Cats in my Garden Cupcakes

 Making some cat mini-cakes. Created with sugar flowers, passion fruit curd, vanilla cake, buttercream and molded chocolate cat face.

 

First I drew up some plans and sketches to get a rough idea of how big I wanted the cake to be. Then I got some supplies. Casting material, sculpting clay, small silicon molds for the cakes, round cookie cutters, white chocolate, sugar flower paste, passion fruit, petal dust, gel food coloring, and plenty of butter, sugar, and eggs.

After sculpting from clay I then made a mold out of silicone. 

 

Since the sugar flowers need some time to dry and would last a while I worked on them next. I used a pre-made sugar flower paste, but eventually I want to try and create a paste that tastes better and dries a little more flexible.

Testing cookie recipes

 

First I tried a shortbread recipe. The dough worked well in the mold and if I put it in the fridge for a while it released easily. After baking the dough with a higher parentage of butter lost a lot of detail. I added a bit more flour and these cookies ended up looking ok.

Next I tried a Springerle cookie recipe. The first recipe had too much baking soda and the cookies lost their shape after baking. The second version of this recipe worked better, but the shape of the cat head was too thick to cook all the way through. 

I ended up using melted chocolate in the mold as this had the most detail.

 

 

Mixing the buttercream and making the mini cakes.

The cakes were stored in the freezer while I worked on painting the cat faces. 

 

A Free-lance Life

This is the first month in a while that I have had some time to pursue my own work again and work on my tarot deck. Since I do not have many outside imposed deadlines and set work times I'm trying really hard to create a freelance schedule.  My day job is involving more freelance work, and I have cut back my hours at Starbucks. I have to make an effort to plan time for getting out of the house, exercising and setting a time to stop working and do things to inspire me.

I'm slowly working out how to plan out a day that works for me. In the past I have had a tendency to fill every waking moment I am not at my day job with art stuff, but that was ok because my day job got me out of the house, socializing and moving about.

Jessica Hische's blog has helped me out a lot in the preliminary steps of planning my freelance schedule. Meg Hunt's illustration blog has also been a great resource especially her section on Drawing Drills and the Icon 8 conference. Do any of you have suggestions on how to schedule and organize in a freelance world?

I'm making an August the 18th resolution to plan more time for; sketching, exploring, experimenting, socializing, inspiration and collaborating.

Winter Thaw

This has been one crazy year. I have been focusing a little more on my graphic design work while still keeping up with commissions,  long term assignments and school work. I have not had much time for personal work.

The beginning of August I  finished up a few long term projects. One of my scheduled creations was a  short comic for the Dark Lady anthology. This comic collection is due to be published sometime around Halloween by Hellcat Press. My submission was a short horror story revolving around the spring thaw, rot, collections of curiosities and teeth.  In my searches I came across some amazing old dental supplies, beautifully gruesome charts and diagrams.

 

Found on vintageprintable.com

 

 

My favorite discovery were the amazing dental cabinets and boxes. ( Search for antique dental cabinets )

 Then I found these tooth necklaces (above)  from BoneLust on Etsy.


I do have a bit of a fascination with teeth, I spend a lot of time at the dentist. I think I like sweets too much, wich leads to cavities and lots of dentist visits.

Enjoy the photos and keep an eye out for The Dark lady anthology.

-Jen

Vardo the Romani wagon

Recently I've been watching Peaky Blinders, it has rekindled my love for little traveling houses. As a child I remember falling hard for Mr.Toad's little yellow gypsy caravan. At one point I vaguely remember owning a toy

Sylvanian Families gypsy wagon, or I may of looked at the image in the catalog so often that I imagined I owned it. It also could of been a Fabuland caravan. These guys were the cutest!

As I got older my idea of a Caravan faded from the minimal decor of a Lego interior to the intricate patterns bright colors and textures of the gypsy wagons depicted in Carnivale. I often imagine my caravan could double as a painting studio or maybe a traveling art gallery. Below is the lovely art caravan by Marie Meier.

 

http://duodesordre.tumblr.com/

Someday I could imagine having a home with one of these lovely painted wagons in the back yard.

Circa 1902 Hearst Family Estate Gypsy Wagon

There are a few movies I watched in hopes of getting some good caravan imagery. I remember carnival having some great caravans, but most of the scenes were very dimly lit. Carnivale has this great mystical, Twin Peaks feel to it. The characters are all awesome and the imagery is beautifully rich and grungy. They travel in wonderfully restored caravans. If you search you tube you can find a video of one of the un-restored German caravans that they bought for the show. For more beautiful wagons check out http://gypsywaggons.co.uk .

 

This show also sparked my interest in Tarot cards.

Made in Fort Point Store

If you live in or are visiting Boston Mass. and have not checked out the Fort Point area, it is definetly worth a visit. The area has changed so much in the past few years. The rent hikes and the development have pushed a lot of the artists out of the neighborhood. There are a lot more restaurants and start-ups in the area now. My favorite new-ish eateries include Flour, Bees-Knees, Tavern Road and Drink.

The artists that are in the neighborhood continue to make Fort Point their own with awesome public art, open studios and the Made in Fort Point store.

The store just recently moved. It is now in a more central location, but just a little hidden. If you are in the area be sure to check it out.

The store sells an array of my prints, and stickers as well as some amazing works by other Fort Point artists. This is a great place to shop for the holidays and support your local crafts-artist.

Above are some of my Krampus Christmas cards.

Retro Future

I've been working on another neat illustration project "Life Science".
If all goes according to planned I hope to be releasing it at the FPAC spring open studios.

• This project is another series of illustrations focused on frogs and robots, but a little more retro-modern in theme. I had an awesome time researching retro-futurism.
  
  • Retro-futurism depicts the influence of the future produced in an earlier era. This aesthetic is characterized by a blend of old-fashioned "retro" styles with futuristic technology. Retro-futurism explores the themes of tension between past and future, and between the alienating and empowering effects of technology. Sort of steampunkish but in this case rather than being based in Victorian times my aesthetic was based in the retro 40's and 50's. (Diesel punk and Atomic Age) The "Atomic Age" is a descriptor typically used to name the period of history following the detonation of the first nuclear  bomb.
  •  
   Modern Mechanix
  

PaleoFuture

 focuses on Utopias and the pasts vision of the future and time capsules

http://www.paleofuture.com/blog/category/1940s 

Why frogs?
With this vision of the future I wanted to counterpoint by depicting the effects of  a consumerist robot-centric society on the environment. Most frogs require suitable habitat in both the land and water environments, they have permeable skin that can easily absorb toxic chemicals. These traits make frogs especially susceptible to environmental disturbances, because of this frogs are considered  indicators of environmental stress.

 

The Life Science wordless story game is now for sale on Etsy.

Krampus Christmas

Happy holidays everyone!

I've been working on some fairly long term projects recently.

This holiday season I will be sending out a little Snail Mail gift envelope of little stickers and such to those of you on my mailing list.

Just add your self to my (E-mail Signup) http://eepurl.com/CZ0Tr with your address before 12/14/2013.
(I will only ship to US mailing addresses)

For my holiday card I've been doing a little bit of research on Krampus.
Here is the finished card:

Krampus is a goatish devily creature from German folklore. Krampus acts as Saint Nicholas's opposite. Insted of rewarding good children with presents he punishes naughty children swatting them with switches and rusty chains before dragging them in baskets to a fiery place below.

Krampus grew to be a part of many familys' Christmas traditions.  In the late 1800's, the invention of color printing and postcards wound up making Krampus a Christmas icon.  German-speaking people around the world took to sending their friends and children postcards that featured the Krampus.  The postcards would often read;  GRUSS VOM KRAMPUS, meaning  Greetings From Krampus.  The message was intended to be a humorous reminder to be good.

Who is Krampus?

 

In these regions it also became fairly common for the young men of the town to dress up and run through the streets. Whenever the first people decided to dress up as Krampus, they would have created a monster defined by whatever easily available materials could be used for a startling effect. In some cases those materials were the horns and pelts of mountain goats, and in others, straw or hay set aside as winter fodder. Today, though some costumes may be produced by mass production, they still imitate the look established by materials regionally available in Alpine valleys.

Their traditional costumes and masks are elaborately handcrafted. Krampusses can usually be encountered on and a few days before December 6

The Truth About Krampus

Atlas Obscura

 

Krampus Run

Europe's Wild Men

National Geographic

Beard of Moss

For the children of the Alps, Krampus isn't purely a figure of terror. No, he's also a sugary treat, factoring into a whole host of traditional chocolates, cookies and breads.

http://www.gragger.at/?s=krampus

http://www.zauner.at/english/backstube

 

Decorations from Salzburg 

The Caked Crusader 

 

Croshame Krampus on Etsy

If you like Krampus, I recommend the movie "Rare Exports"

All the best winter wishes and holiday traditions!

-Jen

Marceline Painting for Desert Bus

Desert Bus for Hope

My most exciting announcement this Winter is the auctioning-off of the Marceline painting I donated to the Desert Bus charity.
I was working on this fancy oil painting for the majority of the Summer and am really happy with the final piece.
 
Desert Bus for Hope combines video games and tedium to benefit charity. Desert Bus started in 2007 by internet sketch comedy group LoadingReadyRun. This year they will auction off and giveaway about 300 prize lots. These items are nerdy-game related and crafty items. I have spent the last few years following their live video stream and auctions and I'm so happy to be participating in the auction this year.

Check out the painting here

The auction Starts:

06:00PM PST, Nov 19th

Mauzer and the Guttersnipe Warriors

Recently I have been inspired by the old-timey street gangs of London (something along the lines of Oliver twist). I have been watching a lot of Sherlock Holmes, Ripper Street, and doing some on-line research. There is something so grungy and primal about of the stories of those children that have been dealt the worst hand and manage to scrape and claw their way through the muck of London. Ripper Street is very similar to the Guy Ritchie Sherlock Holmes with beautiful movie sets based in the 1800′s. “Ripper Street” offers high budget filming locations and consuming that are dressed superbly in city soot.

In my searching I discovered a new show, Peaky Blinders. It looks like it may just be my cup of tea. This is BBC2's new epic British gangster period drama. The story follows of an infamous street gang, a terrifying Brummie mob who ruled the industrialized areas of Birmingham through the 1880s and early 1900s.

For a recent show, (Story Time) at the Monkeyhouse gallery, I created a character that was very much inspired by these shows.

This is Mauzer he lives in city a similar to 1920’s London. Mauzer is a “mouse hunter” he finds mice that are down on their luck and recruits them to join his Guttersnipe Warriors gang.

This group of misfits live on the dirty city streets banding together to make their way in the world. They sometimes fight crime, but they are also known to fight for scraps of fish by the docks. Mauzer’s lady-friend is Kitten-has-claws, she is a strong-willed spirited lady that is a pro at the slight-of hand.

When they travel to other cities, or need a little extra cash they will operate a side-show circus. This mouse gang will use their various street-smart skills to impress the carnival attendees.

In the future I may make a comic out of these characters, there are so many great stories to develop!