Illustration Friday - S.T.A.R.W.O.O.D. band from the "Future"

Hey everyone!! Just wanted to update the blog with my "Illustration Friday" entry. This week's theme was the word, "future." It took me no time to come up with an illustration, I decided to create a cartoon of an awesome band I saw live back in April, called "S.T.A.R.W.O.O.D."

"S.T.A.R.W.O.O.D." stands for "Sociopathic Time Altering Robot Warrior Of Organic Design," and is actually a band made up of Vitruvian Androids from the futuristic year 2276 AD. They were sent back into time, our time, present time, just before their own planet was destroyed (by us, the human race). Their mission?? Alter the timeline and control the human race saving their planet from it's imminent destruction.

My illustration is of lead singer, G7ANGEL591S (aka Gabriel Starwood) standing over planet earth. If you haven't heard them before, their entire album is up online for FREE to download right now at http://starwood.bandcamp.com/ Also be sure to check out their Facebook http://www.facebook.com/StarwoodBand and Twitter http://twitter.com/S_T_A_R_W_O_O_D. Hope everyone has a great week!!

Mika Doodle Contest 2013 - Part II

Hello everybody! Just wanted to update the blog with the continuation of my "Mika Doodle Contest" entry from earlier this year. If you missed my previous post about the competition, let me catch you up. The contest was open to all illustrators, artists and anyone else who wanted to doodle select tracks off the album, "The Origin of Love," that were posted on the MIKA Facebook fan page every week. I made it my mission to submit an entry for EVERY one of the songs posted. This post contains the other half of my entries below!!

Song 6: Popular

This track was based off the original tune "Popular," from the musical Wicked. I love the production Wicked and this song sang by Galinda to Elphaba. MIKA's version has a similar melody but the message was less about BECOMING popular and more a stab at the "popular" kids that put down the other kids at school. I resisted the urge to create something girly and cute and based my drawing on the the line that said, "Dunk me in the toilets now it's you that cleans them." Your typical queen bee trades in her tiara for a little janitor's bucket printed with the song title and filled with cleaning solution, a sponge and a toilet brush. 

Song 7: Love You When I'm Drunk

Next was a song called, "Love You When I'm Drunk." My doodle depicts the chorus, which is exactly the same as the title of the track. I drew a bottle of whiskey with the lyrics written on the label and a half empty shot glass with heart-shaped ice cubes beside it. The entire drawing is surrounded by little broken hearts because as happy as the melody sounds the theme is pretty depressing. The text was based off of 3 different fonts from my computer. 

Song 8: Stardust

Next up was a track called, "Stardust." My original concept was going to be a silhouette of the singer made of little tiny stars taken as a Polaroid picture. After a few sketches, I was convinced it looked much better as another cartoon Mika instead. As for the colors, I was going for galaxy; purple, dark blues and dark pinks. Once I was done, I realized it looked A LOT like Coraline and her star-covered pajamas. Oops!! I still think it came out pretty good though.

Song 9: Emily

I loved the style of the video which starred "Fanny Ardent," dressed in red playing the part of "Emily," that went along with this song. The video's artistic interpretation of the song was spot on but didn't want to translate that too literally into my piece. "Emily" seemed to me from the song, to be a woman under an identity crisis. I wanted to play with the idea of changing identity by illustrating a mannequin head complete with wig and hat labeled "Emily." The curly short haircut and bright red color of the hat tie in with the look of the music video. Elegant yet still fun this is a stand alone piece and an illustration I'm really proud of!

Song 10: Make You Happy

When I heard this song for the competition I immediately thought . . . robot! And that's not just because I love robots and think about them 56% of the time I had a valid reason. The line, "all I want to do is make you happy," is constantly repeated throughout the song in mechanical sounding-auto tuned voice. Much like a robot. But this isn't just any robot, this is a MIKABOT. He comes equipped with a bolted-on suspenders, a fancy top hat and a mop of curly locks underneath it. Beep boop beep!

Song 11: Underwater

The competition wrapped up with a song called, "Underwater." I thought about what could be underwater and came up with an oyster. The oyster is open to reveal a precious pearl, shaped like a heart to symbolize love. I hand-lettered the lyrics, "put your lips on me and I can live underwater," above the piece and added some bubbles to surround the piece.

I love challenging myself artistically by entering contests and competitions. And it was fun to see everyone's different interpretations of the songs off the album. Not only that I made some new artist friends along the way!! Hope everyone has a good week!! 

Illustration Friday - "Tribute" to "Bun"

Hey everyone!! Hope last week was a good one. I'm still getting pulled in a lot of different directions in life but I DIDN'T forget about "Illustration Friday." This week's topic was "Tribute." I thought long and hard about this one and decided to create an illustrative tribute to my favorite childhood stuffed animal, a pink bunny named "Bun."

"Bun" was my favorite toy as a baby and I took him everywhere I went. He had pink fur, purple ears, blue eyes and a pink nose I distinctly remember I thought was a jellybean (yes, I chewed on it). "Bun" taught me to be imaginative and I always made sure to include him in all my silly adventures. "Bun" took your typical battlescars; went through the dryer, lost a lot of his pink fur and his stuffing. In my book, he deserves a tribute! 

KaraKreative's Birthday 2013!

Hey everyone one of my best friends Kara just so happens to also be a blogger and I wanted to write a post of how we celebrated her birthday this year. This was back in March when it was still super cold outside, and rainy . . . and just dreary. We still wanted something fun to do to celebrate so we picked Bowling!!

 It was no surprise that Kara slaughtered us all look at that form!!

Much like any other sport, I really stink at bowling. It's pretty bad when the owner suggests using bumpers after looking at your scores. But we all still had a really fun time and believe it or not, I was the first person to get a strike! That victory was quickly overshadowed since it was Kara's birthday we let her win. That's not true at all, Kara won both games we played out of pure skill.

 

But if you haven't gone bowling in a while and need something to do on a day where you can't do outside activities I highly recommend it. After our thrilling games we headed back to the house for some cake and presents. I got Kara an extendable jewelry holder and a cute elephant antibacterial holder for her purse. The awesome thing about the jewelry holder was that it held all her OTHER presents she received!!<

The party's theme was "Owls" and I was lucky enough to find a "Cute Owl Cake" tutorial from Leave Room for Desserts at http://leaveroomfordessert.com/2011/01/cute-owl-cake/. The recipe I used was a super fudgy chocolate cake that I let cool and then followed the step by step photos from the post. With a little modification and a dash of imagination the owl cake came together:

Kara loved how it turned out and it was delicious! We had such a fun time celebrating Kara's birthday and are planning more creative parties and DIY projects for the summer time. Be sure to check out Kara's blog where she posts about Graphic Design, Movies, Books and more at http://karakreative.blogspot.com/ Hope everyone has a Happy Friday and a great weekend!!

National Peanut Butter and Jelly Day!

Happy April everyone!! We all know yesterday was April Fool's day but know it or not, today is ANOTHER April Holiday!! Today is the day to celebrate the most iconic pair to hit the USA; it's National Peanut Butter and Jelly day!! I took time out of my week to create this fun typographic graphic to celebrate:

I created the peanut butter bread illustration from a sketch and even took the time to hand letter the jelly looking text in Illustrator. Not something I typically challenge myself with but it was well worth the effort! I also spent an hour making these yummy Buttermilk Peanut Butter and Jelly pancakes:

And yes they tasted as delciious as they look. So pick up a jar or two and celebrate the classic taste combination of Peanut Butter and Jelly today!!

Kreayshawn "Group Hug Tour" Illustration

Hey everyone!! Hope everyone had a fun and safe St. Patty's Day!! Just wanted to update the blog with an illustration I wanted to do for awhileeee. For my birthday last year my brother got me a ticket to see the artist "Kreayshawn" on the Group Hug Tour up in Philadelphia!!

It was such an amazing show. Everyone was great and I had such a blast! We even waited around after teh show I got the opportunity to MEET Kreayshawn, EEP! She signed my brother's arm and he took my photo with her:

Everyone during the show was pretty chill. I made some new friends and could take lots of photos without getting bumped around too much. With all the photos I had I REALLY wanted to commemorate the event with an illustration. I picked out one of the photos of Kreayshawn I took, resketched it and then digitally rendered it on Illustrator and Photoshop. This is the photo that I chose:

Kreayshawn was decked out a short camo top with her hair in pigtails pulled back with two sparkly plastic beads. I love her style and was super excited to get started on making the illustration! When I started sketching back in November I ended up scrapping the project. I just wasn't happy with how it was turning out!! This month I picked it back up again since my "Artistic Fitness" entry was a female portrait and I was determined to finish it. And HERE is how it turned out:

 

What a cute little Kreayshawn cartoon!! I wanted the background to reflect the hazy purple and pink lighting of the venue. The most difficult part was probably getting all the tattoos on her arm. I added her name along the side for anyone who wasn't familiar with who she is. It's now one of my new favorite illustrations and I'm really glad I decided to finish it. Hope everyone has a great week and an awesome day!!

A Pinterest Perfect Valentine's Day!

Hey everyone just wanted to update the blog with how my Valentine's went. I always tend to embrace Valentine's day regardless of my lack of a significant other. A day whose main theme is not only commercial but revolves around hearts, candy and cakes?? Heck yes I'm going to celebrate it!!

Me and my friends threw a little Valentine's day party before going out to watch the ever-so romantic "Die Hard" sequel in the theater. Let me admit this first, I am total Pinterest addict and I wanted to share with you some of the wonderful tips and tricks I found through Pinterest that I used in my party!

First off I made these cute little Valentine's gift baskets for my friends. It was filled with chocolates, sugar wafers, and cookies I baked in the shape of hearts. I even dipped some of the sugar wafers in some red melting chocolate and covered them in Valentine's themed sprinkles an idea I pinned from Craft-O-Maniac from http://www.craft-o-maniac.com/2013/01/valentine-cookies.html

After showering each other with gifts we did our planned craft which was creating memory jars. This is an idea that I have seen on Pinterest a lot. Find a jar. Decorate it. And fill it with little slips of paper with memories written on them. Fill it up and open it up at the end of the year! Basically an overly simplified, personalized and pretty journal jar!

The jars we bought at dollar tree. Paper and stickers from Joanns and HobbyLobby. The finished products all came out really cute and different from each other. 

This was the one my best friend and fellow blogger KaraKreative made!! So elegant!

We all get together for Christmas and exchange gifts so we'll have to open up our jars and share our favorite memories with each other then! Last came dinner. I picked two great recipes I found on Pinterest a baked rigatoni and heart shaped dinner rolls. The dinner rolls were a huge hit.

 

The recipe for the Valentine's Dinner rolls can be found here: http://www.rhodesbread.com/recipes/print_recipe/2051 and the recipe for the Rigatoni I got off SkinnyMom here: http://skinnymom.com/2012/02/05/skinny-rigatoni/?_szp=120432&_szi=3 The pasta was made with ground turkey yum yum!!

 

We had such a fabulous Valentine's day! I honestly have the best friends on the entire planet because no matter what we do we always have a blast doing it! For more of my favorite pins you can always follow me on Pinterest @nerdycupcakes. Hope everyone had a good Valentine's Day and have a safe weekend!

2012 Facebook Cover-Illustrations!!

Hello everyone!! It is almost the weekend, yay! I wanted to update the blog with another one of my 2012 projects. Ever since Facebook made me make the official switch to timeline I challenged myself to create a different illustrated cover photo with my name and title. I am an artist afterall and wish to show off my skills and remind all my friends what I do, graphic design and illustration!!

The first month I created for was August. I started out with my favorite thing, cupcakes!! The cupcakes are an original illustration against a stock background.

Next was September. This was an official premier of my NerdyCupcakes characters. We have strawberry on the left and cherry chocolate chip on the right both original illustrations of my creation on a stock swirly vector background.

October was next and I am such a huge fan of Halloween!! The little NerdyCupcakes were such a cute concept I couldn't resist dressing some up for the season! Pumpkin spice is on the left with a spooky little black cat cupcake on a stock background.

Even though it's plenty cold out in November I couldn't keep the idea of a sweet little couple of Ice Cream cone kids in love!! The illustration is based off of a sketch I created on some notebook paper on some downtown at my job at the time. The background is a stock photo of a chocolate swirl mmmm!

And last but not least my cover photo for December!! This little kitten character was inspired by a pair of pajamas I saw while Christmas shopping. This entire illustration is original with no stock elements this time.

I had such a fun time creating my different cover photos and already have a new one up for the month of January on my personal Facebook page!! If Facebook keeps timeline for the year 2013 I will make sure to make a review post of all the ones I create this year!!  Hope everyone has a great day and a safe weekend!!

Batman the Animated Series Gift Tags!

Hey everyone!! Hope everyone is having a merry AND safe Holiday this season! The Christmas season is a busy time for me creating gifts, cards and other printed goodies. Some things I even have to WAIT to post until after the Holidays since they are gifts for my friends and family and I can't ruin the surprise :)

For the past couple of years I have been creating free Holiday gift tags for all my friends and fans and posting them on my blog. This year's tags are finally done!! Since this was a GREAT year for Batman might as well have my favorite comic hero "wrap up" the Holiday season on his own gifttags! Last year I had Batman wrapping paper and this year I picked up some general DC wrapping paper and couldn't find any Batman gift tags to go with them :( So I drew my own interpretations of some of my six FAVORITE Batman characters from the Animated Series I and added some Holiday cheer to each of them!!

Here are just a few samples:

The full set is available to download from the Violet Ink Design website by clicking this link: http://violet-ink.com/Printables/BatmanHolidayGiftTags Be sure to make sure your printer is set on "Landscape" mode to print them. And be sure to share them with all your friends and family!! Although I did design the tags and create the illustrations I do not claim ownership of Batman the Animated Series, the characters, etc those are all © DC COMICS.

Not into Batman? We also have "Jersey Shore" Gift Tags and Cupcake Holiday Gift Tags from previous years. Hope everyone has a great Holiday and stay tuned for more blog updates :)

Nananana Pumpkin!

If I said it once, I said it a million billion times but I  . . . LOVE. . . HALLOWEEN. So this post is going to be about another ode to Halloween; pumpkin carving! Almost every year since I've had this blog I've posted my carved pumpkins including an American Psycho pumpkin and a yummy cupcake. But this was last minute, late at night and I should not be able to handle sharp objects past 8pm but I had a hand in pretty awesome pumpkin carving this year!

My friend's family went down to the pumpkin patch and brought home a pumpkin. The problem was what to carve in it? The obvious answer? BATMAN. But who would be able to draw Batman on a pumpkin for them? That's where I came in.

From there it was carved out and we threw in a jar candle. I think the pumpkin turned out pretty awesome. I hope everyone in the states is okay during hurricane "Sandy." I'm ready with Peanut Butter & Jelly Sandwhiches, books and flashlights. Stay safe everyone!

Pennsylvania Renaissance Faire 2012

Hey everyone!! Just wanted to update the blog with a silly adventure I had at the Pennsylvania Renaissance Faire. Me and all my friends went last year and decided to go back again this year as well!!

Last year, me and fellow blogger KaraKreative were the only two in our little posse to dress up. But this year all of us went all out!! We were quite the party featuring a witch, a peasant, one of the Three Musketeers, "Toon Link" from the Legend of Zelda (Windwaker) and Frodo from Lord of the Rings.

My costume came out pretty good!! I made the sheild myself and my mom, who rocks at sewing helped with the belt and hat. My character really blended in well since the faire sold a lot of merchandise related to the Legend of Zelda like Master Swords, sheilds and other weaponry and I even ran into ANOTHER Link!

The shows were great! We ended up missing human chess but saw a lot of other shows like magic, comedy and a bagpipes drum band called "Tartanic" and of course the traditional joust and the ending ceremonies!

I can't forget how spectacular the food was either! My lunch consisted of a bread bowl of tomato bisque soup even though the bees kept attacking it. All the walking we did deserved a dessert from the bakery; PUMPKIN bread pudding! The bakery which sold all kinds of treats including giant cupcakes and brownies.

I also went crazy and threw some money down on a Master Sword to keep my costume authentic shall I ever choose to re-wear it again.

Once again if you are ever in the state of Pennsylvania or Central Pa, I highly recommend visiting the Pennsylvania Renaissance Faire.

Laura Cooks: Death by Oreo Cupcakes!!

Hey everyone and welcome to another mouth-watering post about baked goods! A great follow up to Oreo Brownies is "Death by Oreo Cupcakes" found on Instructables by user "Food Snots." If you go on Pinterest you have probably definitely seen the pin for "Glowing Cupcakes," yeah, same food whiz who brought you that recipe!

I was at a bit of a disadvantage though. I was baking at a friend's house who normally doesn't bake. No electric mixer. No food processor to destroy cookies in. Only 1 muffin tin. No cupcake wrappers and no eggs! So supplies had to be bought. And since there wasn't an electric mixer I had to CHEAT a bit for the frosting. 

The recipe didn't exactly say how many cupcakes it would make. The batter DID exceed our expectations of a dozen so the rest was baked in a small cake pan and smothered in leftover oreo frosting.  

The recipe got rave reviews though! Both for the cupcakes and the mini cake by everyone who indulged in the treat. I would definitely make it again. And what's a blog post without an illustration?? SO of course I doodled up a cute little "Nerdy Cupcake" with oreo frosting (above).

To try to the recipe for yourself check it out on Instructables here: http://www.instructables.com/id/Death-By-Oreo-Cupcakes/ or on her blog, Recipe Snobs at: http://www.recipesnobs.com/2011/05/death-by-oreo-cupcakes.html

Hope everyone has a great day!!