Bleek Blog

I love Etsy

2009-02-06T16:27:00-07:00

Who doesn't? However, I love it so much that, like many others out there, I decided to start my own store. You see, my other passion in life besides design, is fabric and sewing. There are so many wonderful fabrics out there, and as a designer, I am drawn to bold, funky prints. For Christmas this year, I made bags and camera straps for nearly every female on my list (I will be the first to admit my creations are pretty girly). The response was overwhelmingly positive, and everyone encourage me to sell my creations. So now I am!

You may have noticed the artsy photo of a yoga mat bag as my monthly graphic for January. Well that's one of my creations, and I put it up for January of a teaser of things to come. I've been slightly neglectful of this blog, but let me assure you it's because I've been so busy, not because of laziness. Well maybe a little laziness. When I should have been posting I've been sewing!

Check out my Etsy site at www.obleek.etsy.com and let me know what you think. You can also check out my Flickr sewing project stream to see all my projects as they are completed. For all the guys out there, my bags make great gifts for the ladies in your lives, and I will be offering Guitar Hero/Rockband straps soon (thanks to my brother's request!). I hope everyone is enjoying 2009 so far as much as I am.

We have winners!

2008-10-30T16:31:00-07:00

Obleek's custom designed greeting card contest is now over, and I want to thank each and every one of you who entered. After a random draw, I've picked the following 3 names and have contacted the winners via email:

Merisa - Birthday Invitation
Chelle - Christmas Card
Kelley (bellydancinbabe) - Birth Announcement

Congratulations, ladies! I can't wait to work with you on your designs. As for those of you who weren't so lucky this time, stay tuned for more giveaways in the future. Also, if you're interested in having a custom designed Christmas card, now's the time to get started. Please contact me if you're interested and I will gladly send you my price list.

Thanks again everyone for participating and making Obleek's first contest a huge success!

Win a custom designed greeting card

2008-09-23T22:35:00-07:00

I said that September would be a month of fun surprises here at Obleek, and so it is! 3 lucky winners will receive a custom design (by me) of either a birth announcement, Christmas card, or birthday invitation.

The design can either be 5”X7” or 4”X6” and is full colour, single sided. You will have input in the design and colour scheme, though the design will be used as a template that others can choose from in the future. 25 printed copies on matte cardstock are included (with shipping to anywhere in Canada and the U.S.), and the design will be provided digitally as well should you ever want to have them printed at your local photo printer or copy center.

All you need to do to enter is comment on this blog entry and tell me which type of design you want to enter for: Birth announcement, Christmas card, or birthday invite.

There will be three separate draws, one for each category. If you want to enter in all of them, just say so in one comment. Also, if you mention this entry on your own blog or website and link back to me (and provide me with the link via the comment section or email) I will enter you again. All winners will be drawn randomly on October 28, 2008 and announced on October 29, 2008. Winners must contact me to collect their prize by December 28, 2008, though the design can be used for a future event in 2009. Please be sure to provide your email address when commenting (only I am able to see it) so that I can contact the winners. I don’t sell or give out your personal information in any way, and I won’t spam you with pleas for your business later on. Promise. Though if you ever give me your mailing address, you’re guaranteed to receive a really cool Christmas card, so keep that in mind.

In the meantime, if you just can’t wait until October 28 and would like to commission a custom design, feel free to contact me. I don’t just design kid stuff, so if you have any kind of event or occasion coming up that could use a really cool invitation, drop me a line!

These are a few of my favourite things…

2008-09-17T07:00:00-07:00

Now that I have that song in your head, I thought I would take the opportunity to share a few cool things I've discovered recently. The following are items I've recently acquired that inspire me and allow to me to add graphic design into my daily life.

GelaSkins

Being a graphic designer, it's no huge surprise that I jumped on the iPhone bandwagon right away. But I wanted a pretty way to protect my iPhone, and I am so not in love with all the ugly cases out there. Even when they are trying to be cool, they're not. So while my husband and I were playing with our iPhones at Swiss Chalet, our waitress commented that we should check out GelaSkins, and we did. Right there. Because iPhones rock and you can surf then net from anywhere.

All I can say is Oh. My. God. I was in eye candy heaven! I wanted every single design they offered and thank goodness they had a sale on, as my husband and I ordered two each and if we hadn't wanted to try them out first, we probably would have ordered a whole lot more. I picked this one and this one. We received them today and now my iPhone looks totally funky AND it's protected.

Sid Dickens

I don't know what kind of rock I've been living under, but Sid Dickens art tiles are amazing. While in Sylvan Lake for a weekend getaway, my friends and I discovered the cutest little shop called Mulberry Lane. Inside the store were tons of these gorgeous decorative tiles, and while the $76 price tag made me hesitate at first (I'm cheap, okay?), I couldn't resist walking out of the store with three of them. I'm not much of a collector as I don't enjoy clutter, but I think I have found the beginnings of a new obsession. All of these gorgeously original tiles are going on my birthday, Christmas, and Just Because I'm Your Wife lists.

Cathy MacMillian - Local Edmonton Artist

This summer my hubby and I killed some time in between a wedding by hanging out at Edmonton's Fringe Festival. There were many great artists selling their wares as usual, but one artist in particular caught my eye and I absolutely had to buy one of her prints. You can check out most of Cathy's artwork on her website and blog, and she says that she will have prints available to purchase online in the near future.

Four free vector seamless backgrounds

2008-09-06T08:09:00-07:00

September 6th was Obleek's 1st Birthday, and as promised I have a bunch of surprises in store. To kick off the month-long festivities I have some freebies. Four original vector tiles for download, created by moi.

Use them wherever you like except in images for sale on stock photography or illustration websites. I'd also appreciate being linked to or emailed if you use them somewhere.

So without further delay, here are the files in one handy little zip.

4 editable vector tiles

A September to remember

2008-09-01T06:00:01-07:00

September is when the weather begins its' transition into a cooler, crisper climate. The colours of nature's palette begin to turn from bright greens, blues, and purples to the vibrant, warm hues of red, orange, yellow, and brown. The air is sharper and smells of change. Aahhhhh. I can almost smell it now. Can you tell I love autumn?

Not only is September one of my favourite months in the calendar, but this year, September marks Obleek's one year birthday on the 6th. To commemorate the one year anniversary of me branching out on my own, I have a few surprises planned. You won't find out about them until next week, but it should be a lot of fun. I can't wait to share them with you, so stay tuned.

As for this month's graphic, I just started playing around with faces and this little beauty emerged. I'm pretty sure that some pictures of Blythe dolls I stumbled across on Flickr inspired me as well. I'm not a fan of dolls, but these dolls have a really strange, yet beautiful artistic quality that appeals to me. As for what this images means? I think that subconsciously I was trying to make a statement about beauty being only skin deep, or the fact that we hide a lot of who we are beneath the exterior. But I didn't plan anything, it sort of just happened. You decide what it means.

Have a great September everyone!

Colour me flattered

2008-06-13T20:53:00-07:00

I just received an email from Jimmy Atkinson from WHDb informing me that I had been included in their list titled 100 Awesome Webmaster Blogs by and for Women. WHDb is a Web Hosting Database website with some great articles on webmastering, web design, programming, gaming and more.

I am incredibly honoured (and humbled) to have my name included among those of Lea Alcantara, a talented designer, good friend, and mentor of mine at Lealea Design and Veerle of the well known Veerle's Blog, an amazing designer I can only aspire to be as talented as.

So please check out the write-up ... I'm in the design section, #49, and it's in alphabetical order according to section in case you are numerically challenged. I hadn't heard of WHDb until now, but I will definitely be checking back to see what else they come up with. I think the list they have compiled of women in the web is an excellent resource and will provide some great additions to my Google Feed Reader.

Thanks again Jimmy!

Wedding season is here!

2008-05-01T06:40:00-07:00

May 1st has always meant the start of wedding season to me. And, four years ago in 2004, I myself was married on May 1st (Happy Anniversary honey!). So there’s no wonder I associate May with weddings. I love weddings. I love the invitations, the buying of gifts, the watching the lovely bride walk down the aisle, the dinner and dancing afterwards. This weekend will be the first wedding my hubby and I will attend out of 5 or so this year, and I can’t wait!

Because I have weddings on the brain, I decided to dedicate this post to invitation and stationary design. The following images are of my own wedding invitations and other stationary pieces; including mini-guest books for each table, the CD favours we (well, okay I) made, and even the container for the kissing game we came up with. Being a graphic designer, I loved coming up with a monogram of our names that quickly became the brand and logo for our wedding. It even appeared on our cake! I admit I was a little OCD when it came to attention to detail, but it was this part of the planning process that made me the most relaxed and stress free bride out there. Design is my thing.

Throughout the years since my wedding, I’ve also been paid to create—or created as a gift to the bride and groom—many different wedding invitations. The following images are acouple of those, as well as a photo I took at one of the weddings this past July-- I love this photo!

Because I love designing invitations and announcements so much, I’m working on a sister company to Obleek in my spare time. There are many wedding/baby announcement design sites out there, but the website and company I plan to launch will (hopefully) be much different than anything you’ve come across so far. I can’t wait to get it up and running.

In the meantime, if you are in need of a custom-designed wedding invitation or announcement, please contact me. I would be happy to come up with something you’ll love and look back on fondly in the years to come and my rates are quite reasonable.

Happy wedding season everyone!

Portfolio section expanded

2008-04-11T21:12:00-07:00

The most important part of a designer's site is their portfolio, and mine was in need of a major makeover. It was only ever intended as a temporary solution, and while I don't believe the quality of my work was lacking, the functionality of the portfolio itself sure was. All I really had was a thumbnail linked to a larger image. That's about it.

I'd been meaning to make my portfolio section better since day one, but like most freelancers, I never found the time to work for myself. Until now. It's still being worked on, but at least now you are able to get more details about the project and resources I used. I've also opened comments on each piece (for now) because I believe in constructive criticism and the ability to tell someone you like their work.

In the next few weeks, I will be adding a new section to my portfolio for the monthly graphics found on my home page. I'll also be adding a few more projects and changing the portfolio main page, so keep your eyes peeled.

Happy Spring everyone!

How to create a goofy character

2008-03-05T02:37:00-07:00

I've had a few people ask me where I found the leprechaun used in my March graphic and the invite designed for some friends (above), and the answer is that I created him. I didn't exactly draw him, although this technique could be loosely described as a form of digital illustration. What I really did is piece him together out of many different photos. I used the same process to make my weird theater illustration, as shown below.

For the characters I create, I usually start off with a sketch (or a very clear mental picture, which is more often than not the case... I'm not a big sketcher). Then, I start finding photos of the face shape and type that I want, and start from there. This part can take forever. I've gotten good at searching stock photo sites! Below is the photo that started it all. My search parameters? Irishman. No joke, honest.

To add to my characters I either use pieces of my own photos, or I purchase the lowest resolution version from iStock Photo or Fotolia. So far I have only made these characters for the web, which keeps the cost way down (and adds to my ever growing Stock Photo library for web design). The photo above was my base; I then added on a different nose, two different eyes (one shut, one open), an ear, and I distorted the original photo's mouth using the warp tool in Photoshop.

I usually use the marquee tool to loosely select around the area I want to paste into my working file, and then I play with color balance, brightness and contrast, and/or hue and saturation until the photo matches the skin tone of the face. After merging that layer onto the face, I use the paintbrush, healing brush, clone brush, and sometimes the blur tool to blend the elements together. The more exaggerated the features the better. You don't want to make a picture perfect face; you want one with a lot of character.

The hard part for me is the face and its expression. Once that's done to my liking, the costume and accessories is the easy (and most fun!) part. To complete the leprechaun character, I found a hat that would work and distorted the perspective a bit so the brim fit the angle of the head (a bit of shadowing was also needed), and I found a photo of the body, bow tie and pipe. Because of the way I chose to crop it, I didn't need hands or feet. Some more blending/erasing, and voila! A quirky looking leprechaun.

The last thing I do is pick a background or create one myself. The background for this image was just a plain red theater curtain, which I added a "spotlight" to in order to highlight the character. For the finishing touch, I always add a bit of film grain to (a) add a retro feel and (b) to help disguise the fact I am working with low res photographs.

I didn't bother going into a step by step approach for this tutorial, but if you would find detailed Photoshop steps useful, let me know and I will post a more in-depth set of instructions. And if anyone tries this on their own, I would love to see what you came up with!