Mermaid and Whale Illustration

Hey Y'all,

           I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas! This year was such a blessing! Can I praise the Lord for all that he has done this year. After putting together the Little Mermaid themed bedroom, I decided to do an illustration of my own to add to the wall. Sized at 8x10. I wanted to share with you a digital painting/illustration that I did with inspiration of one of my two-year-old daughters' drawing she did on her Doodle Pro. (I will be investing in a bulk of Doodle Pros.)

Isn't it cute? Yes, the whale is a pirate.

                                   Here is my illustration that is ready for download HERE!

Mermaid Toddler Room

     Hey Y'all, 

I have a small... Pinterest addiction.

For a while, I've been collecting the most random boards. It's time I put ideas together.

      This is IF we did Ember's bedroom in a toddler Little Girls Room with Mermaid Inspiration.

Coral Print - $20 The Main inspiration for colors through the room. |  Toddler Desk - $89.99 to use as a vanity, as for the mirror - going to add great grandma's mirror. | Toddler Chair - $49.99 | Rug on Zulily - $35 | Lamps (pair) - $128.99 Painting the ocean blue for knockoff inspiration. | Toddler Bed - $129 | Night Stand - $49.99 Paint coral same with any vintage dressers we find at the local flea markets using this inspiration. Last decorate small touches like the book ends (We love books!) and picture frames painted in all different colors from the inspirational board. I love this whimsical watercolor Jellyfish painting.

After I finished this board, my daughter informed me that she wanted a Cinderella themed bedroom... Then proceeded to wiggle her fingers and say, "BIPPITY BOPPITY BOO!"

Fresh Start for 2014

Hey Y'all, Lets get Personal.

2013 was quite the adventure for our household. 

It started end of 2012, when we were at revival. My husband and I had a vision of a Youth Center.

So for the last two months of my pregnancy, I made a notebook with start of the plans for the Dream Youth Center. Right after my son, Jake was my born, my husband and I talked about moving to Arkansas to be near my side of the family. Next thing we know, husband went almost two and half months without full time job. We decided to stay here, husband got a job in one week. It was such a blessing! Things looked up almost immediately, I even started going back to school! June: we talked about moving or not worrying about doing a Youth Center because we needed to be able to be self-sufficient before we could help anyone else. June: I almost had an ectopic pregnancy. Okay, we will stay put, it's better to be near family. Things started looking up, trip to Arkansas gave us ideas of what we would look forward to if we did move to Arkansas with all the jobs available. Thomas did not get hired and we became anxious about money again. It's better to stay in Kentucky - looking up! Then October, we found jobs in Alaska. I could become a teacher and they would even pay for my college and there would even be Youth Centers up there we could get involved in. You guessed it. Pew... Now we are really seeing and understanding what God is trying to tell us. Our place is here! Adair County, Kentucky. The vision: Youth Center! It will be a great change - Wonderful change. We have strayed off our path from God. We are not perfect, but we are wanting to change that and to be a better family and better Christians. The real thing that put me back on my path with God is a vision/dream I had that featured my Aunt Vickie. We were in her kitchen, she was telling me the same thing before I went off to college. "God has a calling and plans for everyone, if you don't follow what God has called you to do or planned for you, you may never get the second chance." 

For me, the Youth Center is my calling, not only mine, our calling. I won't be able to do it by myself, nor in the next year. It will take time, but that time will be needed getting closer to God. <3 br="">

The changes for my personal goal in 2014 is to focus MORE on being a family, getting involved with the community, and get back into painting my silly ideas without fear of offending anyone.

On the BLOG: You will see all of these new changes. Now - before any questions are asked about why is Dannie doing house/room collages?

2014 we are WANTING to make some drastic changes to this old house that we are currently renting. This week our wall paper in the kitchen is going to be ripped down. It's been falling down for a while... but, it has become an eyesore to the extreme. I'm going to miss it, because of it's "great grandma's house" feel. We are going to try to put in a staircase and create a Master upstairs so that we can  have a three bedroom house. Ember would have her own room! 

Playing the "If" game can be/is dangerous. At the same time, we are wanting to think about the future. The future we could possibly have. No, I don't expect or want to have a 8 bedroom mansion and throw half a million dollar parties for fame. That would never happen. However, I want to have a better home to raise our children. 

 If we could, we would buy this house right now, my husband and I have made a list of things that we would do. First of all, we would blow out one side of the house and add 20 feet to one side of the house. This would create bigger living room, kitchen, and laundry room. Our staircase would be in the extended edition instead of between living room and kitchen.

Redo:

1. Wiring through the whole house. (Pretty sure it is still knob and tube wiring.)

2. Bathroom to find a way to add heating to the flooring in the bathroom. 

(The floor will give your hair frost bite if not wearing house shoes.)

3. Kitchen!!!! (Can I start with the cabinets?) 

4. Update fuse box (I honestly have no idea what to do when half the house stops working.)

5. Put in a stand alone wood heating unit (Baby, It's cold outside!) 

6. Add two fireplaces. (If walls could talk!)

7. New hot water heater. (Preferably replaced with on-demand system.)

8. Pull out the flu (It's another eye sore in the kitchen, yet perfect holding spot for my canvas'.)

9. Storm Shelter (Put under the twenty foot addition.)

Thank you for your support. 

 

Custom Logo for Images by MJ

Hey Y'all,

      Looks like my husband is going on Christmas vacation/lay-off early. I wonder how much of Cabin Fever he will get? He started his own blog about being a full-time working father and his adventure running and cooking so he will be pretty busy with that. Check it out by clicking HERE!

I hope to get a lot accomplished in the next few weeks along with spending family time underneith our Christmas tree. Pictures to come soon.

The main reason for post is to share with you a Custom Logo I did for Images by MJ. It was awesome working with her. She is such a sweet gal. She wanted something new, cute, artsy-fartsy, and of course something that represented her. First, we started with three concepts to choose from.

 

 

It was so much fun creating these fun Photography and Painting logos! 

She chose B. and customized the colors to: Gray and Teal, Gray and Purple, or Teal and Purple. 

 Final Revision: Gray and Teal

 

I created a matching mini set that includes Business Cards, Letterhead, Envelopes, and custom Logo.

Listing on Etsy click HERE!  

Enjoy!

Self Portrait in Illustrator

 Hey Y'all,

I wanted to share with you some of the pics I went through to get my self portrait for Illustrator. I hope to keep practicing. I am no where near perfect, nor will I ever be. I started out in a hurray, and realized that I could do better. I spent several hours on this until my eyes are telling me it is time for bed.

I hope you enjoy!

FREEBIE!

                        Hey Y'all!
                        I would like to share with you three downloadable prints sized at 8x10 saved in
                        high-resolution. I was inspired by Harper Finch's newsprint paper that she put
                        out in Advent Day 4 of this year. I found the perfect graphics on The Graphics Fairy.                                  
                        Click HERE for a link to Santa. Links to each print are found below each graphic.

DOWNLOAD

DOWNLOAD

DOWNLOAD

THANK YOU ALL FOR YOUR SUPPORT! 

Keeping busy…

   I put way too much on my plate in the month of November. It has spilled into the month of December. Two major lessons were learned: from experience to stronger emotional being. I was also taking two classes about how to communicate through emotions and self-management. Thank goodness for those classes! I am an awkward person. Especially when it comes to talking. I can type my thoughts out, but talking is a whole different story.

   I am changing up my Etsy shop (sorry for so many changes in the last month). I originally got on there to sell custom Paintings…

   Until my little ones are older or if I had my own "craft" room, this was more trouble than I had bargained for. So, digital was my solution to tight spaces… right? 

   I spent roughly 8 hours. I did save it in almost 5 different formats. Including one of her face so that I could add it for maybe a future Paper Doll. That sounds like a good birthday gift! To think I still have to do Jake's Illustration. Where did this year go? I am going to do one of him as a Pirate and one as a Biker. It's going to be so much fun! 

   Anyway, the listing got almost zero views or repins from Pinterest. This month, I took it down. I'm hoping to put it back up (maybe with added shading or few additions) after I invest into a WACOM tablet of some sort. 

   So, there I began sharing my templates in PSD forms. That's where I am making my huge change in the Etsy shop. I had several buy and then inform me afterwards that they did not own Photoshop nor have a printer. I had to say No Refunds. I was very grateful and may have said THANK YOU from being overly excited when someone messaged me BEFORE purchasing to ask what programs she needed and what to do if she didn't have the fonts that were shown in the example. That's when I did a custom JPEG so that she could print anywhere needed be. Lesson number one learned.

    Now, I am focusing more on custom products. This includes for businesses AND clients. Custom logos, invitations, and other files will arrive in DIGITAL files in PNG, PDF, and JPEG form. If needed be, I would love to work with brochures, letterheads, and business cards. I also have options for custom printed products from WHCC, Millers Lab, and South Central Printing depending on the product. Needless to say, no more PSD files for a while.

   I will note that I am going to have to be harder on myself. I had a friend order cards, the day after they were being shipped to her house, she realized that the address was wrong. I chose to pay to get the package intercepted. Sadly, during this transaction: the package got lost! It took almost a week for UPS to confirm or deny if they had lost the package. Now, I'm reordering the cards. From now on, I'm having cards sent to my address, than I will personally ship it. *sigh* Lesson number two learned.

When I say I filled up my plate, I volunteered to paint a prop for a Christmas play. View the prop HERE! The original date of the play was canceled due to the weather, same as my son's first birthday party. We will be combining Ember and Jake's birthday parties this year. Due to the changes of date with the play, they were short handed. My husband and I were able to fill in as Mary and Joseph in the stable with baby Jesus and an Angel sitting above us. Layers of clothing and praying that God would watch over us, we were truly blessed! We even found a last minute baby sitter for the kids. I am hoping next year we will be able to help and volunteer more often.

Template Trouble.

Hey Y'all,

I want to say I am not an expert nor do I claim to be on Photoshop or Illustrator. I started dabbling with it in 2006 with Elements 8. Then progressed to CS3 with Yearbook and part-time newspaper. I mainly retouched photos and worked in InDesign with templates. It wasn't until 2011, I began reading and watching a lot of tutorials on how to create my own templates. Mainly to start a digital scrapbook of my newborn daughter and to make personal birthday invitations. Something to do as a hobby. It wasn't until this year I went back to college and decided to try to sell some of the templates I was making to help pay for college. I soon learned that it came with stress that I was not prepared for. The first template I sold, the person never responded so I worried if she liked it or not. Second person thought that the digital psd template was a frame that she would receive in the mailbox at home. I posted no refunds and tried to reword DIGITAL! PSD TEMPLATE! Just when I was about to take down all of my templates, I decided to wait. Sadly, I have had another person have issues with my template and ask for a refund. I am freelance and do not have a degree. I just know how to make a template ready for print, based on the tutorials and you tube videos I have watched. If I have a question, I generally turn there before I ask anyone else to see if it is a simple mistake. I opened up the template that my buyer had recently purchased and checked the clipping masks to see if there were any issues. I did notice that I had failed to clip mask two of my layers. As seen below.

That was my fault. 

 Layer one clipping mask worked like a charm. (For this example I didn't bother resizing at first.)

However, her question/problem was with the clipping mask on the two layers I had failed to clip mask.         Steps: Place > Right Click > Clipping Mask. 

I did notice that I had to make sure I check marked place BEFORE I could create the clip mask.

Once the clipping masks were made, I used command+t or CTRL+t to resize my image. This made my image go to the center of my template and seem to "disappear." I simply dragged back over to the box. 

                                                                Here is the complete result.

Once again: I am not an expert, I still consider myself a beginner to moderate user. I have very basic knowledge that allows me to create basic templates. I try not to use too many masks and overlays on the templates I sell. I would love to work with other Photographers and Crafters who enjoy the same interests I have. I don't want a competition in artworks. 

I stand by what I have posted on my Etsy: No refunds, especially digital items. 

The papers from this template were created by Harper Finch. 

She is such a creative gal and her papers are so much fun to work with. 

For now, I will try to continue to try to work with other Photographers and keep my templates up, however, I may be switching to only custom very soon. It would be my pleasure to work with you. 

Cyber Week!

Please Share! 

For a limited time: Now through Wednesday I'm having a Cyber Sale on my Etsy Shop! 

I hope to participate in more sales soon! This week is really the first sale and I'm nervous.

    Holiday stress is not being easy this year. It would be great to take a trip down to visit my friends and family in Arkansas or western Kentucky. I am feeling a little homesick. This weekend however my best friends Jammie and Colby are coming down to celebrate Jake's First Birthday! More updates soon!