Happy Holidays!

That Time of Year

It's that time of year. The holidays have crept up yet again, announcing their arrival with signs of seasonal twinkling lights, red and green decorations and fluffy trees strapped to the rooftops of cars. Typically, I am a sucker for holiday festiveness, and while I don't celebrate the colder season with hideous knitted sweaters of dancing polar bears, I do find pleasure in a few things.  

1. The creation of our new holiday tradition; Calendars. Last year we started this gift giving trend showcasing a collection of film images captured with our Holgas. This year we plan to do the same! It's in the works and will be a surprise, but friends and fam should be on the lookout for one very soon. 

2. Sugar Cookies in full decorated happiness. It happens every year; 200,000,000 sugar cookies are baked by my sister Joanne and myself. We probably eat a majority of them, but the ritual is the same: We start the cookie baking process, I get bored. Joanne has to bake a million on her own. Cookies cool off. I have visions of grandeur and create 10 frosting colors, with two types of royal icing (one for borders, one for flooding). We pipe and smear and sprinkle with edible glittering bits. Then we get tired. It gets late. Our backs hurt from huddling over our sugary prison. About 2 dozen cookies get the short end of the stick and get smeared and squirted on in haste. The end. 

I blame the obsession on Martha Stewart and her cookie baking empire:

3. Holiday doodles. In an unstoppable fashion I tend to create super fun Christmasy doodles every 

year. Sometimes they are in watercolor, sometimes in Photoshop. And this usually isn't just limited to the winter holiday season. Some may call it a problem, but I think it's less of a problem then, say, decorating my house in a plethora of creepy Santa faces or hideous Jesus chatskis. Although I would put this up just for the fun of it. 

Watercolor Women

Slightly forlorn and a bit mysterious, this series of Watercolor Women illustrations was a fun process. Just like my Fall watercolor illustrations, the process begun with painted watercolor that I scanned. From there the watercolor backgrounds were transformed digitally in Photoshop adding texture and layered up for a richer color. The women have a slight Picasso-esque feel, but it wasn't intentional; the first illustration (the green girl) was the gateway for the other two, I just ran with the style. I had fun playing with interesting orientations and flowing hair. Overall, it was a fun project done solely for the pleasure of trying something new. I would love to know your thoughts!

Thanks.

 I am never ceased to be amazed by the wonders that this life, and this world, and this place I live in, give me on a daily basis. I am not sure what my purpose is in this great wide wonderful place or where things will end up, but the one thing I am certain of is that life is good and there is no reason why I should not embrace it. As such I would like to say a big THANKS to the things that make my life so wonderful:

Cute kitties in sinks.

 Traveling here. 

My love for this man.

 Amazing friends.

 Delicious food. 

 Family.

This guy.

Girlfriends you can't live without.

A glass of wine.

 Exploring new places.

Good beer.

Yummy things and cooking them. 

Wonderful family.

I am thankful for my health, running, music, living in a beautiful place, having so many fabulous people in my life. I am grateful for laughing and Spin Pins, San Pellegrino and all of my pillows. I am thankful for breakfast cereal, summer and the art of cooking. I am thankful for art and creativity, for lovely dreams and warm embraces. I am thankful for this life I have been given. And so much more. 

You are what you eat.

Just a friendly reminder to myself and anyone out there who cares to listen.

Copyright Jennie Jacobs 2010

Photo credit Lilt Pepeyan 

Spook

Pretty Peony Pattern in a Perfect Palette

Alliteration is fun. Try it out sometime. Highly recommended.

What else is highly recommended you ask?....... Pretty flowers. Lots of them.

Especially peonies. Swoon worthy, feathery peonies, in rich tones.

Highly.

Recommended.

This pattern was created in Illustrator by manipulating a photo of peony, a little copy and pasting and some abstracted leaf shapes. Fun. Easy. Pretty.

Another recommendation? Click on the image to open in a new window, right click  and save as your computer wallpaper.

You're welcome. ;)

Fall is Here!

My closest friends and family know that I am a summer weather girl to the core. I love running around in summer dresses, flip flops and keeping my curly hair in a dry, un-frizzy state. But what they also know is my pure, unadulterated love of Halloween. And actually, anyone who has ever read my blog can witness that love with my digital illustrations, custom Halloween cards, my ode to candy corn, and my Halloween paper collages just to name a few.

 As the weather changes, and Kyle and I get ready for our first road trip up to Oregon, I couldn't help but play with some digital illustrations in the name of fall and the Halloween spirit. These illustrations started with actual watercolor scans and I played with them in Photoshop before pulling them into Illustrator for the vectored white drawings. I hope to pursue some more of these in my free time. Sometimes I get so wrapped up in what I am doing for work that I forget my passion for art and creation.

 Close up detail:

Close up detail:

Baby Cakes

My friend and co-worker/boss lady, Lorrie Thomas Ross is expecting her first baby very soon. Her little girl will be arriving at the end of the month and my friends and I at the agency are so excited for her to be here. In honor of Lorrie and her sweet baby we put together a lovely baby shower. Of course I volunteered to make the invites and I wanted to share with everyone the end results:

 A jungle theme was agreed upon and from that I let my drawing run wild.... wink wink. A hand drawn illustration was scanned and colored digitally in Photoshop. Each invite was printed by me on scalloped edge cardstock and sent to the recipients in a pale purple envelope (sorry for the terrible photo quality).

My original plan called for a hand lettered invite, but the changes in the details of the shower made it too complicated. Instead I went for a combination of a script font and a more hand lettered one to create a laid back delicateness (is that a thing?).

As a gift to Mamma, Daddy and Baby I printed an isolated image of the invite illustration on the same scallop edged cardstock and floated it in a frame over textured yellow paper. It was a special way to memorialize the baby shower and this exciting time  parents experience before the baby arrives.

For an added fun project, and gift for Baby Ross, my friends Nicki and David and I all made some customized onesies! Using fabric paint markers and puffy paint we made some cute little onesies for the newborn to sport in stylish fashion during her first days out in this bright new world. I only managed to get one shot of them before we wrapped them up:

If you are interested in a custom invitation set for your next event I would love to help you out. You can email me at jennie@jennie-jacobs.com for more info.

Lily's Busy Day

Back in May I was approached by a professor of computer science from University California Santa Barbara about helping to create a children's book for a new iPad app he was developing with the help of the computer science students at UCSB. I agreed and am excited to share with you some of the illustrations I developed for my interactive book.

Lily's Busy Day is essentially an interactive "paper-doll dress up" book for small children. The premise is that Lily needs different clothing items and accessories to complete her favorite activities. Each of the components will be able to be dragged and placed on to Lily's form.

  

The app called Bookaroo is a fun and toddler friendly childrens book read and book creator. To learn more about the Bookaroo app by GreenPangolin please visit the website here.

 The app is still in the works and should be releasing soon (fingers crossed). I will be sure to let you know when it is up and running and available for purchase.