My family and I have found an incredibly fun hobby thanks to this day's assignment: cardboard doodles! The process goes something like this: get thin cardboard (we used cereal boxes). Draw on it in pencil. Cut it out. Get the markers and pens out and go crazy.




My original sloths...and then they take to the trees. Because of course they do!





This dude takes requests.



My girls are so into this - so far we've had the cast of several Disney movies, flowers, and a certain girl has been making tons of germs to decorate a reminder for Paul's students to wash their hands before their lessons. And her sister's created an adorable sink for them to go with!

This assignment was to use reference material to draw just the most basic elements of an owl and create a design or almost a logo from them. So in my world, Pigwidgeon, Errol, and Hedwig all get designer makeovers.

Those kinds of dinosaurs.

This day's assignment started with this example at right of a very proper businessman in the rain. I've decided he's British. (Not that you can tell from the pic, just trust me, he is.) In any case, notice was made that all of his limbs were very close to his body, and if he'd been a silhouette, he'd make kind of a staid one.

The challenge was titled "Reality is Boring" and encouraged you to rearrange Mister Businessman so that he made a more interesting shape. Artistic license was encouraged. Poor Mister Businessman... I see a bit of a trip in your future.

Last week, we started something truly awesome with our children, something we've been waiting to do with them for years.

A D&D campaign!

Paul is doing a great job of tailoring it for the kids, making it challenging but not boring, and also bending the rules an awful lot so it's more fun. They rolled up and named their characters, and Peter kept asking, "So this is on the computer, right?"

"No, Peter."

"Okay, so it's a board game then?"

"No, Peter. It's in your head."

"Wait, I see dice... where is the board again?"

"Peter, just sit down and watch!"

(five minutes later, Peter has a revelation)

"It's ALL IN MY HEAD!" Mind. Blown.

We've had an absolute blast playing with the kids; they are so creative and funny and have great ideas. Instead of rolling up a new character, we brought back a VERY old one of mine from back in the day. The kids got such a giggle out of Brüna Stonginthearm and her dubious accent that we had to bring her back by popular demand. The sketch up top was doodled during one evening's campaign on a too-small piece of paper (which accounts for extra-shortness of our taller characters). I should post the version Angela colored in, everyone is wearing an awful lot of orange, for some reason. Just the thing for, you know, blending in and taking the enemy by surprise.

You know what they say; the family that plays together...

...stays together. At least, we think so.

Inspired by images like this, I set out to create a poster for our own family. Feel free to use it as a springboard for your own 100 things!

Click to see the full image (and then click the magnifying glass). I don't mind if you pin it, but would you please include a link to me? Thanks!

Extreme closeup of an upcoming project that had 17 million vector points to edit that made my fingers itch like crazy for my paintbrushes.

Sophia makes her First Communion on Sunday*, and I am possibly more excited than she is! It's a huge and very significant step in her life. As Paul and I are her CCD teachers, we're thrilled to see how these girls have grown in faith over the past few years. Since we just had their last class of the year, I had to make some presents. :)

This is what I made for each girl. I printed each one out, backed it with 2 larger colors of paper (in Sophie's case, white, and then light blue), and framed it. The crowning touch was the addition of a 3D glittering white and silver flower scrapbook sticker to match the white and silver butterflies each girl decorated her Communion scrapbook cover with. (We also printed out a version of each that went inside the scrapbook as well.)

While I would love to claim that I am a super-genius in dreaming this up, I'm really reworking a picture my mom gave each of us when we were kids. We each had our name and its meaning, done in calligraphy, and a Bible verse underneath it that went with it. That hung over my bed probably until I went to college and it made a great impression on me. My name means "a shining light" and my verse was "Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven." (Matthew 5:16) I was happy to pass that along to Nora in our class, whose name means the same thing!

We had 10 in our class, but here are a few others to share. I loved doing this project, and will be giving our other friends making their Communion this month their names as well.

*Hello! Where did the time go?

As some of you know, I have a day job... it's the same job I've had for over 16 years now, and I couldn't be happier at it. Our company is really like a family to me; we look out for each other, we support each other, share in each others' ups and downs.

Oh yes, and we really like to create together.

My good news share for today is that our newly redesigned website just won a Platinum Award from MarCom! More than anything else - the bright colors, useful and interesting copy - our site is really an effort of love from our entire team, and that's why I think it works. There's personality in it, and pride in our work. It says it right on the home page: "We love what we do." And I think that shows throughout the site. We all contribute to the blog and our twitter feed as well, and that helps keep the site fresh and interesting and shows a variety of viewpoints, all focused on making projects better for our clients.

This one was a bit of a challenge for all of us, because it was our first redesign after my boss Rich passed away. I honestly think he would have loved this.

So while I haven't been painting, I have been doing a lot of designing. You can see some of it on the site's portfolio. I should mention also that one of our magazines also got a Gold MarCom Award, so I'm doubly happy about it! I would keep creating no matter what, but it's nice to hear every once in a while that your message is making its mark.

ps ~ For those of you dying to see a recent photo of me from this summer, (HA!) here's my brand new bio.

This weekend our elementary school had their fundraiser - a play written by, directed by, starring, choreographed by (you get the picture) the parents. It is THE social event of the year, and everyone involved looked like they were having the time of their lives. And what did I contribute?

The logo design, of course!

These are the roughs I did initially to get a feel for what everyone wanted... it was clear that it was going to be a logotype, but with a little extra something. The one we went with was an homage to "Slumdog Millionaire" using the broken type, lowercase letters, and uneven baseline. (The plot echoes some of the movie, so there was a reason for it.)



Is that your final logo?



It brought back good memories from high school of seeing people wearing the shirts in the play - although I've been also seeing them around town, on kids at school, even at church. Trust me, it's not the design, it's the message.



The cast in their believe shirts while singing "Don't Stop Believing" (of course).



Paul lent his considerable talents to the pit band! Here he is warming up while Angela (fluffy head in front) looks on.

One of the coolest things was that at the finale - again, in homage to Slumdog Millionaire, the entire cast, including the teachers and principal, and all the students in the audience - got up and did the "Jai Ho" dance from the end of the movie. It was just fabulous. The kids practiced it at the end of classes, and even at a Girl Scout meeting!