Peppermint Love

Reflections

I can't stop playing with these new brushes in Photoshop CS5. I am addicted. I can get such great layers of color, it's like drawing with markers or highlighter and pencil or painting with fun brushes and ink or watercolor. Too fun. You'll probably see more of these posts in the future. Ultimately it is a reflection of my "real life" style of playing around with pigment.

Happy Happy Joy Joy

A constant rain has been falling upon us in California for days now. It is weather pattern that consistently makes me want to doodle in my robe for hours instead of productively getting things done. It also puts a "damper" (haha) on my half marathon training. Trust me when I say running anything over 3 miles on a treadmill sucks. So I doodle in procrastination of heading to the gym and in true holiday spirit choose to illustrate a tree.

Wishing everyone a dry week before Christmas arrives and hope that everyone takes a minute to celebrate the joys in life, in my case, doodling. :)

Doodle Portraits

Playing around with the new bristle brushes in Photoshop CS5 tonight. It is so fun to see these doodles looking like paint without the mess or the hassle of setting everything up. Although nothing beats real paint and paper, this is super fun and easy alternative to idea. This is exceptionally fun when paired with a drawing tablet like this one.

I hope everyone is in a good holiday spirit. Personally I have been busy hand assmbling Christmas presents and it's starting to get a little tideous. Luckily the gifts will be worth the work. :)

Happy Halloweeny.

Wishing everyone a fun filled Halloween. Costume pictures to come!!

Happy Birthday Rich!

Happy Birthday Rich!

An Ode to Candy Corn

With my countless festive posts this month I asked some of you what delights you about Halloween. My cool friend Lalove responded by mentioning her love of candy corn (but only during the Halloween season, of course). Bang! Just like that I was inspired to draw ridiculous digital illustrations of candy corn.

So, candy corn.... you tasty, chalky, tri-colored, chewy nuggets of love...... this post is an ode to you!


(c) Jennie Jacobs 2010

Halloween Greetings

So I wasn't lying when I said I loved Halloween.

A couple of weekends ago I went to the local craft store and had a little Halloween craft supplies moment. The store carried a pad of amazing scrap booking paper and I couldn't resist. Coupled with some sparkly foam Halloween stickers and voila!, I had some fun and easy to assemble Halloween greeting cards. The card with the cemetery-scape was drawn on the backside of black paper and then cut out using an exacto-knife. As for the rest; simple straight cuts made on my paper cutter, glitter alphabet stickers and foam creatures placed on ready made greeting card stock. Fun and easy! Happy crafting.

Haunted!

There is no way around it; I LOVE Halloween. I love the advance of fall before the time change, orange and black and purple, the fun of costumes, carving pumpkins and the smell of their seeds roasting in the oven. I love wigs and glow in the dark creepy crawlies dangling from fake cob webs. I love the bowls overflowing with candy and the shouting of trick or treat at the door.

Due to my love of Halloween I usually devote a majority of my October to crafting, doodling, carving, baking, decorating and dressing things up in all things Halloween. Yesterday I spent time doodling away on my amazing writing tablet, exploring some haunts of the halloween world.

So tell me, what do you love about Halloween?

Oktoberfest @ Home

We needed a little Oktoberfest at home. So we made it happen; homemade pretzels that blew my mind (you can find the recipe here), a plethora of German beer, brauts, roasted red potatoes, and sauerkraut. Warm and comforting on a drizzly, gray, fall day. Simply perfect.

Happy Birthday Fifus!!!

Happy Birthday!!!! to my cute little sister Amanda who turned a whopping 20 years old today. I love you Fifi!!

Xoxo, Jen

Feel Free.

Let's feel free. Let your hair down. Shake your rump. Release your inhibitions. Take a deep breath and let it all go. Let your mind be still and relish in this moment, because it is the only one we know we have for sure. Remember what you love. Remember who you love. And be grateful.

J & D

Some really great friends of ours (ours, meaning me and my loverly boy toy) got married last month and we wanted to do something special for them (aka: we didn't want to just get them a blender). Putting our noggins together we decided to have fun with sparklers, our amateur photog skills and the dark of night. So, I know that this idea has been done before, but we had a blast. Kyle manned the camera while I whisked probably a total of 20 sparklers in the air (in total) like a crack head on the fourth of July. Each image was printed separately and then framed together in a triptych style.

Funny side note: after we gave J & D the present, they informed us that the night of their wedding they forgot to bust out the huge box of sparklers they had bought for guests to play with. I guess they have some presents to make. ;)

Congats John and Danielle!!

Even Sweeter

More visual goodies for your viewing pleasure.

I am hoping to turn this series of sweet treat illustrations into a collection of greeting cards. Ill let you know the outcome of that desire.

Too Sweet.

On a foggy morning, during a stressful week, sometimes you crave that feeling of youthful summer. Bike rides along the beach. Rompers. Carnivals. And that sweet taste of creamy, cool ice cream.

These two fun filled illustrations are reminiscent of days of the past and a have a carefree look of silk screened prints. Enjoy.

Notebook Doodle Series III

Dreams on Film

Palise de Papes, Avignon
Hotel de Ville, Aix en Provence
Barcelona, Spain
Beautiful colors. Barcelona, Spain.
Sagrada Familia Church by Gaudi. So interesting! Barcelona, Spain.
3 Ducks Hostel, Paris.

3 Ducks Hostel, courtyard. Paris, France.
Paris.
Paris (obvi!)
Paris.

I took an excursion to Europe recently and brought along a Holga and some film. Thought I would share some of the moments from Paris, Provence and Barcelona. I brought 4 rolls of film with me and the majority of the pictures turned out ok, which is amazing. (Apparently, no one travels with film these days and it was hard to ask the airport employees to hand inspect your film (instead of x-ray) when you don't speak the language. )

So the above photos are a few of my favorites from my amazing adventure. Please enjoy.
xoxo.

His and Hers

Bridal shower gifts I made for my cute friend Mel! I hope she loves them.

Button to Button

Per my sisters request, here are some adorable and creative button images to delight and inspire:








This cake below is so adorable, a personal fave, and what intially got me started on this whole button idea. Can't you image a plethora of matching invites, save the dates, and bouquets to melt your heart?

images (in almost order) via jessicaclair.net, hellocrafty, marthastewart.com, the knot, prettychicky.com, loveandlavendar.com and brides.com