I have a few pairs of my Sew Cute rainboots in the shop from my personal stock. I’m reserving them especially for UK residents as we get the roughest deal when buying from the USA. Hop on over to my shop to pick up a pair for just £45 including postage. You’ll be wishing for them when the snow starts so why not just get them now?

If you’re not in the UK then you can buy a pair direct from plueys.com.

PS. The above is one side of a cute promo card I got printed to put in orders. Here’s the other side.

If you remember, back in this post, I liked my free cards from Moo so much I was going to get some done for networking purposes. Well, here they are!

As you can see, I’ve gone for a similar idea on one side – a selection of my favourite patterns and illustrations. I can use this as a mini portfolio so people can see my range.

And on the other side is ME. Like I say, these are for networking so not only will the person have a reminder of my work, they’ll also have a reminder of me as a person. The only problem here is that it means I have to make a good impression!

Anyway, I love how they turned out and hope they will help me stand out from the crowd. I’ll be giving them a whirl at Pulse in June – I’m mainly visiting to see how feasible it is for me to take a space there next year, and also to get some inspiration for Super Cute Kawaii, but I’m sure there will be opportunities for networking too. If you’re going, it would be cool to meet you!

It’s a while since I ordered some business cards from Moo but when DaWanda offered up a set for free I wasn’t going to turn that down! Because they’re free, they come with Moo and DaWanda branding so the only thing I could really design was a thank you card for DaWanda shoppers. They’re already familiar with DaWanda and hopefully it will remind them to come back sometime.

I’ve also been thinking about getting some new Moo cards done for illustration networking purposes – the ones I have now are fine for Asking For Trouble or for freelance networking but I’d like some that showcase my illustrations and patterns so I can use them as a little portfolio and leave one as a reminder. Having seen how nicely the patterns came out on these, I am definitely going ahead with this, especially as I hope to visit a trade fair or two this year.

Anyway, if you want one of these, you’ll have to buy something from my DaWanda shop! Lucky for you, there’s a 12% Easter Sale on right now until Sunday – it’s applied to a different category every day but just look for the 12% off mark on my products.

Yay! The Glasgow Craft Mafia‘s relaxed Sunday afternoon markets return for 2010. We won’t be there every month like last year so get along if you can. I will be there this Sunday with a selection of my wares including perfect Valentine’s Day gifts and cards, and a bargain box! I’m not bringing all my stuff so if you’re coming along and want something in particular let me know so I can make sure to bring it!

I did the flyer too, using Chloe from Kuro-e‘s lovely illustration. There’s some more of my recent design work on my portfolio site.

I’ve just done a long-needed redesign of the homepage. It’s always been a problem for me as it has to do so many things – a visitor could be a customer, or a shop/gallery owner or a journalist so how best to appeal to everyone and get them to the right information?

Hopefully, this is a decent solution – there’s more focus on the products, pointing people to either the shop or my image gallery and then the lower part has all the info and blog news plus highlighting the various social networking/marketplaces I’m involved with. Hope you like it!

While we’re on the design theme, you might want to check out my portfolio site. I’ve finished a few jobs recently including a lovely site for fellow Mafioso pumpkinsputnik and these little icons for Folksy. Lots more to come soon too – you wouldn’t believe how many half-finished projects I am involved in just now. Some websites really do take ages to launch.

The cutie fruity friends (yes, that is going to be their name) are progressing from their sketchbook doodles! These are the four that ended up working best and will soon be a badge set. I hope I picked your favourite – mine is definitely the happy orange though I also love how the watermelon looks like she is nervously freaking out.

To get to this point, I basically just scan the drawings, take them into Photoshop and fiddle about with Levels and things until the lines are nice and clear. Then I tidy up any messy bits and colour them in. I like to colour in a watercolour wash kinda way so I don’t worry too much about being neat. I also have the super-steady mouse hand of someone who has spent about ten years laboriously photoshopping images for the web. Once that’s done, they’re ready for my badge templates which I have set up in Illustrator ready for printing.

Later on I will redraw all the characters in Illustrator for other stationery items. I love the sketchy charm of the originals but the lines are generally too rough to be used for anything bigger than a badge. You can see this with Cakeify above. Sketch on the left and redrawn on the right. I’ve lost a little of the character of the original but it’s also much neater and clearer.

Now comes the tedious part of cutting out circles and making and packaging the badges. Hopefully I will be back very soon with the finished badges!

PS. Surprised at the love for Cactus Bear in the last post comments. He was a total joke doodle but who knows what may become of him now?