The monsters want to wish you a happy day! This will be one of my new greeting cards! :) I'm excited to see how they turn out.

Hi everyone! I have really exciting news to share, but first I want to remind you [especially if you live near Rochester, NY] that I'll be vending at the Mini-Mayday! Underground show on Saturday. The address and times and all that are under the "WHERE TO BUY" tab up top.

And now for the exciting news. Last week I asked for some feedback on some T-shirt designs. Although T-shirts are coming later in the summer, I decided to start off by putting the designs on baby onesies!

Marinette, owner of Inspired Buffalo, is helping me with these. I was able to meet with her and she showed me her new, super awesome, HOW MUCH DID YOU PAY FOR THAT! direct-to-garment printer. If you don't know what that is [I didn't] YouTube a video of one in action because it's seriously magic. I chose to try this printing method for now over traditional screenprinting because I wanted to launch 3 designs at once and there isn't any extra fees for screen set up. The design goes directly from the computer onto your shirt, or in this case onesie. Plus you can use as many colors as you want and it doesn't cost extra... and we all know color is kinda my thing. I priced out what it would cost to screenprint with at least 6 colors and it's a lot... unless you buy hundreds. Which is too much of an $$$ investment at the moment... So I'm starting small with 50 onesies. Baby steps.

Literally baby steps. They're baby onesies.

Want to see them. Here they are! All the designs are available for preorder through my Etsy shop. I now have direct payment set up so you can use your credit card without having to go through PayPal. All preorders will be ready in July and I will email you to let you know when they are being shipped.

Click the image to take you to the shop listing for that item. Onesies are $20 each or 2/$30. Sizes range 6 - 24 months.

These are so fun and perfect for gifting... or for your own little monster.

I just finished another pet drawing! I absolutely love drawing animals. This guy is named Simon and he's a black lab mix. The drawing is a surprise gift for a couple's new home! I hope they love it. He's a cutie. 

If you're interested in a portrait of your pet, there is more information in the PORTRAIT INFO tab above. 

I just finished another custom pet drawing. I'm super happy with how this drawing turned out. It's already framed up and looks really polished. I can't wait to deliver it!

If you like it and are interested, I'd be happy to draw your pet too. Information is on the PORTRAIT INFO tab up top. 

Today I finally picked my knitting needles up after taking a break to teach art to some awesome kids at Fine Arts Camp! I definitely have a lot of knitting to do in the next week to catch up. The next show is August 11th at the Buffalo Waterfront so that gives me a week to restock! Work work work.

I wanted to share some sketches that I did of camper's pets. I let them bring in pictures of their dogs and did quick drawings of their animals. They were fun to do... even if I was working in Crayola colored pencils instead of my usual Prismacolors and Faber Castel artist pens. The campers made awesome artwork too! I am super proud of them and already looking forward to next summer. Fine Arts Camp is definitely a fun two weeks for both th

I thought yesterday was pretty productive. Not only did I finish knitting the bodies for three small round guys, but I also finished up this drawing of Cody, the large furry friend of Emily at merrypad.com. 

Mostly I put up monsters here in the bloggy part of the site, but I also wanted to let you know that I love doing custom portraits of people and animals. I updated the "PORTRAIT INFO" tab up top to include examples of my work and pricing. 

Here's Cody!

Welcome to the first erinmakesstuff craft night. To set the scene, I just got back from Zumba [<3] and took a shower and it's about 9:30pm. It's Wednesday and this project will, if all goes as planned, be a bridal shower gift for my awesome monster-lovin' friend Ashley. Bridal Shower gift = gotta get done by Friday. I plan to get it done tonight. It's craft night and this time we're painting. Ready? Set? Let's do some last minute craftin'.

Inspiration:

Ashley and Mike love going to concerts and a few months ago I went with them to see Iron and Wine. It was great. I'm not good at music criticy stuff so I'll leave it at "great." Last time I visited their house I saw The Shepherd's Dog CD lying on their table. Then I got an idea. They have two dogs so maybe I could mimic a similar style and paint portraits of their daschunds, Lily and Sophie. 

Results: 
So... the results were far less colorful than the inspiration. As I was painting, all the brighter pinks and purples ended up more muted tones. I could have fixed that simply by using a different blue to mix my purples or by glazing pinks over the lighter areas. I'm going to keep them as is since they turned out cute. I hope Ashley and Mike like them!

Thanks for looking! Below are pictures of the process... you may have to click "Read More" to see.

I tried to do things a bit different for this drawing. I attempted to focus more on the shading and shadows in the face instead of just linework. Looking back, I feel I probably should have painted this instead of trying to use colored pencil. Colored pencil isn't very forgiving and once it's there, it's hard to go back and do anything about it. I will probably go back and do something about the unfinished looking shirt at some point, but I wanted to get it finished. I did learn that colored pencil looks pretty cool over black gouache. I'll try using that in some future drawings.

Week two: A self-portrait with Ellison [I miss you!] done with marker, watercolor, colored pencil and a tad of gesso on Bristol board. A professor once told me that my paintings reminded him of coloring books. He then added "sophisticated coloring books." Sophisticated coloring books? Ok. I can rock that. I like the tie in to childhood. I make toy monsters and love kids so it makes complete sense that my artwork also makes that connection while still reflecting my own aesthetic. 

July's theme is self-portraits! Expect all sorts of crazy, snarky expressions!