And....she's back!

I'm so sorry to have been gone so long. It's been sort of a crazy month or so. I have only seldom been able to work on my store, in fact this is one of very few new designs I've done. I've been working on a couple of book designs for Clean Run, which is mahvellous, dahlink, because it brings in big bucks. But I've missed the pure creativity of designing things just for myself (well, and for all the people I hope will buy them.

I was thrilled that Zazzle decided to not do shipping last month, let's hope they restructure the whole shipping package; right now their shipping is far too high! But thanks to their promotion, I had one of my biggest months ever in spite of not being able to give the store the attention it deserves.

I had a giggle over this design. For those of you not into dog obedience it may not make much sense. But anyone who has ever tossed an obedience dumbbell for a dog to fetch and had it go careering all over the place (into the next ring, behind you or even, in one case, hanging in a light fixture) will get this one! And this is one shirt I actually did a front and back design for. Front shown here, but there's another dumbbell on the back too. Hope you enjoy.

It's that time of year

June is almost here, and our local Farmer's Market has been cooking along since April. But only now is the really good stuff starting to come in. Last week I bought a quart of strawberries so sublime that they lasted less than 24 hours. And yep, I ate every single one myself. Asparagus is fazing out. I haven't seen peas yet, but maybe I missed them with all the trialling I was doing in April.

I can't always afford to eat local and organic but when I can, I do. The food is better. It tastes better and it's better for you. Luckily our local farmer's market is large and diverse. There are products for palates from around the world, and to sell at our market the farmer must be local (within a certain mile radius of my town) and must have produced the product for sale. No importing, even from neighboring states. The Sustainable agriculture design won a Today's Best award at Zazzle!

Bags are back!

Woo hoo! Finally!

Bags have been out of stock for months and months. They're back now, which means I know have to get busy putting designs on bags, which is sort of a PITA. Anybody who says doing a POD is easy is wrong. It's a lot of constant work, but well worth it.

Robertson coat of arms

My newest design, for my family. I actually had to really put this together. There are many sites on the web that offer to sell you jpgs of coats of arms, but a) they're jpgs and b) none of the nicest quality ones in terms of graphic integrity actually depicted the Robertson coat of arms correctly. The fist holding the crown was missing, and that's an important part of the COA. One depicted the fist and crown, but the boars were tiny. So I thought to heck with it, and came up with my own.

Here's where having a clipart library with images which can be used for anything comes in handy. I had bought one oh, about 10 years ago. And quite a bit of the art in it is cheesy. But it happened to have a huge section on COAs. So I was able to meld together the main piece (the shield with helmet and cloth swirls) with a fist and crown, and a boar's head. I'm quite happy with the result and though it uses some ready-made graphic design elements, it's original too because I am the one who pulled the pieces together (redrawing several of them for good vector lines).

Launching a new store

I've finally decided to split my work into two galleries. My main gallery is of course dedicated to dog designs, but I also have a lot of plant/floral designs as well as other things that just don't fit well into a site devoted to dog things. So welcome DDGrafix! Yep, just almost exactly the same name I already have, in fact the logo is the same. But this gallery will have holiday items, plant/floral items, etc. Nothing dog related.

Hope you enjoy!

New designs

A couple of new designs. The "Chewing is for Amateurs" is something that popped out of my mouth this past weekend at an agility trial as my old gal Viva was sucking down treats. Real Men run Agility is a shirt for the guys who are brave enough to step into what is a predominantly woman's sport in the U.S. The weird thing is, I have no idea why it's dominated by women. In Europe, there are just as many men as women running dogs in agility but here women outnumber men by a huge amount.

But guys, there's nothing more sexy than somebody willing to get out there and laugh at himself and his dog. And playing silly games with your dog? Big turn on.

Agility crazy

This stylized design was so fun to draw, and I think it will work really well on a huge number of products. So day I've been using Quick Create, along with the design itself in a lot of colors, to start creating a whole new line. I'm also making sure I add a spot for people to customize with their breed name so they can personalize their shirt. I'm showing three bright colors here, but I also added more subdued colors (and a couple more shockers!) It's important to design for a variety of audiences, and I see this particular design as being very appealing to men as well as women, so I wanted to have subdued *and* bright options.

More on how to properly use (and not abuse) Quick Create soon!

Rounding out some categories

I did a nice set of flower design mugs a couple of months ago for my sister. She's married to a career military man, and one of her favorite sayings, popular among military wives, is "bloom where you are planted." In a life where they are on the move every two or three years, military families constantly shift from the known to the unknown. New place, new people, new friends. The stresses, especially for young families, can be tremendous.

Mary's three children are all either in college or graduated now, and they are at their last posting before her husband retires. But I love the design and I think it applies to any of us who have had to deal with upheaval and shifts in our lives. Since being laid off from my job, I too have tried to take that mantra to heart and make the most of where I am in life, even if it's not exactly where I expected to be right at this moment!

Today, with spring and Mother's day nearing, I expanded the designs from mugs to shirts, stickers and cards.

New design series!

Here's the first of my new design series for bumper stickers. This is the uncropped design; the real design does not have an actual wavy bottom.

Those of us with purebred breeds are facing an ever-increasing onslaught of prejudice, pushed in large part by Animal Rights activists who would like to see ALL dogs (and cats) eliminated as a species. Breed-specific laws are not only unjust and unfair, they are also ineffective. In each of these so-called "vicious" breeds, the great majority of the dogs are wonderful family companions. Many of them are therapy dogs or do assistance work. Targeting an entire breed for the problems of a few dogs, almost all owned by very irresponsible people, is discriminatory and unnecessary.

Instead, dog laws should be tightened to apply to ALL dogs and to severely punish irresponsible owners who allow any dog to attack or maim humans. There are vicious Golden Retrievers, Labs, and Spaniels, yet these draconian breed-specific laws do not cover those breeds. Thus, many problem dogs go free while other wonderful dogs are condemned to death because of the law. Further, breed-specific laws infringe on our rights as American citizens to have the freedom of choice of which dog best suits our lifestyle.

More red/black

I subscribe to Google AdWords. And it's weird, but one of my most hit keywords is Chihuahuas! I had one chihuahua design, but I decided I better add a couple more. So I've done both long and a smooth coat chihuahua. As with all of my dog designs, it's important to me to represent dogs who meet the breed standard. In this case, the distinctive apple head is very important. There are many, many very badly bred Chihuahua's out there (including the famous Taco Bell dog, who was to Chihuahuas as I am to a ballet dancer). So these designs are both cute and correct.

I'll do a separate post on Google AdWords.

My first TBA!

And what, you may ask, is a TBA? Took me forever to figure that one out. It's a Today's Best Award. My design will be up with a number of others, singled out as one of the best of the day! This is the first time I've gotten a TBA since I've been with Zazzle. Ironically, it's not for one of my dog designs. Instead it's for a design I did for Earthday. I actually did two. The circle design got the TBA, but I think I personally am more pleased with the notecard design. This one might be fun to put on Keds.

The muse is back!

Or at least, the graphic part. I'm particularly pleased with this simple design. I freehand drew the dog with my mouse using the paintbrush tool in Illustrator. The typface is Andy; I wanted just the right combination of casual without being too "schoolkid" or too elegant. I looked at Banner as well, but it just didn't fit as well with the strokes of the dog.

This is one of several designs I've done to benefit someone else. All the royalties from this one will go to Border Collie rescue, which is near and dear to Gail Storm's heart.

Frustrating morning

I've been trying to do a quick product create this morning and the customize button isn't working. Waaahhh! How crummy is that! The Doberman design I'm doing doesn't show well on black so I've shown it on tan, but it can go on any lighter color. I have both the German spelling (above) and the American spelling of the name for this shirt.

I've sort of been in a funk of design after my huge rush of productivity a week or so ago. Doesn't help that I'm in a funk all together since tearing a calf muscle last week. I'm missing my morning gym workouts something fierce.

Anyway, I did a tracking design specifically for Dobes for a friend and it turned out pretty well.

Productive but tiring!

My design tends to come in waves. I have times when literally all I can do is sit and create, and others when that's the last thing I want to do. Right now seems to be a creative time. Which is great, but exhausting. I designed all weekend. I've spent all day today working on a logo for a veterinarian in Chicago.

My head. It sort of hurts. On the other hand, I've got lots of fun new designs to share! It's funny that Dobermans are MY breed but I've been lax on getting dobe designs up. Better late than never. I still need to get the dobe silhouette up as well.

Back to the grindstone...

New Design

This is all Ann's fault. See, I used to show Saddlebreds, lo those many years ago. I actually attended William Woods University on an equestrian scholarship. But those days are long gone. I haven't ridden a horse in years.

Today Ann G emailed a video of a racking horse to a small group of friends. Which made me go find some World Championship Horse show video. And after I watched some of that, I dug in a closet and pulled out a drawing I did in 1988. I've been having a ball with it all darn day. Of course since it was 18" x 24" and my scanner is 8" x 11", it's also taken all day for me to scan it in pieces, put it togther, make it seamless, and then have lots of fun with colors and shadings. Enjoy!