HOODIES!!!!

Mumble Tease now has some hoodies!!!!! I'm very excited about these lovely sweaters. They turned out really really well! And I've even printed them in two different colour combinations! Okay, so I've actually had these printed for quite a while, but man has it taken a long time to get some pictures taken and all that jazz!

Cuddles are awesome! Is there a better way to spend a chilly morning than cuddling? I don't think so.... Except maybe snowboarding... I have to give credit to my dear friend Sean-o for coming up with the text and for being an inspiration for the design. What a cute and cuddly group of snakes!!!

And of course, they are for sale on mumble tease's etsy shop: www.mumbletease.etsy.com

New Sketches

Just some more experiments in ye olde sketchbooke! I've been trying out using fabrics as elements in my paintings. Lots more to come on that front!

More Quotes on Fabric Art Dealies

Here's a couple more experiments using silk-screened patterns and sewn on elements to capture the mood of some inspirational quotes. Fun stuff. It's fabric stretched over a 8x12 inch piece of 3/4 inch plywood. I can see many directions to take this kind of thing. So much to do, so little time....

Waterlution Shirt Design

This is a t-shirt design I did for an organization called Waterlution that's putting on a 3-day "Water Innovation Lab" that gives "tomorrow’s leaders, the insights, tools, and connections to make a difference in protecting your community’s water resources." (www.waterlution.org)

I was originally contacted about the possibility of printing the shirts as well, but wasn't able to, due to the size of the order and the need for two colours. I print more than one colour on some of my shirts, but it only really works in small quantities and when the different colours don't need to be exact in their placement.

I was relieved when they just asked me for designs as I think 300 shirts would have been a few too many for me to handle happily...

My Head Is Filled With Song: Part III

Here's the third piece for a series I'm working on called "My Head Is Filled With Song."

This one is for Wilco's "The Late Greats." Man, what a good song. My only complaint is that it's not long enough! And what awesome lyrics: "The best song never gets sung, the best laugh never leaves your lungs, it's so good you won't ever know, and never hear it on the radio."

I've noticed that I almost always create images that have a light background and dark foregrounds, so for this one I wanted to try switching it up and have a dark background with light foreground objects. Fun stuff.

Reprints of old designs

There's been lots of interest in some of my old designs that I only have printed on women's cotton shirts, so I'm reprinting them on unisex cotton and women's tri-blend shirts!

I really really like how the colours turned out on these ones! I must say, it's hard not to take one of each design and colour for myself! Restraint Heather, RESTRAINT!

Just a reminder, all the shirts are for sale at www.mumbletease.etsy.com

Advertising Illustration for Gaz Metro

This is an advertising illustration I did for a natural gas company from Quebec. The client wanted to use the illustration for a number of different applications, so to accommodate both vertical and horizontal formats, I created a square that can be cropped accordingly.

To create a textured look I did the drawing using China Marker on heavy watercolour paper. In order to get clear detail in the finer areas of pattern I had to make the drawing very large. 40x40 inches in fact! WOW! Definitely the largest drawing I've done.

This project was a great learning experience for me and I'm really grateful to the ladies at Sid Lee for giving me the chance to work with them on it!

I made a photo album!

For my sister's birthday I made a photo album of the trip we went on in 2009. I learned how to do what's called coptic binding and had a lot of fun sewing the book together and making the covers and then arranging and gluing in the pictures (over 300 of them!). These are just a few of the spreads that I liked the most.

Her birthday is in April and I just gave it to her a couple of weeks ago, so you can gauge from that how much longer it took than I thought it would... I really am horrible at estimating the time involved for some projects...

Doodles

Wow! It's been an awesome (except for the weather) and super busy summer! I've had a couple of jobs come up, the latest being an illustration for an ad agency in Montreal! Oh boy! I'll be posting pictures of that when the project is done. Exciting!

But, for now, here's some random pages from my sketchbook I've been meaning to post for a while now.

Alphabet at Ampersand; A Collaboration with CHIKA!!!

My dear friend Miss Chika Ando and I just finished a collaborative piece that will be in the show Ampersand 2, at the Untitled Art Society Main Gallery (4th Floor, 319 - 10 Ave SW, Back Alley Entrance, Calgary).

We created an alphabet of adjectives that can be used to describe people. For each letter we chose a word that Chika was unfamiliar with and then made up a sentence and drew a picture illustrating the sentence. This is one of our favourites!

The show is on for three days. Today and Friday from 12-4, and on Saturday there's a reception party with the artists in attendance from 7-11pm. Come on out and see our lovely alphabet! And all the other neat collaborations!

Father's Day Card

Here's the front and inside of the card I made my Dad for father's day. Cute!

New Fabric Art - Come see them (and me!) at Market Collective this weekend!

This is a series of pieces I've just finished. They are 8x8 pieces of wood that I've covered with fabric. Each one features a different quote and has silk-screened and sewn elements.

They will be down at the MARKET COLLECTIVE in Kensington with me and my Mumble Tease t-shirts this Saturday and Sunday, the 19th and 20th of June! (Old Ant Hill Building, 148 10th St NW, Sat: 10-6 Sun: 11-5)

Shirts for A. B. C.

I just finished up a project making shirts and bags for a friend who has an urban beekeeping company. Her company is called Apiaries and Bees for Communities, or A.B.C. for short. Very neat stuff. It was really inspirational to talk to her and hear about her business and how she's found something she's passionate about and is just going for it! Her website is www.backyardbees.ca if you're curious!

And I'm really happy to have been able to help her out with the shirts! I made up the designs and printed them using cut-out stencils. So much fun! It's so neat to see your creations printed on cloth! I love it!

Silly new sketches

A page from my sketchbook. Just for fun. I started out with pencil crayons and made general shapes and filled them in with patterns. Then I used my imagination and a pen to create little creatures from the shapes. Imagining is fun!

FABRICS!

I love fabrics and have been using them more and more in my work and have started to amass quite a collection. I went to an annual sale at Woodcliff United Church and walked away with two HUGE bags of fabric for a ridiculously good price. All the fabric is donated by people who have leftovers lying in their basements and then all the proceeds go to Grandmothers in Africa. Very neat. And check out all the awesome fabric I picked up! I can't wait to use it in paintings, and on shirts and for random sewing projects! YAY!