Now announcing the Etsy Shop: Lightheart Paper Company

Finally, I'm proud to announce the launch of my Etsy shop, Lightheart Paper Company!

Here it is

To start, I'm selling some familiar prints as well as some newbies, and slowly expanding to home items. Here are a few of pics of what is available.

Grow wild print

Life of Love woodblock print

Remember this guy?

Roaming octopus woodblock print

And this one, honoring my great home state post Hurricane Sandy, or Superstorm Sandy according to insurance companies.  All profits still going to the Red Cross!

Still Strong NJ print

As usual, I'll be writing plenty of posts showing the creative process for my pieces and giving away all kinds of trade secrets (if I can think of any).  So check it out here and send me any feedback!

The wolf

The art store in my Jersey City neighborhood displays murals on their outside wall, and the current one is particularly awesome.

I love the contrast of the fierce, radioactive wolf against the sad Disney bunny and the geometric shapes mixed with the eerie forest. Or maybe I can't get enough of neons. Either way I'm going to enjoy walking past it every day.  

He won't think twice about eating you

Smoking is bad, especially for bunnies

Oh baby (announcements)!

Last week I returned from a two week trip to the Southwest, full of camping, hiking, having fires, and being unapologetically dirty. But more on that in the next post. While I was away, summer officially started, and it's the first summer in years that I have no weddings to go to. 

With lots of friends moving on from marriage to babies, so have I moved on from wedding invitations to baby announcements.  And the smiling face of this little babe will truly melt your icy heart. 

Look, a baby.

Though her parents didn't have professional photos taken, they still wanted to include a picture of their pumpkin for those family and friends who are long distance. In that case, it was best to make the photo part of the announcement, as opposed to having it take up the whole page. The photo is attached with a pastel green paperclip and can thus be easily removed for those who might want to hang onto it. The simple flowers, ladybugs, and butterflies are a cute alternative to storks and diapers and perfect for a baby girl.  The type is a mix of a fat bold font and a soft handwriting, and all is wrapped up in, what else, but a pink envelope. 

The illustrations feel a little Dutch, the colors, not so Dutch.

 

Hey girl, hey.

Looking forward to meeting this bugger in person and calling her all sorts of silly pet names to her face. 

Watercolor wishes

This watercolor illustration has been a long time in the making. I hesitated on it for a while because I couldn't find the right words and wanted to use my own instead of a quote. It was, however, inspired by a meditation/prayer which I learned on my spiritual journey, but was unable to trace the origin of, "May you be happy, may you be healthy, may you live with ease."  You're supposed to say it to yourself when someone has pissed you off or has caused some deep therapy-necessitating emotional damage.  This one is more suited for a new home or marriage.

It's like, my version of an Irish wedding blessing

While technically I "hand drew" the letters, I did pretty much copy actual fonts while adding embellishments.

Cheater, cheater, pumpkin eater. Wait those aren't the words.

The colors aren't playing nice together and I don't like what's going on with the wind illustrations here. So those are changes that I'll be addressing in the next round.

You can even still see pencil marks--someone's lazy!

I do like the sunshine!

So there's the beta version, a happy wish for friends and enemies alike.

Celebrating 2 years with a throwback print

Taken by the Hand turned 2 yesterday and to celebrate I ran a few woodblock prints of an old favorite. This was the first block print I'd done since a long post-college hiatus from printing after being inspired by an old piece of poplar I'd found in my parent's basement. The design was one I'd done in Illustrator, something that started out as a doodle but just kept going. It was the melding of digital and hand-made that I'd been seeking.  But alas, my first few print runs were lacking pizazz, a problem quickly solved by jumping on the ombre trend. The original print blends pink and blue ink for a vibrant gradient. This guy holds a special place in my heart, and a specialer place on my wall and the walls of a few friends.

The words came first and inspired the twisting and curling lines,
alluding to graphic vines and roots

So for the refresh I added a third color and instead used yellow, pink and orange.

A little like a sunset

Oddly, these colors remind me of 90s era Oakley sunglasses, and you can judge for yourself whether that's a good or bad thing.  Number two color combo was turquoise-to-blue printed on a sheet of wood paper that'd been sitting in my stash for way too long.  I'd have loved to do the brighter colors on this but didn't think it would show up on the light wood.

Woodblock printed on wood: a world turned upside down

Here's a few more shots.

Group shot!

The block and tools. Pink!

I'm planning on doing a few more color combos when I get some more paper, and putting them up on Etsy along with the new woodblock that I'm working on.  Lots of projects have been done over the last two years and this one got me out of a slump and kickstarted them all!

Happy Valentine's Day!

Happy V-day! 8-bit style love to my readers!

Conversation heart puffy stickers by Hallmark courtesy of Dad.