Greeting Cards by Melody

My cards finally got printed today. They turned out really well so I think I might draw up some Christmas cards for myself too. Eventually I'd like to sell these on Etsy, but before I can do that I need to get my printer to commit to a faster turn around time...and I need to figure out how to best ship them.

Maybe I'll think about that after the cruise.

Ooh Expo!

After hiking through the woods a couple dozen times this weekend I was a bit worried about how I would hold up at the Graph Expo today. I shouldn't have worried. By the time we got to the McCormick Center I was already giddy.

Being the sole representative of my company at the expo might have made me feel really grown up...except for my "business casual" attire of a hoody & jeans...and the fact that my objective for the expo was to grab as many freebies as possible.

So mostly it was like college, except that being with people from our split off company I sometimes had to actually listen to what vendors were saying. But that was fun too because I got to play pretend and act like maybe I actually knew what was going on. Even more amusing was when I actually did!

The only sad moment in my day was when we were driving up to the center and I thought about how funny it would be if I ran into Prof. Davis with a new group of graphic design majors going to their first expo. Oh yeah. That can't happen.



The rest of the day was, literally, a bunch of giggles. Leslie and I laughed. All. Day. Long.
I don't know the last time was that I've laughed so much. All the other attendees looked serious and bored the whole time. We laughed about ev-er-y-thing. Vendors, freebies, other attendees, demonstrations. All funny.



And I did get a ton of cool freebies. Mostly posters, but I got a nice pen, a usb-multi-port, a bag & some spiffy die-cuts too. A lot of the posters I had no interest in because mostly they were just pictures of pretty, often scantily clad, women. Could it be because most expo attendees are men? But towards the end we visited the HP booth and, whatever HP lacks in service (it's a lot) they make up in posters.

right now

Just a random office doodle. I colored it a bit. Just for kicks.

Today was a good day. I think doodles help my mood.

Ft. Wayne is Not My Friend

After I graduated college my parents moved from the house I grew up in out into the middle of nowhere. For a long time it was simply impossible for me to visit without first getting lost somewhere in the middle of Indiana.

Since my youngest sister, Bethy, goes to school in Ft. Wayne I usually pick her up the way and she usually had to endure a couple hours of, "No wait, maybe this road is the one that...oh, is Muncie on our way there?" No. Muncie is not.

I've been pretty good about it this past year though. We usually make it back in record time.
This weekend was not one of those times. When I got to her school we talked for...too long...about the school's looming demise. Then my sister announced that she had library books to return. "Ok we'll stop by the campus li- oh, the Ft. Wayne library. Oh it's close and easy to find well o-" No children. Close may describe the library, but easy to find. No.

It seemed easy on map quest. But in reality Map Quest doesn't seem to understand that a one way street...well it only goes one way. Makes it hard to turn onto if you need to go the opposite way. Then there was the fact that the roads did not actually intersect where Map Quest said they did.

Eventually we got out of Ft. Wayne, but not before I took the wrong road trying to leave.

Is your boyfriend a soldier

Ok, way back I posted about my roommate's boyfriend being a soldier and the shirt I designed. Well, that shirt hasn't been printed, but at cafepress I now have available a whole host of shirts, hoodies, mugs, stickers, buttons, pins & so forth. There are two designs,"My boyfriend is a Soldier" & "My Boyfriend is in the Army".

Because of the way that cafepress is set up I have to set up different shops for each design - so this should be, well interesting. But, given the excessive number of people who are dating boys in the armed forces I think that at least some people will be interested in buying my stuff. My actual art work might be a bit harder to sell.

In today's news

A while back I posted about a lady sentenced to public humiliation for stealing from Wal-mart.
She had to hold up a sign proclaiming her theft.

It's happened again. Except this guy rammed his car into a close gate while drunk. He has to hold up a sign saying, "I was stupid."

This is not my life

Currently trying to come up with a logo for column in the mag. You know, I think unpaid writers may be the most pretentious people in the world?

Now, I don't use this word lightly as I think that it is mainly abused by pretentious unpaid writers (it's right up there with misanthropic, which is fun to say but shouldn't pop up nearly as often as it does), but it fits.

Note that this is not about paid writers. These people have to actually work to come up with something that pleases their client or boss, just like the rest of us. Because when the paid writer receives their work back with red ink all over it they can ramble all they want about compromising the integrity of their work, but to receive payment they will make those changes.

The unpaid writer has no reason to not ramble. And ramble they will. Frequently about inane topics such as who they handed a safety pin to twenty years ago or, in fits of absurd superciliousness, quoting themselves.

But it doesn't end there. One ill fated day they will send you an e-mail suggesting that they need their own logo and a column header three inches high.

Since all we pay our writers is the ego boost of seeing their name in print I suppose this is something akin to a raise in pay.So perhaps this could all be solved by handing our writers a couple of dollars every month. Just as long as we never pay them by the word.

Today

Star light, star bright

I don't exactly get bored in meetings, but my hands need something to do. And, somehow when I'm thinking about something other than drawing, I draw better. I do some of my best sketching in work meetings or church (while I'm also taking notes).

I also like to sketch while I'm watching tv, but that doesn't take much thought and it also involves looking at the screen so the quality level varies.

Of course sometimes I do delightful drawings when nothing much is going on, so maybe the difference is all in my head. It probably has nothing to do with my setting and everything to do with something silly like what I ate the night before.

At work I draw illustrations for a collection of stories we're printing. Those can be quite hard. The office is great for designing advertisements, but not so conducive to illustrating. Lately I've been having a hard time doing quality work on those illustrations.