Showing posts with label art. Show all posts
Showing posts with label art. Show all posts

Friday, December 05, 2008

Leaflette-on-Etsy

If you have folks on your gift-list who are young or young-at-heart, may I suggest you stop by my very talented daughter's Etsy shop, Leaflette? She has additional information--more photos and a coupon code--on her blog, Hanna's Life is Cool.

If you're not familiar with her art (not sure how that could've happened, being as you're my friend and all!), let me tell you a bit about it. Hanna has always loved to color and draw since she was big enough to wrap her wee fingers around a crayon. Her daddy and I happily bought her artist sets and paints and sketch books and pencils as birthday and Christmas gifts throughout her childhood as she continued to show both talent and determination. When we bought our first computer in 1993, she even figured out how to use that super basic computer program--was it called Paint? or Paintbrush? Where you dotted the pixels by color? (I always thought a person could use that for designing cross-stitch patterns, but I digress.)

I guess that got her started, because she now does all her artwork digitally, though her programs have gotten more complex and her art has matured as well. She has built a website with her art portfolio on it as well as samples of website and blog designs she's done.

About a year ago she began experimenting with printing her art on 100% cotton fabric and making it colorfast. With that process in place, she designed dolls and birds that she prints onto fabric, cuts out, sews, and stuffs. This process makes toys for babies and toddlers that are completely child-friendly and can be machine washed.



She's also selling quite a few prints of her artwork at Leaflette in 4x6, 5x7 and 8x10, ready to frame up and hang on the wall. Or you can purchase them as fabric prints for use in quilts or toys of your own. Here's one of my favorite illustrations: Birder Boy.

Stay tuned in the New Year because Hanna has sold an illustration to a well-known magazine, and I'll be posting up the details when I'm free to do so! Meanwhile, go browse at Leaflette, and maybe you'll find something you'd like to purchase.

Monday, September 22, 2008

Website Tour -- Marcher Lord Press

If you've hung around My Little World for very long, you probably have noticed that Christian speculative fiction--in particular, fantasy--is dear to my heart. And while the market for it is growing, it's still a hard sell, both for the authors and the stores that may eventually carry the books.

It's kind of frustrating, actually. And so it is very cool that I've found a bunch of like-minded folk on the internet (many of their blog links are below) and the awareness of this niche market is growing. Without this gang of folks, I'd have missed out on a lot of great reading over the past few years.

Once upon a time a man named Jeff Gerke wrote a series of novels under the pen name of Jefferson Scott. After these were published, Jeff became an editor for a major Christian publishing house. He later switched houses to help spearhead an imprint, Realms, devoted to Christian spec fic. This didn't take off as well as hoped, so Jeff tried again with another publisher.

By this time Jeff was well known as a champion of Christian novels that were a little off the beaten path (no Amish romances for this guy!). He had also begun to believe that traditional publishing was not likely to ever meet the demand for the kind of novels he believed in. Too many variables, not the least of which is just trying to get the books all the way to the consumer who would buy it if they only knew it existed!

In 2006, Jeff began Where the Map Ends as a way to begin to consolidate information in this genre.

And on October 1, 2008, he will launch Marcher Lord Press, a POD press specifically for Christian speculative fiction. Over the next couple of days I'll be talking about the upcoming launch, but feel free to pop on over and sign up. He's giving away some great prizes!

AND last but not least, one of the featured artists in the Virtual Coffee Table Art Book is my daughter Hanna. This ebook is free with the purchase of one of the novels on launch day.

Here's what the other bloggers are saying:
Brandon Barr
Justin Boyer
Keanan Brand
Kathy Brasby
Jackie Castle
Valerie Comer
Karri Compton
Courtney
CSFF Blog Tour
Stacey Dale
D. G. D. Davidson
Janey DeMeo
Jeff Draper
April Erwin
Karina Fabian
Kameron M. Franklin
Andrea Graham
Todd Michael Greene
Katie Hart
Timothy Hicks
Joleen Howell
Jason Joyner
Kait
Mike Lynch
Terri Main
Margaret
Shannon McNear
Rebecca LuElla Miller
Nissa
John W. Otte
Steve Rice
Ashley Rutherford
Hanna Sandvig
Mirtika or Mir's Here
Greg Slade
James Somers
Steve Trower
Speculative Faith
Laura Williams
Timothy Wise
Tina Kulesa
Jason Waguespac

Looks like we have all hands on deck for this blog tour!

Sunday, October 22, 2006

My own artist!


The Girl Who Cried Squid Posted by Picasa

My talented daughter put together this inspiring portrait of Krin with her kitten fairies blissfully unaware of the giant squid lurking in the background. This is going to be right beside my computer all through Nano! I'll also play with it for a signature banner.

Every now and again I have to brag about Hanna. Okay, fairly regularly! Check out her website for more samples of her artwork. Maybe one day she'll be YOUR cover artist. I hope she'll be mine.