It’s going to be hard for me to write this post so please bear with me. I’m full of emotion and not really in the right frame of mind to be putting sentences together.

You may have heard that one of my illustrations got stolen and has been used as the masthead for a website that gathers news and helpful hints for mothers. It’s bad enough that they are using my illustration as their main logo and top graphic but they’ve also plastered that same image on every single cafépress item available. My illo that I created from my heart is plastered like baby throw up all over teddy bears and mugs and t-shirts. I am ill. I would never do this. I would never let anyone do this. It is sickening.

About a year ago I sold this image to a company (who is NOT momsbuzz) who holds all rights to it. I am under contract to this company. This company and only this company can use this graphic. So what does this mean? It means that I have all the legal rights in the world to bust the mom site who is using my image. But it also means that I’ve been naive and an idiot to think I could share my work with the world wide internet and not have it get stolen. I have to take everything down and protect it.

I’m going back to ground zero. I’ve taken all my galleries down and protected all of my illustrations that were up on flickr. I’m starting over. I haven’t made up my mind what I’m going to do. I want to have a body of work up on the internet for people to see but I have to do it in such a way that it can’t get ripped off so easily.

I’m not a web designer and I don’t know flash so this is going to be something that takes a long time. It makes me sad but at the same time, starting fresh is always a good thing. I needed a redesign anyway.

MomsBuzz has until midnight tonight to take the image down. After that it’s war. I’ve asked nicely. I could sue for all the profits they’ve made off my image but I don’t want that. I just want my illustration back. I loved that little illo.

Update: A public apology has been made. It’s getting better.