Valentine's Day

So instead of going the easy route and just popping into the grocery store and buying some valentines for Amara's preschool peers, I decided to design some for her. I wanted to make the process fun for both of us and I sat her down and asked her what kind of valentines she would like to give, explaining Valentine's Day and so on. If you have spent any time around our house lately you'd know Amara is a BIG fan of the Tinkerbell movie which came out on DVD late last year so fairies were an easy choice. Amara and I started drawing up sketches as shown below.

Keep in mind that I was dealing with the attention span of a three year old so I had to draw as fast as I could. She liked the ones in the upper right but was a little disappointed that they didn't look exactly like Tinkerbell or Silvermist but I was able to move along.After some further deliberation and Amara changing her mind 10 more times before going back to to the fairies concept, we came up with these three fairies.Now, not everybody likes fairies (a concept very foreign to someone who watches Tinkerbell at least once a day) so I added dinosaurs and she liked the three above. We turned to the computer and started to paint these in Photoshop.Painting them was a blast, Amara sat on my knee and chose colors while I painted and talked about color choices and so on. As the images got more fleshed out before her eyes, she would giggle with enthusiasm. I had to do these quickly as she wanted paint as well. I would finish one and she would say "my turn" and grab the stylus and have a go. Below is an example of her handiwork. I felt the cards needed something on the back so I whipped this heart up. You would like this could be blasted out, but Amara sabotaged the process TWICE. Finally we got this nice little heart below.
We were ready to print them out. Here's an example of a pre-cut sheet. The actual cards are business card size 3.5x2".Here they are all printed out. That was a lot of fun, though I really didn't have the time to do it. Amara and I both enjoyed it and honestly I have worked for worse clients. Make your own and just know it's from Amara. Happy Valentine's Day!

Studio To Amara's Room

Because the Jackson three got bigger by one, we decided I would have to move my stuff out of my studio and turn it into Amara's new room. So, after moving everything out and getting rid of a lot of my stuff (thanks, Jessica for giving my table a good home) we began painting the wall like a sky. Amara was pretty excited about moving into her new space and I encouraged her to help. We stayed paint free with the help of some old pajamas and a little plastic painting smock.
Painting blue was fun for a while, and then she lost interest and left. She came back only to find that I was in the process of painting the clouds, which she wanted to do. So I taped off some cloud shapes which took so long, she lost interest again and left.
Finally it was finished and below is the final product. I need to set aside some time to paint something cool on the rest of the walls later but just know they will be covered with High School Musical 6, Hanna Montana, and Princess posters later.

She loves it!

Fun Stuff From Amara

Hi, welcome back! Some more of Amara's PS work.
She is getting better at not mashing the stylus into oblivion and when she feels like the painting is done, she blurts out, "New white piece!" I ask her what she want to call each 'piece'...

The above one's called "Clifford"

This one's titled "Souvenirs"
Great titles if you ask me.
Maybe there's a chance she'll play hockey too.