IF - balloon

"Papa's stomach ballooned so much during Thanksgiving dinner that the button on his vest popped off! He hadn't even gotten to the pumpkin pie yet!"

My 1st real 'scene' illo done in Illustrator...so much fun! I'm learning what works for me and what doesn't and it's getting easier. I still may go back in Photoshop and add some texture and shading, but then it won't be a vector piece anymore...hmmmm, I do love the clean lines of vector art.

We spent Thanksgiving at my sister-in-law's beautiful new home in Olympia. Her kitchen island, granite top, of course, was actually bigger than our bathroom! This thing was huge! The 2-story house also had an elevator and a covered deck with a gas fireplace!

new banner

Now that Thanksgiving is over, it's time to take down my Happy Fall banner and replace it with this new one for winter...penguins, of course! Hello winter!

IF - opinion

For Illustration Friday this week - an opinionated dog. I posted this illo before, but not for IF and I thought it was a good fit for this week, so here it is again. I'm hoping next week I'll have time to do a new one.

7 things

I've been neglecting the 'ole bliggity blog lately and I haven't been able to participate in IF lately either (insert frowny face!), but I was tagged by fellow illustrator, Edrian Thomidis, so I'm carving out a little time to post 7 things about myself. Ack! I'm like Edrian, my life is pretty normal and boring, but here goes:

1. My last name is actually Seven. It's not a "stage" name that I made up. It is my married name and came from when my husband's ancestors came over to America from Luxemborg and their name, Sewen, was changed to Seven on Ellis island. It is unusual to have a number for a name, but it's great fun to make dinner reservations - I need a table for 7 at 7:00 and the name is Seven!

2. I was born and raised in the Midwest (Indiana), but I've lived in the Pacific Northwest for over 20 years and I love it here.

3. I quit eating meat in April of last year. My daughter had gone with her 8th grade class to a lecture by the Dalia Lama, his Seeds of Compassion tour. She wasn't too impressed by the speech, he was hard to understand and the acoustics were poor, but they gave out a pamphlet on the conditions in farms that raise animals to be slaughtered and it was a real wake up call to us both. I had also just seen a bumper sticker that read "I don't eat anything with a face". Those 2 things combined made us decide to go meatless. We do still eat fish and seafood, we need the protein!

4. I worked in the Visual Merchandising Dept of a major dept store for 14 years before I started my greeting card and illustration business. The store I worked for, The Bon Marche, has since been bought out by Macy's.

5. I went to 3 different colleges before I finally got my degree in fine art from the University of Oregon.

6. I lived in the town of Bend in Central OR for 5 years after I graduated. I had a great time there, working, skiing and roller skating around town. It was a wonderful place to live and I sometimes wish I would have stayed there forever!

7. I would really like to illustrate a children's book some day!

Now I'm supposed to tag 7 other people to share 7 things about themselves, but I just don't have the time to figure out who to tag that hasn't already been tagged and find their links, etc. so, let's just say, if you are reading this - consider yourself tagged!

happy day

playing around with Illustrator...It's so easy to create a simple design like this one, I did this in about 20 minutes! How cool is that! I've been super busy this week making my greeting cards and working on things I can't share yet, so I did this little guy to wish all my blogging friends a happy day!

IF - wise

What luck I had this week with 'wise' being chosen for the word to illustrate this week over on Illustration Friday. I had just finished this greeting card with a wise owl on it. I'm working on a series of cards that I hope to one day market to some card publishers and if I'm lucky again, one of them will pick up the series. They are going to be nature based, with lots of woodland creatures and of course leaves and trees. I'm using eco-friendly colors with the hopes that they will be printed with green inks and recycled paper. This is the 1st one in the series, with one other one done to share at a later date. I'd love to get some feedback on this - Am I on to something here?

IF - vacant

I decided to do something editorial this week for Illustration Friday with the theme word - vacant. With all the foreclosures due to the sub prime mortage failures, there will be lots of vacant houses out there. I used the rental page from the Seattle Times as the basis for the house and did you notice that the chimney smoke is lettering that says 'sub prime mortages"? I used the "text on a path" feature in Illustrator to do that and I think it's pretty cool, but looks kind of small in this copy for the web.