day 19: the flower shop

Here's a blast from the past. That's me in the blue dress looking diabolical. When I was little, my mom worked at a flower shop. I remember spending a lot of time there: sleeping in the back office when I'd stay home sick from school, decorating the Christmas trees for the holiday season, making my own flower arrangements and corsages from the scraps on the floor. I've always thought there was something in those memories that would make a fun children's book. And maybe there is. I got as far as a rough draft and some character sketches. I even talked with publisher about it. I think they told me to cut the story back to taking place on one day rather than going through the seasons.

Anyway, found these while looking for something to post instead of the exciting icons I've been working on (table! lime! lightbulb!). These are from June 2002 (crazy) which means I would have just been starting out doing freelance full-time. That probably also explains why this never went any further. Shortly thereafter I got busy and stayed busy.

 

Rosie and her finch pal Bambi. There was a giant store-length bird cage inside the shop full of all kinds of finches. It made for great background noise.

Mom, have you even ever seen these?

Kind of fun to find this. Maybe someday I'll rework the idea, redesign the characters, who knows. I think it still has potential.

Imagine Learning Pic Spam

It's a Friday afternoon and I just finished a big project, so how about an Imagine Learning Pic Spam (tm)? I haven't posted any IL stuff for awhile, so this should be swell. A couple months ago we did a whole pile of illustrations for some little books. These were all about how to do them as fast as possible, so lots of shortcut experiments were done. Below are some of the less horrible results...

And then one of the books is a biography of ME. Actually there are two books about me. One is an example of a memoir, which I then illustrated. The other is the biography, but uses photos so won't bother posting that one.

Me making crafty things at the foot of my mother's sewing machine.

 

Visiting Disney Feature Animation and deciding I don't really want to be an animator.

At my desk at Imagine Learning! Please note I have since quite drinking Diet Coke. Really. It'll stick this time, I swear! Also, I now have a lovely 27" iMac. So pretty.

Have a great weekend! I am off to Park City for a two-day encaustic painting workshop with Jeff Juhlin. Good times.

sweet pea benefit boutique

Want to amaze and impress your friends by owning an actual encaustic painting? Or how about all five Sugarplum Ballerina books when the fifth book isn't even out yet? You can do these things and more at the Sweet Pea Benefit Boutique!

The Sweet Pea Benefit Boutique is a charity auction whose funds will go to help pay for fertility treatments for a couple of folks, one being my pal Devanie. Go check out all the cool things for auction! Bid lots! Devanie needs a baby. :)

little wonder tv spot

Last weekend Leslie Sell, CEO of The Little Wonder Company, was on a local Minneapolis tv show touting the Little Wonder Custom Children's Books. I did the illustrations for these last year, with some additional attributes a couple months ago. A nice segment, and hopefully lots and lots of sales for Leslie! ('tis the season after all!) Go check out the site and you can even build your own character.