Hello, hello!

It's been a while since I've blogged anything, but sufficeth to say, so much is happening at Lis-trations! And surprises! With the blessing of having a baby - our third who's now 5 months old, life has not slowed down one little bit. In early April of this year, a rubber stamp company in the UK emailed me, telling me that they had come across my website online and loved my illustrations, my style and my designs. They had been looking for an illustrator to create designs of a cute and children oriented nature. My illustrations fit their needs perfectly.

To cut a long story short, I am now on the Sugar Nellie creative team, designing images for rubber stamps for the eager crafters and scrapbooking gurus in the UK - and worldwide – for the next year! My designs are already on the Sugar Nellie website and blogspot, with scores of positive comments from die-hard crafters and stampers, which simply send my mind spinning! Needless to say, I’m flattered beyond description and feel incredibly blessed to be on the Sugar Nellie team.

What a fantastic surprise!

Sugar Nellie is a small, growing Scottish Stamp Company. Since starting in Autumn 2007, they have been overwhelmed by the response of crafters worldwide to their stamps. I have been very impressed with Sugar Nellie, and their wonderful reputation. Working with them is such a joy, and it's just so great to know that there are good people in this world to work with - even if we've only met via the internet! :)

To read more about Sugar Nellie and their fabulous rubber stamps for crafts, scrapbooking and card making, please visit the Sugar Nellie website.

I am thrilled with this opportunity as I've always wanted to use my images on greeting cards, scrapbooking etc. I feel like I've stumbled across my own lamp with a genie in it who has granted my wish in a very unexpected way!!

To see some of my work on the Sugar Nellie blogspot, please click on the following:

New Peek

Pickin Apples

Giddy up Pony

These are just a tease of the number of characters I have designed for Sugar Nellie. There will be an expected 60 designs created by me for Sugar Nellie by the end of the contract year. Honey and Pip are but two of my characters, who will feature in many of the designs. I just love the names!! You will also find a Sugar Nellie Gallery on my website, featuring the Sugar Nellie stamp images I create. The images are too large at the moment for high res perusal, but I'll downsize them soon so you can view the images enlarged. I'm ridiculously excited!!!

**Update** Images on the Sugar Nellie Gallery can now be viewed enlarged!

Thanks to my website, I have received a number of contacts from clients who found me through search engines and other sites I'm on. They had the chance to look at my work, and the rest is positive marketing history! Someday I’ll go “dot com”, but for now, being on “Zhibit” is working fabulously!

I’m still teaching children’s art lessons, but have chosen to focus more on my larger projects for clients requiring custom imagery. Thus, I continue to illustrate children’s book images for Laura Drew and accept requests for wall murals on the South East side of Tucson. And I continue to create original pieces with plans to display for consignment at the Casa Bella Fine Imports store in Tucson.

With Sugar Nellie, Laura Drew, wall mural commissions and creating art for sale in Tucson, I am kept quite busy to say the least – and that’s only the business side of life! Though it is super busy around here, being a mother of 3 and gratefully married to an ever loving and supportive husband, I love being an artist with the ability to work from home where I can set my own hours and help support my family by doing what I love to do, and doing what I do well. I love that I can have this choice. And it’s so nice that I can plan around my family and know that I can always be here for them too.

Happy Mother’s Day to all you fabulous, super-duper Moms and Moms-to-be!

Hugs and Smiles,

Elisabeth xx

I don't know HOW I existed before Photoshop!! I'm just loving this software! I've been self teaching the basics of the program mostly, and have also used information that I've gleaned from others. I'm also taking a free online course on Photoshop basics, and with the knowledge I already have, the basics are a breeze - at the moment anyway! The course is "free", so long as you have Photoshop 5.0 and above. Last year I made a fantastic purchase investment with the acquisition of the Adobe CS3 Master Collection, and have loved the creative advancement it's given me! I find that hands-on use of the software, and dinking around on it, can help you learn so much on your own! I just LOVE layers (Layers are my friend!) and the amazing things that can be done with this tool! And fixing minor flaws on imagery, no more will I need to re-draw the entire picture by hand half a dozen times! Gone is the sooo old-school method!

**Lovingly pats computer with big smiles**

Elisabeth xx

Having completed the project with Sondra Lane's Hallelujah Kids late last year (I was involved in character design and created a number of Model Sheets for Hallelujah Kids characters), I continue to remain the illustrator for Laura Drew's children's books. We are looking into publication for her story book series for young readers and we look forward to the exciting unknown that comes with publication. Whether we experience many or few rejections (or none at all!) before reaching our goal, all will be but a matter of learning and progression. Here is an example of one of the illustrations from Laura's wonderful stories! Enjoy!

Elisabeth.

Hello Everyone!

I can't believe how swiftly this new year has taken off and that we are verging onto another new month! Little Eden is chunky and healthy and we have all recovered very nicely. Things have been going very well for all of us at home and I'm excited to announce that Art Lessons will be resuming in March.

For those of you who are interested in continuing or beginning art lessons, please let me know your schedules and we can set up times suitable for you. I also plan on holding a couple of group art classes throughout the year and will give you a heads-up when I have organized those to take place. Art Lessons are designed for all ages and atleast one hour in length. I can also customize the lesson content to your specific creative needs.

For all other creative requests such as custom illustrations and wall murals, please send me an email or call me and let me know your ideas. I'll be more than happy to discuss your vision so that you will be completely happy with the final result.

If you have any questions, comments or would like more information, please send an email to Lis-trations@hotmail.com or call me at 520.360.1584. Or simply drop me a line to say hi and let me know how you're doing.

Stay safe and I hope you continue to have a fantastic new year!

Sincerely,

Elisabeth/Ms. Lis.

Lis-trations Art and Designs, LLC

If there is one constant in life it is change. Yet there never could be a more contrasting truth! It has now been one week since Eden Elisabeth entered our world. On November 24th 2007 at 10:28 am, she arrived screaming heartily into her new sphere of life. I can't help but marvel at the miracle that she is. We are both well, and I am speedily on the road to recovery, enjoying the bounce back to life and living it with vigor and vim!

The new year is fast approaching with many fresh opportunities and productive plans for Lis-trations creativity. Some of my plans include having a private line of Lis-trations custom art with one of Tucson's successful businesses that supplies custom party favors and invitations, selling my art in a local Tucson store, working with various clients for custom imagery and creating illustrations for a number of children's books with Laura Drew. The Sondra Lane Hallelujah Kids project is well on their way to making fantastic effects in this world and I am thrilled to share that the main fairy that I created will have the voice over of professional actor Katie Leigh who did the voice of one of Jim Henson's Muppet Babies! Sondra Lane's Hallelujah Kids will be going public sometime in 2008. I will shed more details on this exciting children's venture shortly. All this plus resuming children's art lessons, creating more art work and much more! With a growing family and voltaic plans and preparations, 2008 is already geared up to be a very full and eventful year!

Stay tuned! Have a wonderful Christmas season in the meantime!

Only 8 more days! Our Thanksgiving baby will be born on November 24th in the morning. Until then, I am now able to put up my feet and relax - albeit uncomfortably - a bit! Yet what sorely needed bliss! I have been able to work on personal pieces such as original colored pencil renditions to be sold next year, something I haven't been able to devote my time to for several months. I am so grateful for partner/clients, like Laura Drew, and many others who are so patient and show forth a tremendous amount of understanding during this phase of my life, motherhood and career. Thank you to you all, a million times over! To be sure, once I have recovered, I will return with a creative vengeance! There are many, many exciting plans projected for 2008!

In the meantime, I hope you all have a truly blessed Thanksgiving season, and thank you, once again, for all your support and your friendship.

Warm smiles and an abundance of hugs,

Elisabeth.

At a time when I'd like to put my feet up and drink Celestial Seasonings herbal tea all day and be enthralled by an onslaught of good books, things have not slowed down - despite the fact that I have only less than 5 weeks left before little Eden is born! We will be experiencing a break from Art Lessons at the end of this month and lessons will resume in spring of 2008. Other than that, I remain hard at work with Sondra Lane's Hallelujah Kids project, and Laura Drew's children's book illustrations are still well on the horizon. With my plans to place my original art pieces for sale at Tucson's local Casa Bella Fine Imports Store on Broadway, I am literally swamped and all my time is taken up for the next month. This is not including being a full time Domestic Engineer and upholding the homefront as Nurturer and Main Organizer! I feel incredibly blessed to have so much activity in my life (I type this even as I supervise my first grader's homework!) and though my feet are beginning to swell every now and then and my toes resemble little savoury sausages, and my joints are popping and I can hardly shift in bed anymore just to turn over, I am thrilled to be living my life as an artist and mother!

We have been cleaning and organizing for Eden's arrival, to the point that I'm driving poor hubby bananas with nesting on overdrive! But I just can't help it - I have the incessant urge to sweep until the floors are spotless of all crumbs both morning and evening!! Bedrooms and nurseries have been taken care of and new dressers have been bought to accomodate the growing need for storing clothing. Oh, and Christmas is already up in full swing in our home. Forget Halloween! Nothing against the candy or anything, but I'd rather decorate for Christmas over Halloween at any rate. We figured that since I probably wouldn't effectively be able to put up Yuletide decorations by November, we put them up real early this year. Actually, it was my hubby's idea and I love him even more for it! Christmas is my most fave holiday of the year as he well knows and he gives me his full support over it.

In the meantime, have a great Halloween and trick-or-treating! More news over the horizon to be sure so stay tuned!

Sondra Lane Corporation of Hallelujah Kids is my exciting new client whom I met through iFreelance.com! They are a company in Florida on the rise with an inexhaustible number of ideas for the amazing project I am currently working on! I believe this company will go big!! - and not just because I'm working with them on one of their projects :D! I am creating wonderful, exciting images for them but cannot display them here; digital images may be privately viewed via email in 2008 when the product is out in the market. This is a thrilling new venture to add to my growing creative demands and with all that is on my plate of Thanksgiving, I am only too grateful for these fantastic opportunities with which I am so richly blessed.

More details soon!!

More exciting news! Last week I got a call from a local shop in Tucson that is interested in selling my art in their store! They sell imported goods from all over the world, including art work from selected local artists. They saw my website online and "fell in love" with my pieces (all modesty aside). They say my art is not only beautiful (blush!), but unique and as they don't have anything like it in their store, they want to add my work to their repetoir if I am willing. Hence, I was invited to visit with them and to cut a long story short, I was impressed with their presentation and professionalism, and I am thrilled to say that I will soon place my pieces there for distribution!

More details shortly on store name and location!

Just completed three custom portraits, a logo and a number of custom graphics with more on the way! I have 2 mural requests in line for next year in spring and illustrations for a children's book on the merge! Plus, a baby on the way in less than 2 months!! Life is full and exciting and I don't mind telling you all about it! :D

Keeping busy doing what I love and am good at thrills me, and although I will be taking a short break from my art to attend to my family and new little one, I have glorious plans on the horizon for 2008! With Thanksgiving just around the corner, there truly is so much to be thankful for. There is no success without struggle, and our lives are indeed a product of what we make of ourselves. As L.M. Montgomery once penned, "It's not what the world brings us, but what we bring to it".

For those of you who have school aged children now at home, have an enjoyable Fall break!

Stay tuned and stay animated! Til next time!