Frustrations

I made this while dealing with some Adobe Illustrator frustrations. You'll note that no part of this wallpaper was made in Adobe Illustrator.

Because I Can

Mother Goose Nursery Rhymes

Even when I was a kid, people - sometimes strangers - would tell me that I ought to draw children's book illustrations. And I wholeheartedly agreed.

When I was 8 I wrote and illustrated a book for my youngest sister. My mom helped me make a hard cover for it out of cardboard and cloth and she stitched in the binding.
Encouraged, I illustrated a bunch more, but those had less impressive staple binding and copy-paper covers.

At the age of 12 I wrote and illustrated another book and submitted it as a 4-H art project at the county fair. I got a blue ribbon and went to the state fair where the judges looked at me as if I had gotten lost.

It's been a long time coming, but I'm proud to present my first ever, full color children's book. It's not technically mine - it's the Amish couple's who published it. I'm just sort of the in-house illustrator. But it's all public domain nursery rhymes and my illustrations, so it feels like mine.

It's 43 pages long, hardcover and is printed on glossy paper with gorgeous, full-bleed color.

You can pick it up in Amish shops in Northern Indiana and you want to order it drop me a line on etsy or facebook  or twitter and I'll get you the contact info for ordering your own copy.

I've got little previews of the illustrations inside here, here and here.

Silent Songbird

I have a condition called Fibyomyalgia. Or Myofascial Pain Syndrome. Or both. My doctors didn't agree and now I don't have health insurance so it's a little unclear.

The main thing is, my muscles hurt.

I'm not a person that this is a big deal for.
Some people have such severe pain that they can't work, it's hard to sleep, and even small household chores can wipe them out for the day. I hold down a full time job, keep my apartment respectable, sell my personal art on the side, volunteer weekly, and have a decent social life.

But every now and again it becomes problematic.

It isn't the biggest problem I've had, but this past week I've had a bit of a pain in my jaw. At first I thought my teeth hurt and I had cavities again and, I won't lie, I was pretty upset. But as I considered it more I realized that my teeth were not bothered by crunching up hard foods, drinking ice-water, or eating sweets - all cavity related issues that popped up last time.

I came to realize that actually my jaw didn't hurt at all in the early morning (like it might if I were grinding my teeth at night) or in the late evening (when, this week, I've been home alone).

Kids, my mouth has been hurting whenever I've been singing! I tend to sing when I'm in the car or the tv is off in my apartment (though I try to not, because I figure my neighbors have never done anything to deserve that)
So I decided to quit.  It's not like I sing well, so what's the big deal?

Oh. Apparently I love to sing. I catch myself trying to sing all the time. I hear the chorus of a song I love and I just want to belt it out. It's been all of two days since I had this revelation and I'm going nuts!

Butterfly Princess

Apparently I've never listed this to my shop before, even though it's a print I designed quite some time ago and presented at other venues. I have several friends who get excited about princesses and formal wear so I drew this especially for them.

Because

Because this site sometimes still gets views, I thought I'd let it be known that I'm shutting it down and starting a new blog over at www.everybodyillustrated.blogspot.com with cartoons and random snippets.

.

I know no one reads this any more. I'm ok with that. I just need to write.

It seems like a lot of death is happening lately.

A kid I used to know killed himself this week. It's been years since his family moved away. In my head he's six. His family never even saw it coming.

When I was in high school my friends talked a lot about killing themselves, but most of them never even attempted it. This kid, just out of the blue is gone. No warning signs. No note. Just gone.

I don't usually cry when people die. Maybe because no one I know well died young. Maybe because I don't cry over much anyway. Suicides always make me cry though. Even if I don't know the person at all. It's not so much for them, but the people left behind, trying to figure out why their love wasn't enough.

You know when someone dies of disease or in an accident, even if it's a kid people always say to remember the good times. And you know that at least you had that and that at least you loved each other. But suicide's so cruel, all you can do is wonder what went wrong. When did things start going bad? Last month? Last year? Were they ever good?

I get why people contemplate suicide. Life's hard. Death's easy. I get it.
I always wonder though about suicides. Did they imagine how it would be for their family? For their friends? Could they see how it would play out? Did they care? Do they think about the hole they're leaving?

Whenever I hear teenagers talking about doing something unhealthy. Suicide. Illegal activities. Running away. I always want to ask them if they love their family. I know they'll say yes. They'd stop a bullet for their family. Maybe they would. I don't know. I just think if you love people you do what's best for them. Sometimes what's best for people is for you to live a good life. Graduate. Get a job. Pay your bills. Visit at Christmas. Be polite. Stay alive.
It doesn't take a whole lot to love the people who love you back.

DZ Fantasy Feature

I just got featured on DZ Fantasy's blog. Check it out!

In other good news, my boss gave me an extra day off! That's exciting because I get to spend some more time at my parent's and with some friends.

Today's favorites from Etsy!

Jupita makes some awesome bracelets out of beads and recycled Starbucks gift cards.

I really like Coffee Talk and I adore Star(bucks) in Her Eyes.

Maybe it's mostly because I adore the artwork on most Starbucks brochures, pamphlets, & gift cards, but I'm also a fan of the way Jupita cuts them up and there certainly is an art to how she strings them together with other beads.

And while I have never held one in my hand the quality looks stellar.

Lily Queen also has some lovely jewelry. I don't know if it's the most unique stuff I've seen around, but I just think it's put together beautifully.

I adore the clasp on the Berry Bracelet. And these Toffee Drop Earrings manage to be orginal and elegant at the same time. My absolute favorite, the one I would buy if I actually had extra money (oh how I wish I had extra money!) is this beautiful Flying Across the Lawn Bracelet.

She has TWO in stock which I find immensely comforting.

That Silly Girl is somewhat limited in her selection, but I love the Amy Butler Lotus Pouch. A little bit Retro, a little bit Modern. A lot orange. Just great all together really. So many things that look 70s also look tacky, but this looks 70s to me and it looks really, really class as well.

Vaca!

Mostly I'm not doing anything interesting on my vacation. I draw, watch movies and put up with my sibling's Fable obsession.

Last night Holly, Bethy & I went to see Valkyrie. We were out so late that I nearly suggested Bethy and I skip Sunday School because I was so tired. I wish we had, the whole thing was more than usually frustrating.

Tommorow, Bethy and I are going shopping because a beloved aunt sent us gift cards to Barne's & Noble. Bliss.

I've also been spending a fair amount of time promoting my etsy store because...well I'd like to sell things. But promoting it has also made me realizing how HARD it is to get exposure, so in the interest of helping others, here are a few of my current favorites:


The Pair A Birds makes lovely (and pricey) prints that I adore. The style is just amazing. I might be a little bit jealous - actually.
My favorites are Orson and Melba in the Field of Marshmallows, Ruby, and Poison Ivy.

I love the Whirl Ring by Rafya. I love the color and it just seems unique. The beauty of handmade. The "whirl" is made of cold clay (I have no idea what that is) but the base is adjustable. And $12 is a pretty sweet price.

The only reason I'm mentioning Faeried Treasures in this post is that I feel confident that the impressive lady who makes them will make more should the items I adore be bought up. If I did not believe this I would hide it from you all.
I think these little owl earrings are the cutest ever. Forget that owls are a fad - I would love them no matter what (and so should you!). These are actually made of vintage beads and come in a variety of colors.
I also love these In the Tall Trees earrings. They're so elegant!

That's it for today. I don't want to be overwhelming, but I do think I'll keep posting my favorites. Not many people read my blog, but some exposure is better than none - I think.

Merry Christmas and all that jazz

Christmas came and went, everyone loved their gifts, hurray and fun times.

It was a dvd Christmas at our house. My brother got The Empirers New Groove, the tenth season of Stargate, and I, Robot. My dad got the 3rd season of Star Trek, the first of Star Trek: The Next Generation, and Get Smart.

We enjoy our sci-fi here.

Bethy gave Daniel a binary clock just to solidfy his nerd status.

I've mostly just been relaxing. I took a quiz on teen slang (I'm the coolest mom ever! Now if I only had kids!) and I've been posting on the etsy boards to try and increase my page views (and sales). I'm going to be featured on http://dzfantasy.blogspot.com next week, so that's a plus!

Bethy and Holly both have to work so it's kinda slow around here, but on the up side, I got 10 1/2 hours of sleep last night!

Wave Jumping

My latest drawing. I did the actual line work while I was on the cruise, but I've only just now finished it up. The girl's swimsuit was inspired by one of the little girls on the boat, but sadly there was no wave jumping during the cruise. That was my one let down about the cruise...no beach. I love to swim in the ocean.

Also, I've posted a new card on Etsy, so check it out!

Greeting Cards and Fun Stuff like that

My new Etsy shop is up at EverybodyElse.etsy.com - I'm excited about it. Tell your family and friends. And, any feedback you have would be appreciated because I'm new at this and I don't know what the heck I'm doing!

Etsy Shop Name?

I'm getting ready to set up my online card shop. I'm having trouble deciding what to name it though. I'm thinking that my current log on name of "littlecynicism" (which under etsy would also be my shop name) is not such a good pick. For one thing, my drawings aren't cynical at all. People usually coo things like "sweet", "dear" or "precious". For another, I've found that most people can't type the word cynicism correctly more than 5 times out of ten.

So, I know I should have my own ideas, but I'm kinda unsure.

Just to be clear, anything along the lines of "Melody's Art & Cards" or "Designs by Melody" is not going to happen. The trouble is coming up with something unique...but not so unique that people can't remember it.

Christmas Shopping

It's that time of year when everyone expects you to get them stuff, so it's time for another shopping post by me. Last year's posst continue to get the most hits out of anything I write. Not all that surprising.

I'll start off by plugging the Etsy shop of my friend Crystal aka indiglow84.

Crystal makes her own felted beads, the necklace and earring set pictured also feature some nice antique beads. I also especially like this necklace with green felted beads with tiny sea shells, but of course the butterfly necklace is lovely too, so I'd really recommend any of them.

Of course if you like the felted style there is plenty out there for the clinically insane...



I've not linked to them because the likelihood of anyone wanting to purchase them...

She's not selling them on Etsy right now, but Crystal also makes some cute magnets. I can only assume that she'll be selling them at the craft fair (December 6th!).

Pretend for a second that felt is the theme for this post, because I think that these felt trivets I saw on delight.com are awesome. They come as a set of four (in one color).

I'm also a fan of the Bow Lovely Wristlet Clutch from Fred Flare. I'm always a fan of wrislets because my friends seem to boycott purses. Since my purse is huge I end up holding their keys, ids & whatnot. If only they owned one of these (or any) wristlets they could carry it all themselves without feeling so weighed down! I love all things Hello Kitty and so do both of my sisters, so I consider these vinyl Hello Kitties from Urban Outfitters would make an adorable addition to any gift. And at $8 each - so affordable! My one complaint is that you can't choose which one you get, which almost ensures that I will get the one that is least adorable.



Still obsessed with trees, so I think this 100% post consumer recycled material journal with unlined paper - is amazing. The cover's made out of cherry wood!

Continuing the tree obsession - this Little Birch Jewelry Stand (also from Urban Outfitters) is all natural looking (except not, because it's metal).



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Trauma

I've had a bad week. In four days I've been in two car wrecks.

The first one was decidedly not my fault. The second was a slide off.

Most of the backroads were ok, so I decided to go the short way. I don't know what I was thinking. I shouldn't have risked it in any case. But I did. And I was fine...until I wasn't.

That last road was a sheet of ice and I was only going about 20 mph, but all of a sudden I was also going through a barbed wire fence. Normally when things like that happen you see it in slow-mo. Like the in the movies. This time all I remember is that one second I was on the road in complete control of the truck and the next I was plowing through a fence. There's no in between. It happened that fast.

It's always a weird feeling to me when disaster hits. Because it feels as if my world should be ending. I should be miserable. I should be hysterical. But I'm usually, almost always, quite calm.

I had to work myself up to cry, because I knew I should cry. Because I knew it was awful.

The Amish guy, whose fence was bobbing around in the air, was really nice about the whole thing. Really nice. Like, unfathomably. I just want you to understand how nice he was. There was nothing strained about it. He wasn't angry. The niceness wasn't out of obligation. It wasn't strained. And when he told me not to worry about replacing it, he meant it. It was weird, kids, but oh-so welcome.

I called the office and told them what had happened. It was so completely surreal. People do not have lives like this. Not unless they're me.

One of my co-workers sent her husband out to check out me. He let me know that I should call the cops, since there was property damage. Then my boss came out and sat with me while I waited for police and the actual dismay over what had happened sunk in.

It was a pretty depressing day. I'm not normally sad a lot. I know I don't strike people as being uber happy, but normally I am happy. The lack of happy was almost as bad as anything else that happened. I was so worn out by it that I went to bed around 8 pm and slept for 12 hours!

Today was much better. For some reason walking around in the hidious cold for a couple hours today felt really good and the movie Twilight was not nearly as awful as I thought it would be. I...actually enjoyed it.

I hate what happened, it makes me feel like a terrible person. I hate the amount of money involved and I hate that I broke something. But I can't change it now.

Night Time Snow

My latest card design. At first I didn't think I was going to like this one as well, but now I think it might be my favorite of the three.

Ech

Today was sort of non-descript. I designed ads, I fixed photos.

Then I left work and slammed into an old lady running a light.

At first I thought that she just drove off, but it turns out that she slammed into a barbed wire fence. Another lady and two cars of teenagers pulled over to see if I was ok. They'd all seen the lady pull out in front of me and been afraid they were going to hit too. They all agreed to stay and tell the police what they'd seen and they were good company while we waited for the police to arrive.

The policeman was very nice, but he wouldn't let me drive my car away. Might have been something to do with the panel hanging off of it. I'm really hoping it isn't totaled, but I won't know that for a day or two.

My arm hurts, but I think it's just jarred a bit. We'll see how well I feel tommorrow.

Sad Day

I've been lusting after the Nikon D40 ever since I heard it was coming on the market. I had decided to buy one on Black Friday if I could find a good price. I was browsing online to see what a D40 would go for right now and I came across one that cost $333 on broadwayphoto.com.
I saw good reviews for them on another site so I decided to go for it. I bought a warranty for another $60 and received a confirmation e-mail.

The next afternoon I was woken up from a much needed nap by one of their sales reps confirming my order. He confirmed my address and then tried to tell me that the battery that comes with the Nikon D40 only lasts for 10 minutes. I would need to buy a 1 hour battery for $59 or a 4 hour battery for $89.

Kids, what battery costs $89? Why would Nikon make such a battery? Even being only semi-conscious, this seemed outrageous. I told the fellow so and he insisted that if I found a lower price they would match it and that he could put my order on hold for me until I was sure I wanted to order.

I browsed online and found many replacement batteries for the Nikon to be as low as $13.99, but the clincher for me was when I asked on a Nikon D40/D60 Flickr Group and I got 25 variations on this reply,
"[Broadway Photo is] a scam. The D40 battery is the best in all the camera lines. You can get a D40 battery for cheap on ebay.

Their scam is well reknown, offer a camera cheap, then require a confirmation call. That is where they either say the camera comes without battery and charger, or hard sell you into expensive add ons that you don't want or need. If you refuse to buy, then your camera is put on back order forever. If you cancel they charge you a "restock fee"."

They also pointed me to resellerratings where I discovered that 9 out of 10 people had terrible experiences with Broadway Photo and at least one person had their credit card number used fraudulently soon after their order was placed.

A few people got camera's in good condition after being firm with the salesperson. But most people who went through with their order from Broadway Photo got immitations or their camera was "back ordered" (one person called in pretending to be someone else and discovered that they had 36 of that camera in stock!).

After my innitial findings of cheap, long lasting batteries for the Nikon D40, around every corner - I called Broadway Photo. I hung up after being on hold for about two millenia (or ten minutes, but still kids).

Then I e-mailed Broadway Photo and let them know that I was not impressed with their company and was considering canceling my order. That $333 was just soooo tempting though that I idn't want to cancel just yet (I did not mention that, I told them I could get it almost as cheap elsewhere...and I can, just they're probably a scam too).

But after seeing resellerratings.com and hearing from my new Flickr friends I knew I had to give up on the wildly cheap price and resign myself to paying whatever moderately cheap price comes along on Black Friday.

I called a few minutes ago and told the Broadway Rep I wanted to cancel my order.
"Ok!" he yelled cheerfully over the insane amount of noise in the background, "Would you mind telling me why you want to cancel?"

I explained the discrepencey between their battery prices and every one else's battery prices.

The smug Indian (supposedly this company exists in New York, but I heard no evidence of this) wanted to know where I had gotten my information. He thought he had me, I could hear in his voice that he thought I didn't know anything about anything (after all, if I did why would I be buying from them?). I told him I talked to other Nikon D40 users and that they said the battery that came with their D40 lasted for hours and hours. They didn't have to buy theirs seperately and when they did it didn't cost any old $59 either!

"Hahaha," he cackled, "But they paid $499 for theirs didn't they! Even with the battery you'll save $70!"

"But the batteries don't cost that much. I checked. I can buy the same thing for $20."

I couldn't understand the next bit, so finally I just interuppted and said, "Sir, I know it is a scam. You're trying to sell me some cheap piece of crap. I want to cancel my order."

Then he was an angry Indian. He told me that they weren't a scam and that I needed to check all my facts before I started accussing anyone of anything. I was about to reply that he needed to improve his customer service, but he snapped, "Your order is canceled. Goodbye!" You'll just have to imagine the tone. It wasn't friendly.

So, now I'm feeling a little depressed. I thought I could buy a camera and buy some boots to comabt the snow in, but now it seems I will have to choose...and I know boots should win, but kids I SO want that camera.

My new Flickr friends suggested I buy my camera from B&H, Adorama, or Amazon - but those would be refurbished. On reseller ratings www.beachcamera.com got mostly good reviews and they're selling for $419 brandnew, plus they'll throw in a free 4 gig card. Maybe I'll buy from them.

Holdays are delicious

Actually, I'm not all that big a fan of gingerbread. I like my sweets sweet. But, while I'm more of a sugar cookie girl, I like the idea of gingerbread.

I think I usually draw my people by themselves lately. It used to be I drew a lot of people together. One of my favorite things to draw was a whole crowd of people at a fair or the mall or skating rink. But lately they've been on their own. It's sort of understood that the person they're smiling at is just off the page, but even so...maybe I'll try putting a bunch of people together in my next card piece. Family togetherness and all that.

I'm going to try and print at least these two designs this next week. I'll be selling stuff at a little holiday craft fair on December 6 (get in touch if you want details, there should be a lot of good vendors) and hopefully getting up on etsy.com in the next week or so.

Good morning, to you

Yesterday I was in such a pathetic mood. I just didn't care at all about my work. I think I was just too tired to care. I was trying to get through my day without an energy drink, which I did, but it was not a good day to give that a go. So this morning I've had two full nights of sleep in a row and I had an energy drink and thankfully I'm actually excited about designing ads today. Good thing too because we're doing a special section for a local sale and the ads are all full color and different sizes than we normally do so they're pretty much adorable and it would just be such a shame to be apathetoc about that.