Today's Best Award Winner from Zazzle!

Ice Cream Dream iPad Speck Case by LuksiCreations
View other iphone 3 cases

Pretty cool huh. Second one I have ever gotten there. I just finished this last night too!

Puppy Love

Done in Illustrator CS3. You know how your first crush can go. You like him/her, they think you have cooties. This is my version of that.

Author:
Kiamichi Goodbear

Merry Christmas! Have some bacon!!

Hope everyone has had a wonderful holiday with their friends and family. It's been pretty laid back here. Everyone is all warm and comfy in their flannel pajamas and fleece blankets. Coffee is flowing because the adults here all need caffeine to function. Plus, I got this awesome present from Santa:

Love it!! I got a Major Award!! I was just saying last night while watching A Christmas Story that it would be awesome to get that lamp and that I would forever love whoever was able to procure one for me. So happy to get this, you have no idea. I am such a nerd.

I also have been busy drawing things up. I am also offering custom silhouettes in the Etsy store, if you are interested. Here is my ode to pork, because who doesn't love bacon?

 

I have a warped sense of humor. I have also made a wall pattern of the background and will be putting it on items in the Zazzle store, the individual little pig will be on items as well. The whole thing will be sold as posters and maybe some other items as well. More to come so check back often!

Author:

Kiamichi

Last Vector Practice

Deciding to go ahead full steam and offer this type of service in the Etsy store, or you just contact here as well. Prices are as follows:

Single Portrait: $30

Couples: $40 ($10 for each additional person)

Full Body Portrait: $50

Black and White Line Art: $15

Here is the last practice image I worked on, I worked on this off and on cause I have been kind of nursing my hand from all the sewing I had done before Deluxe. First I will show the original image and then the vector image. Enjoy!

Original Image:

Vector Painting:

 

This one was challenging because of the hair and all the little details in the clothing. Had tons of fun with it though, the more challenging the better!

Portfolio Site

I have a new portfolio site made specifically under my name because I think this business here under this name is going to start incorporating more people so I want a specific space just for me and my illustration work. By more people I mean Luksi Creations is becoming more of a family affair than just me trying to go it alone so much. My daughter is joining me in my crafting ventures and I told her when she turned 14, legal working age, then I would let  her become more involved, plus my mom is getting in on it all as well as my husband, sooo more changes are being made here. Pages will being changing or disappearing all together. If it concerns my illustration work, I will still post things about new things here, but the portfolio part of it all will be here:

http://kiamichigoodbear.carbonmade.com/

all nice and neat and in one space. This will be our main blog for me and everyone else concerned. It's been a long time coming actually. Just bear with me while I rearrange stuff. 

I hate coming up with titles to things

I really do. It never goes well. If I could leave everything Untitled and then just put a number after it I would. It's agonizing to me. I mean, it took me a 8 years to think of a name for my daughter (mind you I started thinking of it when I was 10) and my oldest son was almost born nameless cause we couldn't figure out what to call him until three days before he was born. I suck at it. Same thing with blog titles, art piece titles, facebook status updates, the list can get quite long. Don't even get me started on usernames for forums and other things. It makes my head want to explode. I think this is why I can't make my mind up on a decent logo and banner too. I have loads of them, just can't decide which one fits me the best cause I am really all over the place. I am a creative hurricane. I have a point in all this, I really do. It has to do with the vector painting project I am doing this week. I have another one to post today. The title sucks. Fair warning has been issued. Beware. This one is another random image pulled from some random image search I did when researching Japanese Harajuku fashion, cause I really just love it, so much insanity and cute, I adore it. Anyhow, the image is a girl with a large stuffed doll. Hence the mindblowingly awesome title of "Doll Girl", yeah, amazing isn't it. Ok, enough with the sarcasm, on to the art!

Original Image:

Cute huh, I also obviously have something for girls with pink hair. I think it may be time for me to rock the pink hair again myself. If anyone knows the source of the image, let me know. I don't have it.

The Vector Painting:

It was particularly fun drawing the tights. I love stripey things. I think I am getting the hang of this pretty well. I paint like this with acrylics all the time. Not much difference with the drawing tablet other than the fact that it's cleaner and I don't have to worry about my kids dumping my paint on the floor as they run screaming through the room.

Well, that's that. More to come. I have at least 3 others that I want to do. Then I have some original illustrations I need to finish up and get posted as well. I am having some fun with these at the moment though. Enjoy!

Vector Painting Practice

I am going to be practicing my vector painting this week so I will be posting my efforts here when I am done with them. This is the first one I have done, took me about 7 hours. Found the image on tumblr and will try and find the source, if anyone knows alert me so I can credit their photo. It is a very colorful photograph and that is the reason why I used it to practice on. So here is the original image:

Pretty isn't it. I really love her pink hair, I had hair that color once. It's fun! Now, here is the image I drew in Illustrator:

  I think the hair and the decorations in it took the most time. Also you have to remember to draw things in a certain order, or rearrange your layers after you group your paths, it is a lot more brain work doing digital art than people realize. You really have to think out each step, not that you don't have to do that when doing art by traditional methods but I think you realize it more when you are working on the computer.

Now the reason I am doing these little practice runs, I am going to start selling portraits and taking on commissions to do digital portraits for people through Etsy and Deviant Art. I decided I needed to do some dry runs before I worked on any for money. Always good to hone your skills. This should be an interesting week!

Blog Mentions

You should go check out the blog for Deluxe and see all the amazing artists they are featuring for the Craft Bazaar.

http://www.deluxeok.net/

I am being featured today, YAY! 

Back to work now, lots to do!

Star Wars Bunch

I made this for my son. Originally it was just a black and white coloring sheet I made for him to color in. Then I decided to color it in as well, cause I love to color. I think I may print these off as ACEO cards, but I don't know. I am a little iffy on the whole selling fan art thing. I think I am going to look into it more so I don't step on any legal toes.

Still working on new items for the upcoming Deluxe Show. Really excited! Also working on some digital cards and dolls to sell in the Etsy and Zazzle stores. Those should be up within the week, hopefully, time willing. Will be updating with new illustrations and such throughout the next few weeks. Have a lot to share!

Deluxe Indie Craft Bazaar

You can find me there this winter!

Pretty excited about it. Especially since my experience at the Plaza District went so well. Had a great time there. Met some really nice people and enjoyed some great food and music. I put some photos from it up on my Facebook Fan Page.

Have been taking a well needed rest for the last two weeks. Reading some books, doodling, ideas, making some patterns for new dolls. Ok well, I have been working some, just not  like a crazy person. I can't help it. I have a real hard time dealing with trying to relax and do nothing. It just isn't me. Back to creating!

Here comes the Catbus

Here are the Totoro shoes from earlier, all colored in and finished. Came out pretty good I think. My daughter loves them, which is good because she is the one who has to wear them.

For some reason Blogger is not letting me upload photos from my computer today so I will have to post the other things later. I had some bags and other things to share but since there are technical glitches beyond my control I will have to do it later.

Still getting ready for the Plaza District Festival next weekend. Really looking forward to it, hopefully I remember to bring my camera so I can share it with everyone later. More to come!

Bead Madness

I have been beading like a maniac for about 2 weeks now, I think. My perception of time is a bit wonky cause I work from home so I never see weekends anymore, but that's a whole other post about the side effects of working in your pajamas every day.

These are for the upcoming Plaza District Festival on October 9th in Oklahoma City.

The top one is going to be a bag and the others are hair pieces. I need to edge them and put them onto some barrettes. Then I decided to show my mess. I have this HUGE stack of drawers that are full of nothing but beads in them. I am slightly shocked though cause when I went through them the other day I realized I am running out of a few colors. I haven't had to buy beads in about 5 years, I buy in bulk, so it was a bit of a surprise to me.

Other than this, I am just trying to get my whole look for my booth together. I haven't had a real booth in a long time and I have changed what I sell so coming up with a cohesive look is stressing me out a bit. I want it to be simple but pleasant to the eye, but not to where it is distracting from what I am selling. The crafts are the stars after all. Until next time, happy creating everyone!

Craft Show Madness

I have been busy the last few weeks getting ready for an upcoming craft show here where I live. I was accepted to have a booth at the Plaza District Festival here in OKC in October. I was busy anyway getting new things made for my Etsy store, but I like making things so I just decided to make more. It is mainly a lot of beadwork. I am making some beaded floral hairpieces, I will show them later when they are finished, and am also beading some hand sewn velvet clutch purses. So for today's show and tell, I have some shoes, a screen in process, and some really cute charm pendants with some of my art work in them.

The shoes I have are just some regular canvas shoes, I am making them for my daughter. She asked me to put Hayao Miyazaki's Totoro characters on them. My Neighbor Totoro is one of our favorite movies to watch as a family and if you haven't ever seen it  you should. So, one of the shoes is Totoro and the other shoe is the Catbus. I haven't painted them yet so they are just drawn in at the time being. I have them on my agenda to do this weekend.

 

  

 

I have another blank pair to do as well, but I am still trying to decide what to put on them. 

T have also been making screens for some shirts I am going to make. I took a pic of me drawing in the design on my Zombie shirt:

 

 

There are two more designs that I am going to have as well, but I figured I will take pics of those after I make the shirts. I do have to say, I love my mod podge after all of this. It is amazing and I will never use anything else.

 

I ordered some resin stickers and some glass cabochons to make pendants with. I spent several hours in Photoshop as well making templates for my pendants so I can put in different designs without having to make new sheets every time. I am going to me making smaller ones as well so I can make charm bracelets with them. The pendants are all 1 inch in size and all the artwork comes from some of my illustrations and doodles I have done. 

 

 

These were a lot of fun to make and a lot easier than I thought they would be.

If you want more information on the show, you can go to their site: http://plazadistrictfestival.com/

More to come!

The Quiet Before the Storm

Things have finally calmed down a bit enough for me to start updating regularly again, or more than I was before at least. That huge project of mine is completed, will share it with you when I can. It was a lot of fun to do cause I got to do a lot of different things. Now that it's done I am preparing myself for a craft show in October. Needless to say, I had to clean and rearrange my workspace, I can actually see my table now! I know how everyone likes pictures so I took some and here they are:

I bet it stays that way for about 3 days. I also have a wonderful case of tendinitis, which makes it a bit difficult to type since my hand looks like it was attacked by a mummy.

 The finger is just a job hazard. I'm turning into a cartoon monster. Dreams do come true!

Well, my hand is starting to spaz a bit so I am going to have to cut this entry short. Off to plan screen prints and canvas shoe designs! Will update progress when I  get started on them. Ciao!

Star Wars and Ice Cream

Things have been a little hectic, working on a project and it's kind of taken up a lot of time, hence the long wait in between posts. Here are a few pieces I am working on and will be finishing once I am done working on the current project I have to do. I will definitely post more about this project once it is completed, but until then I kind of have to just say that I am busy and some things are on the back burner until it gets completed.

So I am going to preview for you my Ice Cream Dream and Star Wars Bunch illustrations. I will also show you my extremely messy work space. I try to keep it clean, but it never stays that way.

I am going to finish this one up in Illustrator later. I really can't wait to work on it more cause I think it's cute and silly. It basically sums up my love of frozen dairy products. YUM!

It's a nice little family portrait. This one is going to be finished in Photoshop after I ink it by hand. I basically made it for my son, he is a huge Star Wars fan. He wants to take fencing cause it will be like fighting with light sabers. So he will be getting a copy of this to color all on his own once I get it inked.

Here is my laptop. I do everything on it. Everything. I also own multiple USBs and that is where I keep all my illustrations so I have enough space on my laptop to work. I love my laptop.

Yeah, here is my messy desk. It was clean a few days ago, now it looks worse than this. At least I know where everything is, it is a very organized mess. I really need to clean it again.

I am going to attempt to post every Friday from now on. I need to be more consistent. Even if I am busy and can barely check my emails. See you next week, hopefully with something interesting!

Changing Layouts, Again

Since Blogger has this wonderful new Design feature, I decided to take full advantage of it and give myself a new background and layout. I kind of got tired of seeing this sea of white every time I logged in. I am also working on a new header, so until that gets finished, I am using the blogger default. Not quite as attractive as I would like it to be, but it will have to do until I get my new one completed. It has my new logo on it and it just fits me better than the previous one did. Of course since I am changing it here, I have to change it everywhere else also, fun fun fun!

I also got to thinking that I may start doing a weekly feature on here on how to draw things. I got the inspiration for this from the project I am working on currently. Now they aren't going to be these mind blowing how to draw things in Illustrator or Photoshop, there are enough of those all over the place. I just want to do your old fashioned, pencil and paper, how to draw things. I get kind of tired of everything having to be digital all the time. It's just for fun and for people who like to doodle cute things. This probably won't start for another month or so because I am kind of back logged with my ever increasing to do list.

I will be updating again soon with some pieces I have been working on. I have some really fun images I have sketched out and will share with you, hopefully this week. I will also put up the final images up when they are completed. I am also excited about some new things coming up for the Etsy store. As soon as I get them ready to launch, I will share it here as well. So many things to do and it seems like I never have enough time. Glad to be busy though!

Bubblegum Baby

Done in Adobe Illustrator CS3. Another one is the series I am doing on weird holidays. This one is for Bubblegum Day in February. Will be available for prints in my Zazzle store. Please do not use without my permission.

Sugar Shock

Here is what I have been working on the last two days. It took me so long because Adobe Illustrator was being a pain in my butt and crashing. First time it crashed before I could even save anything. Next time I saved things every 5 minutes! So, yeah, those of you out there who are just now delving into the wonderful world of digital art, save your work every few minutes or end up screaming at your computer for your own stupidity. I was so upset at myself the first time that I just went to bed. I posted the line art to this in the previous post, so I am just going to put up the finished piece here in this one. Prints are available on my Zazzle site. This is one in a series I am working on for weird holidays. I think this is for National Candy Month.

I especially like the bon bon and the gumballs. They are my favorite out of the whole thing. This took me about 6 hours, mainly cause I do a lot of back and forth and I had about 17 layers. Each piece of candy was its own layer and group. Plus, I am still just not as quick with digital art as I am otherwise. Mainly because of the whole saving issue I spoke of earlier. Still not second nature to me yet. Really I am just a perfectionist who redoes everything at least 3 times before I am semi happy with it. More to come in this series, next is this cute little ice cream freak or the bubble gum girl, haven't decided yet. Plus more to draw out. Have a really fun Star Wars one I am working on.

Bubblegum and Sugar Attacks

I have a few illustration in the making. They are two in a series I am working on dealing with fun and weird holidays. Potentially they will become a calendar, but I am having some creative issues with a couple of months out of the year, mainly January, April, and December. The rest I have ideas for. I also may turn them into a coloring book as well to sell on Lulu.com but I am still debating that idea. I am going to make them all digital illustrations though and sell prints of them on Zazzle. I also have some digital paper dolls I am working on. I love paper dolls, I used to play with them all the time as a kid.

The girl is for Bubblegum Day in February. I wanted something cute and what is cuter than a little girl with curls blowing a bubble with her gum. The finished one won't have all the black inking on it. The pile of candy is for National Candy Month in June. I may or may not keep it inked in black. I still haven't made my mind up on it yet. Plus the image is sideways, thanks blogger. I will post these up as soon as I get them finished. Hopefully soon cause I am getting frustrated with my lack of time due to crazy family, end of the school year stuff. I also may just finish up my other sketches and then color all of them. Decisions, decisions, decisions. Also, may be making some jewelry soon too. Still thinking on that though.

New page and rants about Image Galleries

I decided to add a children's illustration page so that I could split up my illustrations a bit. I think that putting cute images next to zombies and other more mature content is a bit much.

I am still looking for a better format to show them in though. I like how you can place images on tumbler but I have been here for a long time and I just had a bunch of stuff printed with this site address on them so moving now would be kind of a pain, but the whole image gallery thing here drives me nuts. I don't want to have to get a flickr account just to be able to show my work. I have a photobucket that I barely use as it is. I also have most of my things on Deviant Art. I wish I was able to find some kind of slide show that allowed me to do what the DA Portfolio does. So far I have had no luck.

Well, now since I have this new page I need to redo the slide show in the Illustration page and make a new one for the new page. I really should do this while I have time between projects. I have a few things keeping me busy now since I am working for a greeting card company. It's nice to be able to do it. I have always liked making cards. I have always made hand made cards for people since I was a kid. I only do that if I really like you though!

No Illustration Friday post this week, I really did not like the theme. They have been a bit obscure since I joined and it ends up taking me a week to think of something so I just don't.  Maybe next week I can make something, until then I have my cards and my other illustrations I have sketched out to do for posters and promo items.

Illustration Friday: Detective

It's a little late but I had fun doing it. India ink and Prismacolor markers.

Blog Mentions! oh my!

I have been mentioned on a blog for the work I did on "The Quilt That Wouldn't Quit". I have never been mentioned on a blog before so I am kind of geeking out a bit. It is nice being recognized for your work. Here is the link:

http://blackthreads.blogspot.com/2010/03/quilt-that-woldnt-quilt-by-cynthia.html
Go check it out!

If you want to see all the illustrations for the book, plus a few concept illustrations for it you can go to my deviant art gallery here:

http://luksicreations.deviantart.com/gallery/#Quilt-Book-Illustrations

Cards! Lovely litttle Love Cards.

Like I said previously, these were supposed to be for Valentine's Day but hey, love is an every day thing and not a once a year thing so I decided to finish them and VOILA! They are block prints done with magenta speedball ink. The ink is the water soluble kind so it will run if it gets wet. Though it does stain your fingers for a little while. They came out a lot brighter than I thought they would so it was a bit shocking.  I like the designs though, so I think I will play with them as vector images and put them up for sale in the Zazzle store as well. These cards are going into the Etsy shop, hopefully in the next hour or so, definitely by the end of the day.

This is the first time I have done lino cut block printing in a very long time. It felt really good to dig into those blocks and scrape around. I always draw my design out first then transfer it on the block. I am too much of a control freak to just start cutting on those things without knowing where and what I am drawing. Also, you have to remember to do it backwards since it is basically a stamp. I think they turned out pretty well. I think the next batch will go smoother since I finally got the hang of it again.

One more thing, I received an extremely cute photo from one of my mom's co-workers, her boss really, and it is of his grand baby playing with one of my handmade teddy bears.
It is so cute and it made me really happy to see it being played with! Here is the photo:

I need to make more plushies. Have the ideas and the patterns made, just need more material!

Construction over and Cards!

I am a fast little worker bee when I want to get something done. I have some temporary slide shows up to show my work. I am using those until I can find better ones, maybe with flickr or someplace else. Most likely flickr, just need to get my stuff set up there and no time for that until this weekend. So enjoy the newness.

I have also been block printing cards again. Will get a post of those up in the next few days. Letting them dry so I can take photos of them. My fingers are stained magenta, it is a bit strange looking, almost alien like. It's more hot pink than magenta really. Very delayed love cards. I had intended to have them done for Valentine's Day but then life got a bit crazy so half got done and then I just now got to finish the rest. Love happens every day though so who says you can't make love cards any other time of the year! Will be sharing them by the end of the week and they will be up for sale in the Etsy shop. Going to overhaul that shop soon too. Need to be more descriptive and all that fun stuff. Back to work now!

Under Construction for a tiny while...

With all my stressing out about websites and portfolios on websites and blogs and all this crazy information which makes your head spin if you know absolutely nothing about HTML like I do (cause frankly, I never took the classes and even when I tried, it was like a foreign language to me), I FINALLY decided to figure out how to reconfigure my mess on here. How about that, amazing isn't it. Well I found out I can add pages onto my lovely little blog here and get my tabs set up and I don't have to move anywhere! YAY BLOGGER!!! I can't remember if it's always been that way, I don't think it has, but it probably has since I am not the most observant person in the world about this kind of thing. ANYWAY, I am rambling and what I am really trying to say is, SITE UNDER CONSTRUCTION.

This place is being overhauled for a bit to make it more functional and not such an eyesore. Tabs have been made and information is being moved to those nice little pages I have made. Until all the info has been moved, the links to my hot mess will still be available over here on the right, or the left, depending on which template I have thrown it on. Sorry for the inconvenience, mainly mine, not like you guys care all that much. I shall now go celebrate with lemon lime soda and an aspirin. *swoosh*

Guess what's back

Back again, shoes are back, tell a friend. (Dork Alert engaged I know)

Anyway, I have new Hi Top Sneakers in the Zazzle store. I decided to have shoes again since they are now carrying Hi Tops. I had taken the previous shoes out. Here they are:

Sweets Hi Top Sneakers by LuksiCreations
See more Candy Keds Shoes

Bubble Hi Top Sneakers by LuksiCreations
More Shoes Keds Shoes

I think I am going to streamline the store a bit more soon. Plus I will be making custom hand painted shoes to put in the etsy shop too. Soon, I have lots of exciting things to make and share!

The One Man Hat Band

I decided to do my baby sister a favor and bead her man a hat band. It was supposed to be for Christmas, which he got to look at it but I hadn't finished it yet. It's now March, I just got it done last week, lol. So much for me being swift on this one. Granted though, I have to be in an emotionally stable place when I do any kind of traditional bead work. I can't bead when I am feeling crazy or for certain other reason I do not care to share with the population at large, kind of personal spiritual reasons that I just do not feel like explaining. Basically, when you are in a rotten mood, the beads seem to know and they will hate you for it and not do what you want them to then the item you are making is just going to be a source of frustration for you and you will resent it the whole time you are making it. This is why it took me so long, I didn't want to resent it. It isn't necessarily a pattern I would normally do, it is very different and one of a kind. Kind of like the person I made it for. He really is a great guy. So here is the hat band I made for him to wear with his cowboy hat. The photos are progressive and I made it with nylon thread, beeswax, seed beads (size 11), card stock, felt, and backed it with leather.






That's my son holding it for me. I think he would kill me if he knew I posted his picture somewhere, he is kind of shy lol.

Now that I have that finished I can start on another piece. Well several pieces actually. They will all be part of a traditional grass dance outfit for my husband. He is going to start dancing again and we are hitting the pow-wow circuit hardcore this summer so of course, he wanted brand new bead work. Here is kind of a sneak peek at it and a few pics of the beginnings of his cuffs:




Please, this is a family design so no stealing it. As in, everyone in my family has this on their regalia so if I see it on yours I will shame you out. You know what I mean. Use it for inspiration all you want, just don't blatantly rip it off. I will have some more updates soon, shoe related ones! EXCITED!!!