IF - canned

Remember making a "phone" out of some tin cans and string? This is the 1st thing I thought of when I saw the word to illustrate for this week was "canned" over at Illustration Friday. The 2nd thing I thought of was getting "canned" from a job and this idea was way more fun, so here it is! Do kids today even do things like this?...I think they just want the real thing! My daughter started asking for her own cell phone when she was like 10! No tin cans for this generation!

(click on image for a bigger view)

A Muse - New Holiday Images

A Muse has just released their newest holiday images and I always like to share my favorites of the ones I design for each release. My favs for the Holiday release are the Winterboy and Wintergirl. I just think they are soooo darn cute! I hope all the A Muse addicts out there think so too and they sell really well! For those of you who don't know A Muse, they make rubber stamps and other supplies for paper crafting (making handmade cards, scrapbooking etc.) These little cuties are rubber stamps.

The new release will be available on the A Muse website when they launch their NEW e-commerce site in a couple of weeks. Until then, you can order them via fax, phone or email.

aw, shucks...an award!

The incredibly talented illustrator and all-around super nice person, Andi Butler, has given me this "you are too sweet" award! I'm so honored! It's not everyday you get an award, ya know! She just wanted to say thanks to all her blogger friends, who have helped pick her up in her down moments and shared her successes in her up moments. What a cool thing to do! I know that connecting with other artists and illustrators through blogging and the IF challenges has really made a difference in my life, so here's a HUGE thank you to all of my cyber friends, too! You are all "too sweet"!

IF - enough

For Illustration Friday this week: This Mom has had ENOUGH! Oh, yeah...I remember those days! Thankfully, my kids are older now and I don't have issues like this anymore, but of course, they have been replaced with other issues. Like last night, my 14 year old daugther asked us if we were going to buy her a car for her 16th birthday! Yikers!

IF - foggy

"Even though Josh's snorkeling goggles were foggy, he still found this really cool starfish!"

I'm finding it's hard to spend a lot of time on IF challenges in the summertime...it's just too nice outside to spend a lot of time on the computer! I managed to do this one...not my best work, but kinda, sorta fun. Ya think?

new coffee designs

I thought I'd share with all my blogger friends the latest designs I've created for my coffee themed greeting card line, n7 designs. There are (obviously!) 2 new anniversary images and 2 new birthday images. I'm quite pleased with how these turned out. I combined my love of collage with my love of working digital in Photoshop and they all have a scrapbooky/handmade card kind of feel to them, which I don't do, but I greatly admire those who do it well! You know who you are...all you crafty friends of mine from A Muse! And for all my Starbucks coffee loving friends...these are for you!

a trip to the ER

I haven't blogged for a while, but this time I actually have a good excuse! 2 nights ago I had to have my husband call 911 in the middle of the night and I took a trip to the ER. And you know what...it was NOTHING like on TV! No one yelled STAT or ordered a Chem 7 or gave me 10 cc of Morphine. They didn't even turn on the siren on the way to the hospital. It was the slow boat to China I tell ya!

What happened was - I woke up feeling really sick to my stomach and my hands and feet felt tingly, like they were asleep. I went to bathroom and threw up (gross I know!), I got really hot and sweaty, then my hands cramped up like claws and I couldn't straighten them out.

It finally went away and I tried to lay down again. In about 10 minutes it started all over again. This time, my feet also cramped up, straight out and I couldn't unpoint my toes. It hurt so bad!!! I woke up my husband at this point and said, "I'm having some kind of attack! Call 911! My hands are like claws!" Sounds really funny now - not so much at the time! I had no idea what was going on...was I having a stroke or what? (I always imagine the worst).

The firemen come and ask me all kinds of questions, when of course, I can barely talk. Then, the ambulance finally comes, more questions. They finally get me in the bus, more questions on the way there. They did give me some oxygen on the way there which helped a little. In the ER, the nurse comes in and guess what - more questions!!! The same ones I already answered!

No treatment yet...only the oxygen. The Dr. finally shows up and you guessed it! More questions! I got a little mad at this point and I am normally a nice and very patient person. I had to apologize later, I felt bad about it. They did start treatment soon after that and I began to feel better pretty quickly. It turned out my potassium had gotten dangerously low due to some medication I take. Crazy, huh? I hope I never have to go through something like that again. Not a fun way to spend the night. I didn't even get any sleep...there's machines beeping and people coming in and out, the light was on full blast. I'd much rather watch ER on TV than visit, it's definitely way more fun!

IF - sour

Dear Illustration Friday - I've missed you! It's been 2 weeks since my last entry in your illustration challenges. I hope you haven't forgotten me...I was busy with work and then on vacation, you know how it is sometimes. This is what I did for this week with the word "sour". I hope you like it and I promise to try to keep in touch with you as much as I can this summer, because you are so much fun and I always enjoy our time together. Love, Nina

indiana

One of the most fun things about going back home to Indiana is doing small town things and seeing weird signs along the roads like this one. I would have loved to spend a day driving around looking for unusual signs to take pictures of, but I couldn't get much support for this idea from the rest of my family. They did indulge me this one...not only is Jesus coming, but it's SOON! You just don't see things like this in Seattle.

There are also some things that I don't really like about visiting Indiana. I barely managed to survive the GINORMOUS mosquitos which attacked me everytime I went outside. These things were fierce and not in a "That's so fierce Project Runway" kinda way. My bites were the size of quarters! I also had a close encounter with a case of Poison Oak. I offered to wash the windows on the outside of my Mom's house for her. She was lamenting the fact that the window washers had quoted her 2.50 a pane, so I said, "Hey, I'll do it!" It's a one story house, so no ladders were involved. I got about 2/3 of the way around the house and went in to check the time, knowing I had to pick my sister up from work at 5:00. Once inside, seeing it was 4:40, I told my Mom that I better clean up and get going and my Mom replies..."You'd better take a shower, there's Posion Oak over on the side of the house where you just were!" SAY, WHAT?!!!! I was in that shower, scrubbing like crazy, faster than you could say "poison oak". And I even managed to pick her up on time.