Lyrical 3

rupaul needs no introduction. oooh gurl. you betta werk!

Lyrical 2

i've really been into these lyrical posters. they're a lot of fun (well tedious and time consuming and mind-numbing) but enjoyable! it's a lot of work but i'm really getting in to it! i've done a michael jackson, katy perry, taylor swift and lady gaga. this one i made for my friend who loves t swift (i feel the absolute opposite of that about her). we always joke and argue about it so while making him a cute poster that he can put on the wall, i got my own little dig in there. about an eighth of the way down the poster (during the song love story) is the line "yo, taylor. i'm really happy for you. and i'mma let you finish. but shakespear had one of the best stories of all time." and after that it's the entire play romeo and juliet. ha! i love it.

Lyrical

i'm going to go see john legend in concert thanksgiving weekend and i'm really excited. he's just the most amazing. anyway i'm so excited i decided try and get some of my wigglies out by being creative. i really like the way this turned out!

Fontographer

So it seems I may now be a typographer. Okay maybe that's going to far. But after successfully (at least in my opinion) creating two families of type I'm pretty much an expert.

This was a lot of fun. Initially spurred by a quirk of writing a book with some friends, I decided that I would make typefaces out of their handwriting (to give the book a journaled feel). After I got theirs out of the way (ie my test subjects) I moved on to my own. This became a more daunting and time-consuming task than I thought I set out on. I normally write in all caps but I didn't think this would translate or read well in book form. So I ended up using uppers and lowers. This wasn't good

cool chart of top typefaces

enough. In my writing there is often emphasis added. That meant I needed either italics or bold. I went with italics, but then decided that I liked that almost more than regular. So I might use that face in the book. Which would mean I still needed an emphasis, so bold and bold italic followed. By this time though, I really wanted my real handwriting, so I ended up doing all four faces in small caps as well. All-in-all it turned out really well, and it's super fun to type and it show up looking like my handwriting.

The time thing I mentioned earlier was an interesting thing to keep track of. Here's a few ways I measured my time investment in this project:
• TV (that I watched in a small corner of my computer screen): 3 seasons of Breaking Bad
          + 1 season of Sherlock, Luthor and Shameless
    • Olympics: 34 gold, 22 silver and 25 bronze medals for team amuricah (U-S-A! U-S-A!)
• Kering pairs (two glyphs manually spaced): 34,486
• Glyphs: 845

graduation present

i did some drawing for the first time in a looooong time. this one was done because it was required of me. i drew my niece dietra as her graduation present, so the same needed to be done for justice. and her graduation is quickly approaching. i've been putting it off, just because it's been so long, but today was one of my last days off before i go back to nebraska. so i buckled down and got to drawing.

i'm happy with the results.

Wedding!!!

my little sister is getting married! so awesome. and a little weird. she is my little sister after all. it makes sense though. when we were little, she was always the one playing house while i was off filling in my coloring book with the smudges of every crayon i could find. anyway, she asked me to design her invites. of course i would! these went through a lot of versions (see below) before they became more of who she actually is and less of what i expected her to want.

disney princesses

these are amazing!!!! i just had to share. (all this art was done by viria13). besides the awesome princess hipsters there's a drawing of supernatural - one of my favorite shows. this girl is awesome. and only like, 18. talent.

Graduation

i just placed an order for my niece's graduation announcements. the family couldn't decide on which pictures they liked for the back so i did two versions. i tried to keep it very simple and straight-forward, focusing on the pictures to tell the story. luckily justice decided her theme for graduation was colors. all colors. that tied in extremely well with the photos i took of her while she was in sf visiting. so one of those graffiti shots ended up on the front with 4 others gracing the back. i really like the picture of her with the sunglasses - it's young and fun. and since we were unable to use that for her senior pictures i was happy to be able to include it here. on the front i used the typeface whoopass for her name while the rest (including all on the back) is set in metromix.

catering

here is the website i made for myself. for my catering... uh... business? i don't know that i'd call it a business. i'm not sure what else to call it though. so it's pretty much 2 pages. the landing page has all the details and contact info and a link to the second page, which is the different outfits i can wear. that page is fun because you can click on the color options on the right and the outfit on the left changes to match. fun. also i used the illustration of casey for the outfits page. made her a little heavier and blonde - and there i am ;)

business

i ordered new business cards from moo and they came in today!!!! yay!

there's about 38 different images on the front, with my contact info on the back. i also added the recycling info (the cards are made of 100% recycled post consumer waste, 100% recyclable and biodegradable, FSC & Smartwood certified paper, and manufactured using wind power) because that's very important to me and the city i currently live in.

(note: i just went to moo's website to try and find all the recycle info, to be lazy and not get out one of my cards to find them all. but for some reason i couldn't find all of this information anymore. hmmm... was i just not looking in the right place? or might they have taken this info off their website. because when i was originally designing my cards i took that info word for word from the website. the conspiracy theorist in me wants to think that not all of this info is true and that when they saw my cards come through with all of that info on them, they realized they were falsely advertising it and changed their website. that's probably not what happened but what if?! to the right is the original screen shot i took for reference)

i just had to add share these images. they're beautiful examples of animated .gifs. apparently they don't have to strobe! or have flashing hearts and stars. or look like they just came out of a rave hosted by myspace.  ; )

(blog post where i found them)

casey klein

from the starz series party down. someone at my part-time catering job suggested i watch this show (since it's about a catering company). it's pretty funny! all the characters are so weird and quirky and lovable.

so i've been thinking about doing an independent contractor thing with catering / serving. i like the jobs at people's houses and i've decided i don't really need a middleman to get those jobs for me. and i definitely don't need them to take over half the profits! i decided i'll try to make a website and see what comes from that. on the website i'm planning on having a page that lists the types of outfits i can wear. what better way to show these off than with one of my illustrations. i plan on using this illustration and adjusting it to look a little more like me. and voila - outfit page done.

raspberry lemonade

i had a fun time baking today! we're having a potluck at work on sunday and that's just the excuse i needed to try out a new recipe. i decided i was going to try out a fun summery raspberry lemonade cupcake. i googled for a recipe but none were just what i was looking for so i mix and matched. here's the recipe i ended up with:

Raspberry Puree: 12 oz raspberries  • 1/4 c granulated white sugar  • 1/2 t fresh lemon juice
Cupcakes: 1 (18.25-ounce) white cake mix, plus any add'l ingredients called for on pkg 
• 3 T lemonade drink powder  • 1 t finely grated lemon zest
Frosting: 1/2 lb confectioners (powdered) sugar  • 1/4 c (1/2 stick) unsalted butter, softened 
• 2 T frozen lemonade concentrate  • 1/2 t vanilla  • 1/2 t finely grated lemon zest
Directions:
Raspberry Puree: Place raspberries in a large fine meshed strainer suspended over a large bowl and force the juice from the berries by gently pressing the berries with the back of a large spoon. All that should remain in the strainer is the raspberry seeds, compost these. To the strained juice, stir in the lemon juice and sugar (add more if needed). For extra flavor, add a little raspberry liqueur.
For the cake, in a large bowl, stir together the cake mix and lemonade powder. Prepare the cake batter according to the package directions, using any additional ingredients called for (eggs, milk, water, oil, etc…). Stir the lemon zest into the batter. Fill baking cups about 1/3 full, then add a teaspoon(ish) of puree (if there's some leftover at the end it can be used on top of the 
cupcake as a drizzle). Swirl puree into cake mix with a toothpick. Fill the rest of the cup (3/4 full) with cake batter. Bake 15 to 20 minutes or until cake is springy to the touch.
For the frosting, beat together the confectioners’ sugar and butter until fluffy. Beat in the remaining ingredients until combined.

that seems like a lot, it's not too bad though! i did work on this for a long time today but that's because i had a few hiccups. the first is that i don't have a zester. so i had used a veggie
peeler and knife. another (and the biggie) was as i was finishing my second set of cupcakes i ran out of batter and they were all tiny (see pic). since i'm bringing these to work i wanted them to be sort of impressive so i ended up going back to the store and getting another box of cake mix and making another set. finally i really needed an electric mixer for the frosting. i built up some muscles mixing that by hand!

niece

my niece justice was visiting this week from nebraska. she's going to be a senior in high school (starting today!) so we took some senior photos while she was here. i'm very proud of how some of them turned out. it all comes down to great locations, good photography and a cute model!

"just give me all the bacon and eggs you have...

I was inspired by this trader
joe's "recommendation"

wait wait, i worry what you just heard was 'give me a lot of bacon and eggs.' what i said was 'give me all the bacon and eggs you have.' " ron swanson is the best. parks and rec is a great show - but more than the plot or storyline, the best part is the characters. ron. leslie. tom. april. jerry. all wonderful, amusing characters. 

"What's a not gay way to ask him to go camping with me?"