B - Ballerina

Alphabet Exercise

In an attempt to update my portfolio, I've decided to play the Alphabet Game. Every day, I'll post a new illustration, corresponding to a letter of the alphabet. Question is: Will I actually make it all the way through the ABC's? Place your bets now.

A - Alien.
Also doubles for this weeks Illustration Friday - Atmosphere.

Fun experimenting!

How did I go so long without knowing about Corel Painter! Sure, I had heard of it, but I always thought it was some substandard Photoshop ripoff. I am not too proud to admit I was so totally wrong!

I reinstalled my Wacom tablet after the whole "evil computer genius" fiasco, and decided to install Corel Painter Essentials just for kicks. I've spent the past hour playing around with all the cool brushes and effects!

IF - Star Gazing

Chatty Wrappers

March 3, 2010 at 3:54 am (Copywriting, Funny)
Over the past few years, you may have noticed your fast food wrappers talking to you. Well, not in the “I’m hearing strange voices” sense, but catchy little one-liners showing up on the items that hold our delicious (?) morsels of yummy-goodness.

This straw wrapper from Arby’s informs me that it is “the only thing standing between you and Jamocha bliss” … well, that might have been true if I were drinking a Jamocha shake. But I had a Pepsi. I’m a simple girl who enjoys simple beverages. No Jamocha for me, please.

Burger King and it’s “frypods” have also started speaking up, but my all-time favorite has to be the sauce packets you get from Taco Bell. They always throw like 30 in a bag for one taco supreme, so you can always count on a nice variety of witty sarcastic words of wisdom. And I admit, I have laughed out loud more than once over what advice they had for me.

But here’s my quandary: why spend so much time and money on this marketing device, when you KNOW it’s going to end up in the trash?

I don’t keep my frypod after the fries have vanished. The wrapper in the photo above was balled up and tossed 30 seconds after it’s picture was snapped. And while I am guilty of tacking a Taco Bell packet up on my cork board at work, it doesn’t make me want a taco every time I look at it.

So what exactly is the point of it all? Comments?

From the archives...

March 2, 2010 at 10:14 am (Uncategorized)


snark•y

[snahr-kee] – adjective Chiefly British Slang. testy or irritable; short.


Snarky seems appropriate for the writings of this gal. Try as I might to be polite and understanding (the Man upstairs KNOWS how hard I try) there are just some days when a gal just can’t muster up the strength to not be sarcastic.

This is one of those days.

Here’s how work went today:

Email #1: Sorry suckers, you worked hard, but the economy worked harder. No bonuses for you! Oh, and we’re closing your site. Pack it up and be gone!

Email #2: Mr. So-And-So was promoted today! (fyi: The same Mr. So-And-So who made the decision to close our office. Sweet.)

You’d think such a large company who claims to care for their employees would be a bit more compassionate, and, oh, I don’t know, NOT SEND THOSE TWO EMAILS RIGHT AFTER EACH OTHER???? It’s a good thing we’re all caged in our little cubicles. There could have been mass mayhem.

Next on my mind: The Twilight Saga.

I like the books and movies just as much as those hormone driven teens who wear their Team Jacob t-shirts day and night [for the record, I am totally Team Edward!], but enough already! Word on the street is that there is to be a GRAPHIC NOVEL based on the books by Stephenie Meyer. OK. We have the books. We have the movies. Do we REALLY, REALLY need to kill another tree in order to add pictures to the words? Here’s a thought: If you’re unable to conjure up an image of these characters in your head while you’re reading, then watch the movie. Or have your little teen sister paint a picture for you. Either way, a graphic novel is just overkill.

Enough snarkiness for today… catch y’all later.

Illustration Friday - Caged

Rudy Rooster isn't sure what
the big deal is about being caged.

Farmer gives him all the
corn he could ever want!

What a way to spend a Sunday

We've probably all experienced some annoying spy ware at some time or another. It's annoying, sure, but usually not that big a deal. Have you ever had a virus that tells you every single program you are trying to open is infected? One that won't let you open your computer's control panel? And even tells you that you can't access the Internet, because it too is infected?

I fell victim to all this late Saturday night. Wonderful.

Sunday morning, as I waited until the Geek Squad opened at Best Buy, I did a little reading about such irritating computer infections, and found that if I did a complete system restore I would most certainly get rid of the virus. The cost? Losing all my files. I considered this a long time, before deciding that the Geeks may be able to kill the parasite without flushing my files, but that would probably be quite expensive. And, I did back up my files about a month ago (I know, I know... I should do it more often), so really, I'm only going to lose the files I did recently (which were quite a few, in all honesty).

The scary "System Recovery" CD goes in, and 2 minutes later, my files are just a memory.

I thought that was the worst of it. No one warned me that certain drivers I need to access my hardware weren't contained on the magical CD. I knew I could get the drivers online, but ironically enough, the Ethernet driver was one of the ones missing. Perfect.

I tooled around for a while, found that I could connect to my modem through an USB port (thank goodness) and got most of my drivers off the company's website. I've spent the rest of the day (and night) reloading software. You really don't realize all you've lost until it's gone. All my swatches I had saved in Illustrator is probably the biggest blow. Oh well. Live and learn.

The day wasn't without it's share of laughs, however.

While trying to find a phone number to call my Internet provided, I read the following in their User Guide:

• "If you need any assistance in setting up your Internet service, please visit our website and click on Customer Service."

Do you see the problem with this?? If I could get online to your website, I probably wouldn't need assistance with my Internet service. Wow.

The computer company's website was even less helpful. All the drivers I needed were there, except two. The two I needed the most. So, there was a nice little "chat online" customer service thing so I clicked it. The dude I was chatting with told me that I wasn't under warranty (hello? my computer is 5 years old) and that typically he couldn't help me. But since I was such a valued customer (I am??) he would do his best to assist me this one time.

Wow. He's going to help me get drivers for my computer that should have been on the computer's website? How sweet.

Even sweeter when he sent me links to drivers that weren't compatible with my computer model.

Ugh. Whatever. A good Google search lead me to what I needed. Apparently I wasn't the only one that had trouble finding stuff on their website.

It's been a long day. My computer is fixed, and my checking account still has every penny it did this morning. The Geeks didn't get my money. Times like this I realize just how resourceful I am! :)

Here's hoping Monday will be better...

Another piggy revision. Hmm...

Sketching fun...

Quirky needs a friend

So, Quirky has been looking for some new friends, but I'm not so sure this Piggy-Pal is quite right. He's a bit of a scaredy-cat, which only annoys Quirky even more than usual. Back to the drawing board...

Ultimate boredom = New quilt

I've spent the past two days making my first quilt. A flannel rag quilt, to be exact. I'm surprised at how easy it was, until I washed it. A word of caution: Don't wash jeans with your quilt unless you want fuzzy jeans.

Live and learn.

It is super cute and oh, so soft, however! ;)

Frog

Frog.
Just a frog.
Reading a book.