email marketing service.”  Pro being that this way I could have pretty html formatted emails that would actually show up in people’s inboxes.  Con being that my email list seemed kind of small to actually pay for this sort of thing.  Then the other day I found Mail Chimp!  It has a bunch of different price options, and it seems like I can use the free version until I grow into one of their other plans. So I’m working on setting up a newsletter with them.  

I guess I’ll have to add those two to my new list: May Goals:

1.  Add images of what I have in my etsy shop to my Goodies page on my site.  The images will link to Etsy.  Some day I’d love to Other Such Things to be its own entity, separate from my illustration work really.  But for now I think that will serve as a nice enough “home page” for my etsy shop.  I’m just not up for building a whole new site for it, until its really going.  

2.  Research specifics for new kid product.  Every winter when all the magazines roll out their gift guides, I’m torn between oohing and ahhing, and screaming because I didn’t get it together to have something of my own in there.  SO. This year I’ve come up with a cute gift idea that I should get done by the summer so I can send it out to magazines.  No more screaming in the snow. That’s the goal. 

3.  Contact Thumbtack Press and possibly others to see if they’re interested in carrying any of my work as prints. 

4.  Make bear drawing into a poster. 

5.  Get Garden promo postcard printed. 

6.  List Hello postcard in the shop.

Happy Birthday Cris!

Birthday wishes to my dear friend who lives so far away.  Its been too long.