Flickr Faves on a Friday

I locked myself into my room today to finally get down on paper and screen some designs that have been floating around in my head for a while.  Funnily enough they took on a life of their own and travelled to places I had never imagined before.  Hopefully, I'll be able to show you some sneak peeks in a few weeks.

Until then... a ring that has been inspiring me.  Elisita's papercuts and all her artwork for that matter are just breathtaking.  You can see a lot more of it here.

Paper Ring by Elsita

Playing Around With Images From My Fabric Folder

Can't sleep, so playing on Photoshop with images of fabric that I have.


I started playing with this one for an image I want to transfer onto a silver jewellery piece. The silver came out a bit wavy, so I thought I'd go with the flow (sorry about the pun) with the image for it.

I have no idea what this one is for, but had fun doing it. I just loved these retro kokeshi dolls.

Not much has been happening behind the sewing machine lately. I seem to need to sleep most of the day and then am awake all night. In this thin-walled Japanese apartment, I don't think my neighbours would like me much using the sewing machine at 3am.

Well, I'm off to play some more!

Kimono Kokeshi

Ahhh.. what to do on a sick day when you don't feel like staying in bed. Sit on the sofa and play on your computer of course!

I've had a lot of fun playing more with my kokeshi design. I'm pretty pleased with how she's going. I've got a few plans for her later down the track as well. But for now, I've put her into my Café Press store. I have to confess, I haven't done much with my Cafe Press store, so it was about time there was a new design.



It could just be the whole nesting thing I'm going through, but I think she looks particularly cute on the maternity shirt.
This time, I did two versions. One with her cut out and on a white background....


.... and another on a kimono background.

Leni & Rose commented on the first version of her and asked how I got the background to fade out. On Photoshop, it's actually quite simple;

Make sure you've flattened your layers first. I now always try to save the photoshop document before I flatten the layers (which I'll later save as a jpeg or png depending on what I'm using it for), as so many times I've done work and then wished I could go back and tweak a layer but couldn't. Use the lasso tool to go around the edge of the object (in this case, the kokeshi) and once it's all selected, go to the "Select" tab at the top and choose "Inverse". Then use your eraser on the largest size possible, dial down the opacity (I used 40%), rub over the image and all done! To get out of it, just go back to "Select" and choose "Deselect".

Happy photoshopping!

Designing my Etsy Banner

I've been having so much fun playing with designs today. Of course I SHOULD have been photographing stock during the daylight hours, but instead started playing with ideas for the banner.

I started out by flicking through my pile of kimono and Japanese design books....

Then started out with this sketch that I scanned.... The plan was to make a series of them, all nesting dolls with the last one opening, hence the line in the middle....

With the aid of photoshop, she soon looked like this... as a rough sketch, I was pretty happy so far.....

But then once I put her into the banner dimensions... she looked rather lost..... so that was all scrapped (well not totally, I will go back and work on her at a later time)...

And for now, my banner looks like this... what do you think?

Akemashite Omedetou Gozaimasu!

Kotoshimo Yoroshiku Onegaishimasu!

....or in other words, Happy New Year!

It's snowing outside! The first snow of the season has come on the first day of the year, how cool is that?

I hope everyone had a good evening and has started off 2008 with a happy note. We had a quiet one in, just the two of us with some yummy food, some DVDs and a bottle of Dom Perignon, a very generous Christmas present from my boss.

Our first nengajo arrived before we even got out of bed (though this is more an indication of how late we slept in rather than how early they arrived). 2008 is the Year of the Rat, so many of the cards this year had cute little mice on them. Here are a couple of my favourites from today

This super sweet one comes from a student at my school. Funnily enough, I've never actually taught her, which may be a good thing, it would be hard for me not to favour her. My very first day at the school, when I was very nervous and didn't know where to go or what was going on, she and her friend came and introduced themselves in English and helped me out. Since then, we've become email buddies and we remember each other's birthdays. She's a very good calligraphy artist and I have a piece on my wall that she did for me. I suspect she painted this card and then had them printed out. It's hard to see on this scan, but the pink details have been done by hand.

How gorgeous is this little kogeshi doll? The black parts of the face and the Japanese writing look like they have been printed, but everything else is hand-done. The beauty of the yuzen paper doesn't show up in the scan. This is from one of the Japanese teachers that I teach English with. She also is a very good artist and takes care of the art club after school.

It's such a delight having the postman arrive with these on New Years Day. What a wonderful tradition! I feel like 2008 nengajo design is really quite dull.... Oh well, there's always next year.

Today, Wayne and I are going to head into the "big city" and go to a large temple to watch the New Years festivities. In the first few days of the year, most Japanese will go to a temple to pray for the year, some of them in their finest kimono. My camera should get a workout today!

Nengajo Design

Yah! I've just finished designing my 2008 Nengajo, Japanese New Years card. I didn't end up using any of the images from the nengajo book I bought, but rather used it for inspiration. I decided to stick with my origami crane theme for the year, you can see the Christmas cards I sent out below.

The watermark on the card says "Akemashite Omedetou!", which is Happy New Year in Japanese.

For our 2007 nengajo, we stuck with tradition and used our wedding photo as we had gotten married the year before.

Mmmm... so now, I just have to finish printing these, and then address them all.... better get back to it!

Sale! Three days only!

For three days, Café Press are having a $20 off sale for any orders of $75 or more, which includes anything bought from my store. To get the discount just put in the following code when you go through the checkout;

HOLIDAYVIP

The sale ends on 8th November, 2007 at 11.59pm (PST). The sale does exclude a few things, including taxes and shipping.

I've just put a few new designs in the store and of course, there are always my older popular designs to choose from as well. They are printed onto a variety of products; bags, shirts, cards and blank journal.

I'm starting to work on a range of designs taken from or influenced by vintage kimono fabric, as you can see by the kimono blossoms tote bag (the design is also available on different products) and the kimono fabric journal.