It's been awhile since I updated things around here and life's been a pretty hectic roller coaster lately. In July Robert and I celebrated our 5th anniversary together and his birthday came and went, both reasonably uneventful. August was fairly slow, waiting for Dragon*Con and dealing with some family related stuff. Dragon*Con itself was a blast. It started a bit slow, and certain events were a bit disappointing, but the art show and the people were fantastic as ever. I got the chance to sit with Jessica Douglas for awhile, which was a blast, and I went to the Monster in an Hour event that she hosted. There I got to meet Ania and Peter Mohrbacher and , Brenda Lyons , Melissa Findley , and Angela Sasser . It turns out that Angela and Robert went to college together, which was a fun surprise. We got a few prints while there, and I added a few extra people to my watchlist. We also dropped by to see Michelle Poust and Jennie Breeden as we always do, and took a lot of pictures.

The mood after the convention was heightened as it usually is, and things continued in a fairly hectic manner for the rest of the month. I finished my Think Pink contest entry, saw District 9 on my birthday (and received some craft supplies, including glitter), and ordered a print from . I ended up with a hand-me-down laptop that I could use for travel and as a second computer for communication so that my main computer could be used pretty much exclusively for art. Not long after that our funds came to a bit of a stand-still due to some family members having some serious financial issues.

As October rolled around, Robert and I switched to an early morning schedule because of his job, and I started getting nervous and excited about the results for the Think Pink contest. I was extremely pleased when I saw the results. Second place for vector is definitely not a bad result, especially given the number of wonderful entries overall. Check out the news article for more details. news.deviantart.com/article/95…

I created a portfolio using dA's new portfolio system thelayersofdesign.daportfolio.… and sent it to a company as my first non-POD branch out. No response, yet, but I've got a couple of similar places that I want to try as well.

Not long afterwards, we got an invitation from a couple of our neighbors to join them for a trip down to Tybee Island (just off Savannah, GA) for Pirate Fest. The invitation came fairly short notice and neither Robert nor I keep any pirate gear around (we are firmly in the ninja camp after all), so we decided to do something a bit different. We dressed up as ninjas, complete with the internet geek cred of being shirt ninjas (check out the comic Real Life if you've never heard of this character. www.reallifecomics.com ) That turned out to be a complete blast. We appeared to be the only two ninjas on the island, and the response from the other revellers was much more positive than I had originally imagined it would be. I'll try to get a couple of pictures posted in my scraps later to share the fun.

For Halloween, I have a piece that I've been working on for the past month, and tonight we should be finally getting the chance to carve our pumpkins. We're still not sure what we're doing for Halloween. There's several things that we could do, but no definite plans yet. And costume-wise I was seriously considering going with the ninja costume, but doing it a bit better than we did for Tybee (I was already planning for a ninja costume before we got the invite, I just hadn't bought any of the pieces yet). Unfortunately by the time I finally found a costume I liked (ninja costumes for women were hard to find, and masks even worse), it was sold out everywhere. www.buycostumes.com/Dragon-Mis… :sigh: Not quite sure what I'll be doing but I'm sure we'll have fun whatever we do.

Art-wise I've got a lot of ideas floating around in my head and jotted down as notes for designs and art to do, ranging from branching into pattern sets that I'm not used to working with (things not involving Celtic weaves, mehndi, or the general geometric patterns that I usually use), to a set of characters that I dreamed about that I want to make reality at some point. I don't have a super in-depth story for them; the dreams were just flashes of the images that I want to make. Those will be a while in coming, though, because I really don't have the skills needed for that yet. Art may be a little slow for a while as I'm doing research and learning how to use the hand-me-down CS3 suite that I received a couple of days ago. Since I now have a copy of Illustrator, I'm going to be learning that to see whether I still prefer Flash or not.

Anyway, if you've read through all of that, I commend you. On to a feature of some works from the people I met and prints we purchased and a great piece from .

Features


People, Clubs, and Community Projects


Places to buy prints and products
dA Prints: High quality prints, puzzles, etc.
CafePress: Shirts, housewares, etc.
Zazzle - Wedding Invites: Customizable wedding invitations
Zazzle - Rainbow Designs: Customizable shirts, keychains, etc.
Zazzle - Holiday Designs: Customizable shoes, shirts, etc.