Hello Jello!

March has been Jello month at bootcamp…jiggly, wiggly, colorful, and sometimes a bit gross (yes at some point in time it was all the rage to throw those left-overs into a jello mold….spaghetti, veggies, Spam?? I think my own dear mother may have snuck some mystery meat into the jello in the mid 70's…I'm dating myself here!) But my memories of Jello are mainly good and sweet….I even make a  yummy fruity jello salad for the holidays, so this was familiar and fun subject matter to draw.

I had a good time with the mini assignment, making a page of sweet treats with black pen and copic markers. I even got brave and played around in photoshop with my jello icons.

The main assignment was to create a jello-inspired design for the bolt fabric market. I went back to the drawing board and drew a gazillion fancy cake stands topped with all sorts of sugary confections. Lilla gave us her Monday surprise which was the "nougat palette" and some tips on using neutrals in our work. I was immediately inspired by the dusty and pastel pinks, soft blues and purples, and pops of acid yellow & lime green and envisioned a sweet little circus world in these colors. In my final piece I ended up going with a little brighter versions of the colors. Here are some of my initial sketches.

and my palette

painting the icons

I had a couple more spots planned, but time ran out, so off to the computer I went. 

I found some tutorials on making patterns in PS, but just didn't have enough time to practice, so I did what I could.

I submitted this one to the gallery.

I am looking forward to trying to make a true repeat pattern with some coordinates when I have some extra time, but for now its off to catch up on Etsy shop orders and prepare for MATS part A which starts next week…bootcamp has been the perfect warm-up!

Doodled Pendants DIY

Here is a fun DIY for you that has been inspired by the art of doodling. I started making these little pendants last summer when I was spending the lazy summer afternoons by the pool with my kids. It was too hot in the afternoons to work on shop orders, but I still wanted to be productive and
with minimal supplies to haul down to the back yard, this seemed like the perfect project.

Doodling is fun and relaxing, and not so intense that I could not keep an eye on the activity in the pool…and the best part was that my kids could join in and make their own cute pieces of art.

As the summer drew to a close, the holiday rush and MATS (make art that sells ecourse) collided, and I had to abandon my little projects. I picked them up again with the intention of creating this tutorial for Valentines day and was sidetracked again….but it is here now!
Enjoy and feel free to email me with questions or pictures of your creations. jellylane@live.com

The first MATS Bootcamp assignment

Wow! It was an adrenaline filled week for this bootcamper! Our assignment was to design a cell phone case with a cuckoo clock theme. We started off with a "mini" assignment of researching and sketching....you guessed it....cuckoo clocks! At this point we had no idea what the main assignment was, so the sketching was super relaxed and we had the freedom move in any direction with our sketching process. I didn't do a ton of sketching due to time constraints, but I did come up with a few icons that I liked.

I was partial to the traditional Bavarian-style clocks with their cute little animals and mushrooms, but I had come across some unconventional ones on Pinterest like a cuckoo clock teapot and crazy brite pink or teal clocks and was inspired to go with something completely whimsical.

After a few days of floundering about with markers, pencils, and paint, I turned to my old friend polymer clay. Here are some pictures of the process, which took 2 days of working  here and there in-between making pieces for orders from my Etsy shop and life (4 kids at home on feb vacation). Photographing and editing in photoshop took another full day and a half.

I went with a cupcake theme, made the sketch and then photocopied it to make some templates for the pieces of the clock which I cut out in clay….super soft sculpey III.

The challenging part was choosing the pallet. Lilla had given us 2 on-trend pallets that I liked, but I felt that neither of them would work for this piece, which I envisioned being totally candy-shoppe-lollipop-sugary-sweet.

I chose to work in my sunny kitchen instead of my studio, so that I could be at "command central" for the kids. I gathered up all my supplies and spread out on the table. Normally I work with colored clay that I mix, much like paint, to get shades and highlights, but I wanted more control with this pallet and opted to paint the clay after it was baked. I worked in layers and edited my original sketch as I went along, adding some elements and discarding others. I used super glue and hot glue to hold everything in place.

Time to photograph! I set it all up in my lightbox, arranging all of the candy swirls, hearts and sprinkles each time I changed the background color, which was at least 10 times!

I had fun taking some informal shots with my iPhone and documenting the progress on Instagram.

The next step was the most challenging as I am still in the infant stages of learning photoshop. This is the finished mock-up that I submitted to Lilla's gallery.

I really enjoyed this assignment and got some valuable feedback from my classmates (whose work blew me away)….you can view all of the submissions (about 350+ artists participated) on lilla Roger's

website tomorrow. I can't wait t see them all!

Thanks for checking out mine!

Merry Christmas 2013!!

It's been a hectic week, finishing up clay orders, trying to squeeze in my runs, and all the many christmas responsibilites.....somw of which still need to be taken care of and it's 11:45 Christmas Eve!! It is going to be a late night, one of many this month. I managed to fit my Santas in, one a day more or less. Here are the ones completed this week.

Santa #19 ~pencil&marker

Santa #20 ~ marker, pastels

Santa #21 ~pencil, marker, pastels

Santa #22 ~ marker, pencil, pastel

Santa # 23 ~ marker, micron, pastel

Santa #24 ~ acrylic, pastels

Merry Christmas....have a wonderful day! Planning to sit with my feet up with a magazine at some point tomorrow!!!

Weekend Santas

squeezed in a few extra minutes this weeekend to do these 2:

Santa # 14 ~ acrylics, pencil, pastels on canvas board

 Santa # 15 ~copics, pastels, micron on paper

2 weeks (and 1 day) to the BIG DAY!

Santa #10 ~faux chalkboard

ho ho ho. . . is your shopping done yet?!

Santas 8 & 9

It was a busy weekend! On top of everything else going on, we decided to move all of my art stuff, which has been slowly taking over the living space in our family room. While it is a good size room, it feels tiny with all of us plus the dogs and all my junk packed in it.....so we spent the entire sunday moving and setting up a studio in a spare room....which housed most of my supplies anyways...more on this later, with pictures!

And today was a snow day.....a full house! Here are my santas from the past 2 days....both dobe in my new studio YAY!!

#8 ~ acrylics on paper

#9 ~ copics, pastel pencils

Santa catch-up

Only the first week and I am already playing catch-up! So here are a few from the past 3 days.
All done with copics, pastel pencils, 7 black micron.

Santa # 5

Santa #6

Santa # 7

Thanks for looking!

Santa #4 and company

I sketched the icons quickly on graph paper and photocopied them, colored with copics, cut them out and glued them down....voila! Quick and fun. I like the rough pencil lines and grid lines peaking through here and there. Then I played around with the background color in photoshop. The white background is the original.

Slowly acquiring some ps skills!! Taking a course in January, watching lots of tutorials right now.

In clay news....2 more days of free shipping in my shop! Stop in and grab some stocking stuffers : )