Holiday Baking Boxes!!

Hey everyone I know I have not been posting a lot but the holidays have been so freaking busy.

I was working on a lot of little holiday projects here and there. For the entire staff at my work I wanted to make them cute little character boxes filled with a baked good!! I first hit my sketch book and worked out some sketches and ideas for things that involved Christmas and just the chilly Holiday season!!

I narrowed it down to three characters, a penguin with a bow tie, an angel and an elf. I rendered them digitally in illustrator to sit on top of a cupcake. They came out super!

Next I had to figure out how to make the right type and size box.

Yikes! This took an exceedingly long time!! I was never really great at working with paper, origami or any of that jazz. My folding skills just aren't there. So I went through a lot of different templates and dummys until I found THE one!!

It was a candy box! But I figured I could use the lid of the box as a tray to hold what I was planning on baking. This template is great because there is very little scoring and cutting that you have to do compared to OTHER templates.

I then measured and figured out that I could include 4 on each page. I printed them on 65 lb packs of card stock I purchased at Michael's Arts and Crafts for $2.50 in Christmas colors.

Next was the boring part cutting out all the templates. Luckily I still had the Always Sunny in Philadelphia Christmas episode on DVR and enjoyed watching it with my dad while cutting out all the templates.

The rest of the scoring, folding and gluing was also done in front of the tv. I used tacky glue just because I had a teeny tiny bottle of it I needed to get rid of. My tower of boxes slowly increased.

I was in the home stretch, time to measure the finished pieces and print out my little characters. I could fit six characters on each page on the white card stock that came in the Holiday stack.That was super easy and I reused the Tacky Glue to glue the characters to the front of the boxes.

I deicded to bake everyone muffins. It took me about an hour to make them all, but I was cranking them out like a machine thanks to my cupcake maker. Each batch took about eight minutes and while I was waiting for the next batch to bake, I was busy whipping up another batch. As I waited for that batch to bake, I wrapped the cooled muffins in treat bags I also purchased at Michaels.

Here was the finished the product, sitting on the break room table! They were a complete hit!! I was so glad that everyone enjoyed them (and no one got food poisoning either, go me!!). Merry Christmas everyone!!

New Jersey Trip Take Two

Hey everyone just wanted to make a little post about my trip to New Jersey on the 8th with my brother.

Have you ever heard of Man vs Food? If you haven't you're missing out on something amazing. It is a television series on the Travel Channel with the concept of a guy named Adam who goes around doing food battles from restaurants all over America. The American dream.

Early December or around late November my brother did one of the challenges at Chick and Ruth's Deli. I missed out on the trip since it was just him and his friends with huge appetites, hoping they would prevail like Rocky. Unfortunately it was a day in which food won instead.

BUT the last time I was in New Jersey my brother suggested I check out RU HUNGRY (a restaurant featured on the show), the grease trucks across from Rutger's for one of their tasty sandwiches. The menu consists of sandwiches packed with steak, mozzarella sticks, french fries, chicken tenders, everything bad for you thrown into a sub roll.

I got the Fat Darrel, french fries, marinara sauce, chicken tenders and mozzarella sticks on a roll for 7.50 with a grape soda. It was delicious. But obviously not something to be consumed on a daily basis.

From there we headed to the Bridgewater Mall hoping to find the store, "Pop Culture," which I used Google to find the address from. But they apparently moved out of that mall, so it was a lost cause.

Although the staff was nice enough to answer my Facebook post questioning their location from my mobile phone super quickly and to text me the address we had to skip it. It would have been 15 minutes from our original destination (very convenient) the new address just confused us. I'll save it for another day I suppose.

All in all, another successful and productive trip to New Jersey.

Hope everyone has a great week!!

Holiday Gift Tags!

Hey everyone I have been so busy illustrating and shopping and crafting, etc I still had time for a project I had wanted to do both this year and last, create my own Holiday gift tags!! I could easily pick some up at the dollar stores (last year I bought Disney Princess ones) but then again I am an artist and create my own for free.

I wanted to make Holiday and Winter cupcakes. Cupcakes are of course, one my most favorite things on the planet, so why not??? I did a couple of sketches on a napkin at work:

Hey, I didn't say they would be pretty, they are just sketches :P My sketches are always super rough...

And I came up with this sheet of simple vector illustrations:

I just cut them out with a regular pair of scissors leaving a little bit of a white border around them so they can still POP against the colorful wrapping paper I was using.

Here are some photos of what they look like on my gifts:

This is on a gift for my brother, he loves the penguin one!!

And as a treat, I want to share them with you all!! Feel free to download and print the PDF by clicking here: http://violet-ink.com/VioletInkChristmasTag.pdf

Enjoy!!

Hardee's 50th Anniversary

Quite a while back, in September Hardee's the fast food burger restaurant celebrated it's 50th Anniversary!! Fans of the resturant had an opportunity to create digital 50th Birthday cards!
I whipped one up on the fly and added to their collection!!

I received 5 Hardee's coupons for it and the seal of the Approval from Happy Star himself.

Click here to check it out on Hardee's Fanpage!

Art for Me!

I always showcase my art everywhere, blogger, facebook, etc but I wanted to showcase some art made for me :)

My friend Rosie made this for me around November I believe!! It's me as a zombie. I got a lot of compliments on this picture. Brainssss!!!!

This one is a little hard to see and I apologize for that but it's a gift I got for my birthday in November!! It's too large to scan since it's already framed. But it's a picture of Hello Kitty in a Kimono on rice paper. I love it!!

This is something my friend Ryan created for me!! It is beyound unique and I'm using it as my Facebook default now!! The hair is amazing I could never recreate it!!

And last but certainly not least, a Hello Kitty Christmas made by my friend Tamara :) Mmmm a tree full of cupakes with cupcake gifts at the bottom?? I'm in Heaven!! She made this as an art trade with me although I'm not entirely finished with her piece just yet >.>

I love getting gifts, but more importantly hand made gifts!! That is why I love these pieces the most!!

Sweet Holiday Cards for Sale!!

Hey everyone!! I listed a new item in my Etsy shop. Last year I made some Christmas cards to sell at a craftshow. Unfortunately the night before the craft show I got into a bad car accident and was not able to make it :( 1 year later, I still have 2 packs of the Christmas cards left.

I missed the art show once more thanks to my hectic Holiday schedule, working black friday, thanksgiving, saturday, sunday, nearly everyday!!! So I decided to add them to my Etsy shop instead :D

To order a set be sure to check out the listing at:
http://www.etsy.com/listing/63025234/sweet-holiday-cards

I also decided to discontinue a couple of other items in my shop because they were not selling well :( and it was costing to much to relist them. Christmas is approaching fast, it's almost December already!!

To see my entire selection of handmade goods, be sure to go to the shop front at: http://violetink.etsy.com

For the rest of the day today I'll be making some gift tags for the presents I wrapped.

Squishy T-shirt Design

I flip flopped a lot of pieces in my portfolio and added some new ones. I wanted to make some posts about them in my blog. One of the earlier pieces I added was a t-shirt design for the EveryoneLovesRobots. A merchandise design!!

James already provided me with a solid concept, all I had to do was illustrate it for him.






If you are interested in purchasing one for yourself on a t-shirt or more (to support his music project), be sure to check out EveryoneLovesRobot's store:

http://www.zazzle.co.uk/everyonelovesrobots/gifts?cg=196992192342483122

Hope everyone has a good day :)

Happy Birthday to Me!

Hey everyone! Thursday was my birthday I just wanted to briefly share some things of what I had been up to :)

First of all, the day before my birthday my parent's ended up giving me my present early since I was going shopping ON my birthday, just in case I wouldn't buy what they got me... and what they got me was a cupcake maker!

I tweeted about one when I had initially saw it. The thought of making cupcakes in about 5 minutes is a great idea. I suck at baking so much. I never know how much mix to put in the little muffin tins, or how long to leave them in. I don't have the patience to wait 20 minutes, and usually burn myself getting them out of the oven. This machine is a godsend.

I did make one batch of cupcakes in it so far. It makes eight little mini cupcakes. I made a recipe for exactly eight, and spooned about 2 and a half tablespoons of mix into each cavity. You check to see if they are ready with a toothpick, just like the real oven, and ta-dah!

It makes more than just cupcakes though. It has instructions for brownie bites, muffins, appetizers, etc. I could make pancake puffs! Oh and mini pies :D

On my ACTUAL birthday, I did go shopping. Here are the things I bought:

Timberland Boots with some financial help from my brother...

some cute argyle sweaters from Target. Argyle is one of my most all time favorite things :)

Amy Sedaris' craftbook at Books a Million! I had her cooking / entertaining / whatever book this is the second one of hers. She's a very funny lady :) maybe more about this book in another post...

and these plaid slippers from Aeropastale (not photographed because well, they're on my feet)!! Super comfy.

We also ate at CiCi's pizza which is super yummy :) especially the mac and cheese pizza!

I got little things here and there from my friends here at home too. Not to mention the nice birthday tweets, and facebook wall posts :) what a great birthday!!

Happy (belated) Halloween!!

Hey everyone, just updating the blog :D

Halloween is gone and past and I just wanted to post of the stuff I got into!! I carved two pumpkins:

A cuppycake :D

And a ring pop!!

They weren't difficult to carve, I just purchased some artificial pumpkins and cut a hole at the top to drop a electric tea light into. I created the designs in Illustrator (black and white) and printed them out. I then taped the designs to the pumpkins with scotch tape and cut out all the black sections.

And now for the costumes, my friend Kara was Lady Kruger

And I dressed as Hit Girl from the movie KickAss



It was a blast!! More updates coming soon :)

Karen's Wedding Portrait

Hey everyone! Things have been really busy right now. I am only getting a chance to eat my first meal of the day (mac and cheese) and update my blog :)

The latest portrait I got to do was for Karen! She wanted a cute cartoon version of some of her wedding photos. Here is what I created for her:

Is it not adorable?? It was the first wedding portrait I have ever gotten to do and I think it came out fantastically! She really enjoyed it and I cannot wait until she receives the printed copy in her mailbox!! Remember if you are interested in purchasing your own digital portrait drawn by me, Laura, head over to my etsy shop, and click on this listing:

http://www.etsy.com/listing/60011013/full-color-vector-portrait-from-your

I am also busy working on updating my site. The shop page is really coming together. It longer directly takes you to my etsy shop. I added this graphic as an example of the portaits that I do:

This weekend is also Halloween! Me and my friends from college are getting together hopefully :) cannot wait. Will keep the updates coming!! Have a good day everyone!

Lauren's Second Portait!

I am still really sick :( but I am going to go to work today! Just sitting in my desk chair, eating a bowl of macaroni and cheese and catching up on my freelance stuff since I was in bed for the past two days; not fun!!

But anyway I wanted to post a client piece I did recently for Lauren. I made a portrait for her before. This time she wanted me to go crazy with the photos she sent me! We are both huge fans of pink and Barbie so I wanted to do something really, really, REALLY pink.

Here is one of the photos I used to work from:

I was a big fan of the sunglasses and the way her hair was blowing in the wind. This is what I created:

It is a very cute and very fashionable cartoon!!

I used three different hues of the color pink, some dark and almost purple, bright pink, and a light pink. The background I did was very simple, clean and geometric. I made some cute embellishments to the sunglasses like a little heart and some pink rhinestones :)

She really liked it!! She is one of my very good customers and I love working on her projects!

Have a good day everyone!

Alichia-Rae Portrait

Hey everyone I am still pretty super sick :( it is not fun at all. I thought I kicked it out of my system but unforunately that was not the case. I figured now would be a good time to post some more work I have done up to this point.

I got to work on a digital portait for a client named Alichia-Rae. Here is the photo she gave me to work from:



And here is how I rendered it:



I think it turned out great, and she was very pleased with it too! It was nice working with the green, not a color I work with too often :)

She found Violet Ink Design on Facebook. You can click the "like" button in the facebook frame on the right hand side of my page to fan me and keep up with all my projects! Or just visit http://www.facebook.com/#!/pages/Violet-Ink-Design/115320861822900

More client work to follow. I hope I get better soon though. I have a lottt of projects to work through. Have a good evening everyone!

Cartoon Tracy Madness!!

Hey everyone, sorry for the late update on the posts. Things have been super busy and I did end up getting sick for awhile. The BeABiographer contest is really winding down and it is not looking good for Team Laura!! To place some final votes just click here at: http://www.beabiographer.com/#/gallery/13/

The important thing is though, (whether I win or lose) is that I made art for a great cause! By showing people my piece I am raising awareness to the social cause at hand; the reality of human sex trafficking. I urge you all to visit the Blind Project's website (http://www.theblindproject.com) educate yourselves and if you have some extra money, donate to their cause :)

Onto the artwork now! I have done a couple portraits since the last time that I updated. First off is a portrait request from Tracy DiMarco modeling a look from the store Pop Culture! Here is the photo I had to work from:

And here is the finished piece:

I think it turned out great! I just loved the neon green dress and matching bracelets! The important part is that Tracy really enjoyed it :) and when she's happy, I'm happy!!!

Next I did a portait for her and her boyfriend!!! :D They are definitely the cutest couple around! Here is the photo I was provided:

And my finished piece:

How adorable is that??? I even made sure their outfits matched this time!! It did take a longer time for me to do, the camo pattern was REALLY slowing down Illustrator. So much that it refused to save :( it was really annoying!! But once I switched her dress to black, everything went smoothly. I then added the pattern last. And of course I had to add a big pink heart :)

What do you guys think?? I love doing work like this!

ALSO if you are interested in showing your TEAM TRACY pride, the style network has an official store to buy JERSEYLICIOUS merchandise!!

Go to http://www.cafepress.com/Jerseylicious/7249326 and order yourself a hoodie, shirt, or even a canvas bag!!