Designing Pillows —- Digital Art for Zazzle

Sometime in January I posted in a Zazzle forum calling for ideas for new products how cool it would be if independent designers (me, for instance) could design throw pillows to be produced by Zazzle. I was pretty excited on February 7th when I found out that they now have that in place, and I quickly designed 3 pillows on GIMP. A really nice thing about these pillows and the other housewares products that came out at that time, is that they are being manufactured by a company that "sustainably employs" and supports single mothers.

Here are the three pillow designs that have sold from my store so far. You can see a theme emerging as far as what is popular. (I also see that with my iPhone cases and cards.) Two of these have a digitally collaged background of  vintage Parisian and French ephemera, including an old invoice, receipt, handwritten letter, the handwritten manuscript of Madame Bovary, lovely typography and old stamps, with a number of the vintage images from Karen at the Graphics Fairy.

Vintage Blue Hydrangea French Ephemera Pillow by 13MoonshineDesigns

Paris Eiffel Tower Butterfly Pillow by 13MoonshineDesigns

Vintage Paris French Ephemera Pillow by 13MoonshineDesigns

Three of my other pillow designs were featured products on Zazzle, wining Today's Best Awards.

Vintage Chandelier Gladiola Pillow by 13MoonshineDesigns

Sunflower Ancient Rome Italian Pillow by 13MoonshineDesigns

And just a couple of days ago:

Vintage French Floral Dress Forms Pillow by 13MoonshineDesigns

I have actually designed 49  pillows that are available in my store.

If you are a Zazzle designer who has sold any pillows, add a comment to my post with a link to your best selling pillow design.

 

Fonts Are Cool

I love fonts. I have just been on a shopping binge for fonts. I am so excited by the ones I got!

My new fonts

I got these at FontRiver. There are thousands of fonts there...and thousands I haven't even seen Yet.  I am really glad these people offer FREE fonts and amazed by the people who design all the wonderful fonts and then offer them for free. Yesterday after lusting after some great fonts for a while, with some help from Edward I learned how to unzip and install the fonts to my font folder. ("Font folder" I had no idea, and I can honestly say I had never been in my Control Panel before.)

I have no idea how I would ever use the magical unicorn font, but it was too fun to pass up. I love the Jane Austen one that is based on her handwriting.

I used the Adine Kirnberg font on this Shakespeare themed pillow cover I made.

Shakespeare Romeo loves Juliet Pillow

And the very pretty Chopin font for this one, that isn't sewn yet.

Imagine Peace Pillow

My brain is pretty worked up imagining all the things I can do with these fonts. I am offering personalized pillow covers using a choice from five of these fonts in my etsy home decor shop.

Christmas Digital Art

Just these, and then I'll quit. Really. Well, I do have another one sort of designed in my head, but I also have a million other things do to get ready for Christmas.

Vintage Deer with Holly Christmas Card by 13MoonshineDesigns

Fellow followers of the Graphics Fairy blog will probably recognize some of these vintage images that I have combined and manipulated for the deer art I made this morning.

Vintage Deer Seasons Greetings Christmas Card by 13MoonshineDesigns

I also put together this vintage typewriter "CREATE" card and mousepad since my last post. I really have a thing for old manual typewriters.

Vintage Typewriter Card by 13MoonshineDesigns
Shop for cards at zazzle

Vintage Typewriter CREATE Mousepad by 13MoonshineDesigns
Learn ways to make money as an artist on Zazzle.

The most popular holiday image by far has been this "Santa over Paris" Eiffel Tower picture—on cards, ceramic ornaments and as a print.

Vintage Santa over Paris Christmas Card by 13MoonshineDesigns
create cards online at zazzle

Digital Art and More Image Magic

I have continued working with GIMP, my image manipulation program, the last few weeks.

Paris Butterflies Digital Collage by Anita Barnard

This little Paris Butterfly collage was my most ambitious to date, if only because it had more layers than I had used before in a piece and some fidgety placement and sizing and levels of differing transparency that I had to figure out. I am still playing with how to get to the right place for what are probably some pretty basic commands, and making this digital collage was definitely a learning experience for me. And satisfying in that I am happy with how it turned out.

Starry Christmas Night

I had an idea of Santa's sleigh flying through Vincent van Gogh's Starry Night sky. After I found the vintage image of Santa and his sleigh that I wanted, I spent about 200 years clearing out all the background from in between the sleigh runners and all the little reindeer antlers...with a tiny erase brush and the image at 400% most of the time. (Okay, maybe not quite that long, but my hand was stiff and cramping a bit before I was done. There's probably an easier way of removing a background from an image that isn't all white or just one color, and I'd love some guidance if anyone can tell me what that method is). I am a big van Gogh fan, and I liked how this looks.

Vintage Santa over Paris Christmas Card by 13MoonshineDesigns

Having done all the work clening up the Santa image, I then found some great vintage postcards of Paris and Rome over at The Graphics Fairy blog, and had fun positioning Santa to fly past the Eiffel Tower and over the Coliseum.

Vintage Santa in Rome Italy Christmas Card by 13MoonshineDesigns

Vintage Santa over Big Ben London Christmas Card by 13MoonshineDesigns

Many of my new images - and variations, as well as images of my hand cut physical collages and art have been put on some things like cards, mugs and shirts over on Zazzle. Here are some examples.

Vintage Santa over Paris Christmas Ornament by 13MoonshineDesigns

Van Gogh Cypress Artist Christmas Card by 13MoonshineDesigns

Chicago Ferris Wheel Love by 13MoonshineDesigns

Paris Butterflies Art Collage Mouse Pad by 13MoonshineDesigns

Thanksgiving, Food and the Garden

I have made the traditional cranberry relish..cranberry sauce...I never know exactly what to call it...with fresh cranberries, orange, orange zest, clove and a wee bit of cinnamon...and the house smells great. Just like the holidays have arrived! Which I suppose they have. How did that happen already?

I have also pre-cooked and mixed up the squash casserole with fresh yellow squash and fresh oregano from my garden. We are still enjoying going out to the garden for fresh herbs and some vegetables. Earlier this week we had roasted red peppers on homemade pizzas from the bell peppers that are now starting to turn red...and we have lots of them in various shades of green to red, still on the plants. We have several jalapenos ready to pick, lots of very green tomatoes that survived the cold nights a while back, and we picked two small eggplants several days ago. Wow! Eggplant and jalapenos in late November. My okra is huge, and still has blooms and little baby okra, but the growth of the okra has slowed down a lot in the cool weather, and it takes a long time (especially considering the usual growth rate of okra) for them to get big enough to pick. Even my basil is still surviving, which makes me very happy. I think that is what I miss the most through the winter and early spring...not being able to go outside and get fresh basil in just the amount I need.

Another dish I am making for Thanksgiving tomorrow is buttermilk pie. I have been a big fan and critic of buttermilk pie since we stopped at a small home cooking type restaurant in East Texas after berry and peach picking one summer about 6 years ago. Since then I have sampled and critiqued (right texture? creamy enough? too much nutmeg? no nutmeg? too dry?) many slices of pie from restaurants and cafes all over. But, I have never made a buttermilk pie myself. I know, it's funny, because I bake a lot...maybe I was a little intimidated. (Would I not live up to my own standards?) The recipe I am using we looked up on the internet a few years ago, is titled the "Best Ever" buttermilk pie. I recall that it was part of an article about buttermilk pie, and how a southern girl had to convince her friends where she was then living that the idea of buttermilk pie was not weird or gross but was in fact VERY good. Sounds great; however, this buttermilk pie recipe has no nutmeg...not the slight perfect amount, not any. So, of course I will be adapting that recipe and adding a hint of nutmeg with fresh whole nutmeg and the essential nutmeg grinder that my son Damon gave me.

House of Hope and Striving Collage

House of Hope and Striving,  Collage by Anita Barnard

Here is another recent collage with a different interepretation of a house. The piece explores the theme of Vincent Van Gogh's yellow house in Arles, France and the great hopes he had of creating an artists' community there. The collage is 8x10 on 11x14 Bristol board paper. It is comprised of found and created papers, text, images, ink and acrylic paint. Two examples of Vincent's handwriting from his correspondences appear in the piece, including the larger word "Tristement" in the roof. Sadness.

I worked on the piece on and off for over a week, then I just let it sit for another week, sometimes taking it out and looking at it, or arranging the last couple of elements on it. Finally I quit asking Edward and my youngest daughter whether I should add the last bits or not and just glued them down. I don't know why some pieces of art feel more certain, and others are dithered over for a long time, but I am happy with the decision I made. (Which is good, because you can always add something later, but it's a lot more problematic to rip something out.)

It was an interesting piece to work on, and sometimes a somewhat melancholy process, as I spent a lot of time thinking about Van Gogh's work and his life while working, as well as about the life and ideas of artists in general.

An archival print or a poster of House of Hope and Striving are available on Zazzle.

The images of wings came from The Graphics Fairy, a great site for vintage images.

Two New Collages - Houses and Birds

Collage with Mixed Media 8x8 inches

I've been having a lot of ideas for some little collages lately. Today I just finished up the images of two from last week. I keep thinking about house and home and all that means and that images of houses can symbolize and bring up emotionally for us. Like some of my other recent collages these two have the house image...and also some birds that crept in, which is not unusual in my collage work lately.

Collage  8x8 inches

 

The two pieces are very different in tone and color, one being more serene and pastoral, closer to a traditional landscape, and the other with more deep color and contrast, and as Edward said, more masculine "plus it has all those numbers." Now I'm not very into numbers, being more of a language and art person, but as a former quilter and sometime woodworker, these images of vintage tape measures and rulers just appealed to me.