Covered in Glitter and Screaming

My illustration pen pal loaned me another Griffin and Sabine book, and I returned it with a handmade card. This one plays around with the format, and features an octopus holding a message in a bottle. Process video: I ended up making several of these, but I think I want to go back and adjust the design a bit. I love the look of the suckers being cut from the front piece of paper to reveal the back, but the finer details are hard for the Cricut to handle without tearing. This card also doesn't fit into a standard envelope. The plan is to make at least one alternate version of this concept that is easy to replicate, to be added to my (brand new!) Etsy store , which currently features kokeshi doll cards .

 My illustration pen pal loaned me another  Griffin and Sabine book , and I returned it with a card holder inspired by modern kokeshi dolls . Process the process almost always starts with a sketch Some math was done to determine how big the finished doll should be then the sketch was traced and I used a grid to enlarge the sketch to the final size using the new drawing, I split out the individual pieces to be cut out The body (red) is cut from craft foam, the other pieces are cut from paper The patterned paper at the bottom is usually used for origami Front and back of assembled doll Front and back of finished doll holding the folded letter

My illustration pen pal loaned me another  Griffin and Sabine book , and I returned it with a letter and a puzzle. I already had a mandala design from a workshop years ago, so I started there. I made some tweaks and printed it out to decide what the colors should be like. Thanks to radial symmetry, I could get four different looks on the same sheet. Top: white background, rainbow shapes on left and metallics on right Bottom: black/white shapes on rainbow background left, metallic background right  Puzzles are made of chipboard (what hardcover books use, a little more hardcore than a cereal box) Let's feed that into the Cricut and see what happens Good news: the Cricut can handle drawing all the lines at this size, and it will successfully cut out all those puzzle shapes Bad news: all those frayed edges are not gonna work for me Second attempt: puzzle re-drawn and re-cut on two sheets of cover stock glued together instead of chipboard. A little less solid, but much smoother! An...

My illustration pen pal loaned me another Griffin and Sabine book , and I returned it wrapped in multiple layers of tissue paper so that opening each layer was like digging through the layers of the earth. Outer wrapper (shovel, address, and postage) Organic layer (grass) Topsoil Subsoil Reference -> sketch -> final The book was cleverly hidden under the fossil layer of tissue paper

 My Griffin and Sabine pen pal sent me the first book to read, and this is the box I made to return it. The box design went through several rounds of changes and it didn't end up perfect, but overall I am very happy with it This is the first time I've used a magnetic switch – the light only turns on when the lid is opened. Concept sketch First try Second try Third try, bottom half Third try, top half Pencil drawing References are helpful! Gel pen and marker on black paper looks GOOD Attaching the LED to the battery and switch There is a magnet in the bottom front edge of the box; when the switch at the top center gets close to it, the light turns off Ready! Finishing touches added

Out of the blue, I got a postcard in the mail from a friend. One side was a beautiful landscape he created with pen and watercolor, the message on the back described a book called Griffin and Sabine , a lavishly illustrated and interactive book about correspondence between two artists, and he invited me to respond in kind. I couldn't possibly say no! I wanted to respond with a Japan-inspired illustration. Painting isn't my medium, but I liked how the flowers turned out on the  deck of cards , so after some thought I landed on digitally tracing and painting a famous  torii gate  and added an  Amabie .  Not my best work, but doing it is how I get better Design process: