Very, very busy at the office.

Some of us.

Busy, busy. (These are the rejected sketches.)

Very busy.

And when we’re done being busy we drop dead from exhaustion.

Zzzzzzonk.

In other news: I have a post up on my review blog talking about how my kid won’t wear what I pick out for her in the morning. Chime in with your two cents and you might win a $25 gift card for American Living clothing! Hurry! Contest ends this Friday!

I love these little illos. So often I get pigeon-holed with the cutesy stuff and I don’t like to think of myself as a cute-monger. I don’t make scrapbooks! I’m sophisticated, damnit! I mean ninja bunnies! (That’s my new curse word care of Bug.) But the cute just sneaks in and I am better at it than I am at other things so I try to embrace it and work with the skills God gave me. Sometimes it works, sometimes it blows up in my face. But this post is not about my flops. It’s about my successes. I’m sorry, can you tell I’m still working through some of my feelings about failure?

Anyway, I’m really happy with this design. I love working with Heather. She is the best web designer ever and worth every penny. And I’m not just saying that because she’s my friend. I truly respect her sense of design and her obsessive need for NO CLUTTER. She always does such a good job. I just recently designed a whole website myself for a client and now I have even more respect for her. It was hard and I’m still not 100% happy with it. When it launches I’ll try to share that here too.

(Jill Hart and OMSH)

I also really love this site. Jill Hart is a Grandma who does all these cool things with her grandchildren. People like her make me want to get older. Life does not stop just because you wake up one the morning with arthritis. How cool is it that she does all these things with her grandchildren? It’s like a whole home-schooling curriculum! I’m seriously impressed and so happy to work with her. I hope she keeps needing illos because I love making them for her.

I’ve been doing this secret agent character thing for about ten years now and sometimes I forget how fun it is. At times it’s been a thorn in my side because it didn’t always match up with who I am. I’m a mom, I’m a graphic artist/illustrator, what does spying have to do with that? Why didn’t I pick another name for my blog? But that is what I picked way back then and now I’m known for it. It would be a shame to abandon a brand that I’ve by default worked at for so long.

So when my neighbor stopped by with two pairs of “secret agent” glasses that she picked up at the local dollar store, I saw a glimpse of how fun this secret agent gig is for other people. It dawned on me that I really should just get into it already. In fact, now that I’m getting ready to launch a book tour and I going to visit some kindergarten classrooms and possibly a home for children (all while in costume) I should embrace this character more than ever. So I am. I’m buying a trench coat. I’m stocking up on glasses and I’m digging out my spy boots from the back of the closet.

Keep your eyes peeled. You might just spy me spying on you in the near future.

What I’m really thinking is, why did I have to go and ugly-up that super cute picture of some micro-spies?

They’re so into the spy thing. It kills me.

Which brings me to my next book: Numbers! I’m slower than molasses in January but I am actually starting on it.

I think I’m going to need help on it. Are there any techie geeks (and I say that in admiration, not jest) out there who would like to help me with my research? I will include you in my end notes! Email me.

Over and out.

I figured I’d write a post about work today. I don’t do that a lot and maybe I should. I don’t know. Do you guys wonder how I spend my days working away with my clicky-mouse? I just have been thinking on something lately and thought I’d share it.

Above is a logo I’m working on for a client. I don’t think she’ll mind me sharing. I thought it was pretty good. I spent a lot of time on it and thought I had it in the bag. The client liked it too but then a day passed and she sent me an email asking me if I could tweak it into more of a 50′s-60′s style. She even sent me some pictures for reference. Which is really nice by the way.

My first reaction was rebellion. I do this a lot. I call it my Monday Morning disease. Because way back in the day when I worked in an office, I would always feel overwhelmed by work on Monday. It seemed like every sales person in the whole office had some project for me to do RIGHT AWAY! RIGHT NOW! STRESS STRESS! STRESS! But then magically, Tuesday would roll around and everything that seemed so overwhelming and impossible on Monday seemed just plain normal and doable. I could count on it. So after a while I started to ignore my Monday morning freak-outs, knowing that they would dissipate by Tuesday.

I don’t know why I am this way but I’m always on the defense right away and it’s stupid. But I always do it. When my client asked me to “tweak” the illustrations towards a more 50′s-60′s theme, my first knee-jerk reaction was to freak out. Do you think I have a button I can push to make it 50′s-60′s, I thought angrily to myself? Is that some kind of photoshop filter I don’t have? Of course I would never say this to a client in real life because it would just be rude and over time I’ve found that I always regret pushing back.

So I sat on it for a day. I wrote a polite email to the client saying that I could probably do what she was asking but that it would mean going back to the drawing board and starting over. I thought she’d dismiss that idea and stick with the original logo that was obviously just fine, right? Nope. She didn’t. And I’m so glad.

That night I took my laptop to bed and while the kids slept on the floor around me (they like having “sleepovers”) I clicked away into the wee hours of the morning.

I came up with this.

And this.

And this.

And this!

I’m not done yet. She’s asked to see a few more designs but I love the new art so much better than the old. I’m so glad I kept my Monday Morning disease to myself.

Do you guys have this problem? Is your knee-jerk reaction to think that you can’t?

A while back I landed a big job with Turbo Tax and got the opportunity to create twenty-some icons for their website. The turn-around time was crazy. I got the job on Friday night and it was due before Monday morning. That’s probably the reason I got the job in the first place. Who else can turn around something that fast? A freelancer who is desperate enough to work all day and all night of course.

At first I thought there was no way possible that I could do it. I don’t even illustrate in that clip art style. But after much discussion with my friend Heather, who I was staying with at the time, I decided to take a crack at it. I downloaded their existing icons and started to take them apart with my mind. Sure enough, the shadows and highlights were just shapes filled with gradients and not that hard to put together. I just had to dissect it piece by piece and not get overwhelmed by the whole.

The job went swimmingly and I ended up getting them all done with plenty of time. But I wouldn’t have if I’d let my Monday Morning disease get the best of me.

Not that I’m all peaches and cream all the time now that I’ve learned this lesson. I’m still learning it with every single job. But I definitely have raised the bar for what I think I can do. Anything is possible.

I watched this video a while back and found it really helpful. Maybe there is some other freelance artist out there wondering what direction their path will take and fearing failure. I think this will encourage you:

Milton Glaser – on the fear of failure. from Berghs' Exhibition '11 on Vimeo.

I’ve been feeling like we need more free downloads around here so how about some bunny puppets in striped t-shirts! That would be fun, wouldn’t it?

All you have to do is print them out and cut around the dotted lines. The little circles are holes where you can put your fingers through and make your bunny hop hop hop! I apologize for how difficult it might be for you to cut out the little paw holes (No, they are not boobie holes. Get your mind out of the gutter.) but it’s fun for kids, so make the effort!

I found the best way was to either use a hole-puncher and then enlarge with scissors or to slightly fold and cut an “x” and then cut out the circle from your “x”. Okay, I’m shutting up now. If I continue to explain how to cut holes out of paper, I’ll probably scare off all the people who hate crafts.

It’s easy. Just do it.

Then stick your fingers through like so.

And little-bunny-foo-foo* all around the garden!

*that’s a verb!

p.s. Bug informed me that we need a color-it-in version so here you go.

This is me at two in the morning. I have very weird sleep habits. I go to bed at eight pm. Why? Because I’m tired! Bug and the day wear me out. So when I put Bug to bed, I read her a few stories and before I know it my eyes are closing and it’s night night for me too. I really want to stay up until ten or midnight like the rest of the adults but I don’t know, I’m just too much of a morning person and I run out of steam when the sun goes down.

However, my body doesn’t need 12 hours of sleep like Bug’s does so I pop back awake at two in the morning. This is especially bad when I drink too much coffee and get no exercise. When I lived at the beach I walked everywhere so I was physically exhausted and could stay asleep until at least five in the morning. Out here, not so much. I’m cutting down on coffee (of course) but I’m also trying to figure out how to fit in exercise. It’s been a challenge. The neighborhood is not really the walking kind and well… it doesn’t take much to discourage me when it comes to working out.

I thought I had a plan. I was going to take Holly, the dog, on a long long walk early in the morning. That would be great for her (we usually take her on short walks just down our street) and for me because she’s a big scary black dog who will scare all the bad guys away. I called my mom and was all ready to send Bug over to my mom’s house to watch cartoons while I got some exercise.

Except Bug didn’t want to be left out. She loves working out. You know she does The Shred, right? She does it more than I do.

She puts me to shame.

So anyway she was having none of this walking dog business without her. Before I knew it she was off in her room changing into a workout outfit to match mine. I gave in and let her come with.

{click to enbiggen}

Biggest mistake ever. Never take a kid on a long morning walk BEFORE breakfast. She might be shredded and spend two hours a week doing ballet and gymnastics but she does NOT like to keep up with me when I’m walking, especially when she is hungry, tired and bored. We walked about a half hour and I spent nearly all of it trying to get her to keep up with me. It was mental workout not a physical one. I miss my stroller. (I left it at the beach with Toby. It doesn’t travel well.) So I’m back to square one.

Jump rope anyone? Or maybe some shredding in the Pink Princess room?

Grab your red pencils! I’ve finally finished the 2011 Secret Agent Josephine Calendar pdf! And guess what? Haste makes waste! So you guys get to be my editors! Download the free pdf here, print it out, find all my many errors, add in those Jewish holidays I forgot (like all of them, I think) and then email me your changes. I’ll fix it up and then sell the perfect version in my shop for two bucks! Thank you! Thank you!

Mwa!

Poor Bethany is so done being pregnant. I totally remember that feeling. She’s not in pain. Nothing is really happening other than Braxton Hicks that are a tad more irritating than anything else and the fact that the baby likes to stretch out and make everything uncomfortable. Bethany has said more than once that if only the baby would just come out already, she could finally take a full complete breath and maybe just lay down on her stomach for a minute. Oh the bliss that would be! Of course then there would be a crying baby in the mix but at this point that seems like less work, if that’s possible. Funny how that works.

Anyway we are all on pins and needles wondering if every deep intake of breath that Bethany takes could be the one. I sleep in the guest room beneath Bethany’s bedroom and every time I hear the floor boards creak, I wonder if tonight will be the night they’ll finally take a trip to the hospital. The suspense is killing me.

However! I do have a room to paint! So I better get on that.

p.s. I guess I should explain this illo. We went with Bethany to a doctor’s appointment yesterday. We got to hear the baby kick around on this monitor thing that spit out a paper reading of the baby’s heart beat. It was pretty neat at first but then they left us in the room for what seemed like forever, thus the never-ending printout from the baby monitoring machine.

So this is what I’ve been working on lately. I don’t usually blog my work but I want to someday when I ramp up my business site (which doesn’t exist yet). Anyway I asked Bethany if she’d mind if I posted her banners I’ve recently made and she said go for it! It’s great working with friends.

I especially love this one. My execution is not perfect but I love the idea of Annalie as Katara from The Last Avatar. When I was visiting the Actually’s this last Spring I witnessed Annalie’s infatuation with Avatar. She dresses up in all kinds of interesting outfits (usually made from pieces and parts of other costumes) and dances around the room with great sweeping arm motions. She’s water-bending of course.

And lastly, this one. Bethany’s pregnant, as most of you know. Being pregnant has muddled her brain a bit (as it commonly does) and she’s found herself making all kinds of silly mistakes like misplacing things, forgetting things and making typos on instant messenger…which is great because now she’s finally knows what it feels like to be me!

I lost my mojo there for a little bit. But I’ll be back.