Guys! This commission was so much fun to work on and I’ve had the hardest time not sharing it with you sooner. But, you know, it’s apparently bad form to spoil surprises. Derek reached out to me and asked me to work on a portrait as a gift to Carlos for their anniversary. I think it turned out pretty cute. :)

When I do commissioned portraits, you get the digital copies of the final piece to share on social media,. but I also provide high-quality fine art prints of your piece on archival paper. Here’s the final portrait printed 12x12.

Working digitally is my jam, but I sure do love seeing a finished illustration printed off. I think it helps show some of the detail work that might be overlooked on a screen. You can also visit this piece in my portfolio.

Happy anniversary, Carlos & Derek! Thank you for thinking of me and letting me have a small part in celebrating your day! Here’s to many more.

On my march towards opening my Etsy store (coming soon - hopefully), I’ve been in total prep mode. My main focus has been on making sure I have quality content and products for the store. But, to do that, I also needed some tools to aid in making inventory.

I know that part of what I want to do it offer prints, stickers and maybe even vinyl decals. I could order them from a manufacturer directly, but after researching that option, it seemed to be cost prohibitive. I’m just starting out - I can’t (and don’t want to) charge people $10 for a sheet of stickers.

Enter this guy:

Through the beauty of the Facebook Market, I was able to snag a Martha Stewart edition Cricut Express Air 2 for dirt cheap. Someone was given it as a gift, tried it a couple times and realized it wasn’t something they’d use on a regular basis, so they decided to part with it and make a little money back.

I’m still in the very early stages of learning how to use this baby but I’m excited. Thankful for videos like this one from Catherine Kay (aka Katnipp) that soften the learning curve.

How gorg are those golden Martha Stewart edition Cricut tools? Way gorg.

So, I did a thing - that thing specifically. And hopefully it’ll help me bring quality items to customers while keeping prices reasonable.