Sketch Diary: awkward horn girl reject

Meredith - it's okay. You get to the bottom of the page and you run out of room. This does not mean you need to make the figure disproportionate in order to fit the ENTIRE figure on the page... just leave the legs hanging off. It's okay.

NO IT'S NOT! Must include everything! Lol. So silly. Learn well, children. This is what not to do.

with love - M

Sketch Diary: KERA girl in the best coat ever

And another older sketch from a KERA magazine in Japan that finally got inked. I think she turned out well enough. An attempt here to include a bit of the background. I get so bored by the time I get to the background. It's a serious fault of mine. But I always feel more complete when I take the time to do it. I don't understand why I keep denying myself. It's like not putting sprinkles on my ice cream because the container is out of reach and I'd have to get up and walk over to it. JUST GET THE SPRINKLES! Ok, ok, I will. Maybe. I want that coat...

with love - M

Sketch Diary: A finished color piece! Snow White

Ta-dah! I give you - Snow White. Or whatever. Doesn't have to be her. I just liked the look she was giving the camera in the original photo. I forgot how much I enjoy working with these markers when I just go with the flow, try not to think too much. She feels so alive for me right now. Like all I want to do is look into her eyes and make all my dreams come true :sigh:. In 2 months I'll hate this picture hahaha. That's just how it goes. But for now, I'll just enjoy it.

In case you're curious, I use Copic markers. I have used Prismacolor and Shin Han but these Copics man... can't beat alcohol based. The room might smell like rubbing alcohol while I draw but it's a small price to pay to be able to actually blend colors like watercolor paints. It's like magic. I don't remember who I bought them from online, a small dealer in the States somewhere, but just make sure whoever you buy from has good reviews and that your getting the markers you want. I only buy the refillable ones, not the one and done dudes. I LOVE refillable markers. I don't understand why markers should be made any other way. It's so easy. The only issue I ever ran into was that you have to ink with the right kind of pens. Of course copic has their own brand of inking pens but I think as long as it's not also alcohol based, you're good. Otherwise, they blend together and that defeats the purpose of inking for me.

Oh and the paper... just plain old copy paper. The slicker the better. I find that though I like card stock, it tends to soak up so much of the ink. Good if you want to do a lot of blending and layering but for just practicing and goofing around, I prefer to keep it cheap.

with love - M

Sketch Diary: mermaid idea - fiasco necklace

This one is kind of a double post. I already posted it on a little project blog I'm working on with some other artsy folks but I wanted to put it here, too. Cuz let's be real, I'm rather pleased with it. She's super skinny... I know, bear with me. But I like that you can really see the gills, ya know? What took the longest was that silly necklace. You would've thought I was painting the Mona Lisa with how much time I spent on that piece of jewelry! And I don't even like how it turned out! This is why I move through my sketches so fast (rarely more than 30 minutes on a single figure). I feel like I end up spending too much time on the details and I end up missing the big picture!

with love - M

Sketch Diary: TBT Totoro mini comic

Almost missed my chance for TBT this week! And what a special little piece of paper it is, too. Another piece filled with memories. Being cold in a Japanese winter, seeing little Totoro figures EVERYWHERE. The little strip at the bottom... I thought was quite genius at the time haha. I hope it makes you smile. Now I need to go watch a Ghibli movie! Gets me every time.

with love - M

Sketch Diary: Girl sitting on air

Just a girl... in a slightly awkward pose hah. Not sure what I was going for here. Feel like she should have wings but I just wasn't feeling it at the time. Wanted to play with hand positions and spinal curve. That head is definitely too big though, an error common with my sketches lately. But I'll waste no more time on it! Off to the next victim of head enlargement.

with love - M

Sketch Diary: Snow White and the apple from KERA

Old sketch, new ink. I loved reading (what little I could read, anyway haha) KERA Magazine while I was in Japan. So much fun stuff in there - shiny things, unique outfits, wild ideas for accessories, and great photo shoots. If you see a good one, pick it up for me ^.- ! This particular page was of fairy tales - Snow White specifically. I fell in love and sketched it while I was in Japan. But just the other day, I finally sat down and inked it. Maybe there's some color on it's way and it can be finished finally! It was suprisingly relaxing and rejuevenating to ink this piece so hopefully coloring it will be the same.

with love - M

Sketch Diary: puff pants archer

Ready for some TBT (Throw Back Thursday)?! This was sketched and colored way back when I was in Japan. Just a quickie. But to be honest... at the time, I truly hated this piece. I mean loathed it. Loathed it so much I didn't color anything for a months and months afterwards. I buried it away in my sketch pile and forgot about it until recently.

Sure, it will never be a favorite of mine - now it's old and I can see the faults pretty clearly. But there's something about it I enjoy now. Maybe it's the memories it brings back. Maybe it's the strength and power in the pose (as compared to my other sketches which are usually so curvy, sensual). And I love the pink to yellow hair combo.

Anyway, anyone else out there that has work they hated years ago, I hope you're able to look back now and appreciate it for what it is and what it can give back to you now.

with love - M

Sketch Diary: an eye, a figure, and a floating head

I once had an illustration teacher that loathed floating heads. I quickly got into the practice of adding shoulders in some way so it was more of a bust, way more classy. I always got good marks from him for my sketch homework after that. My real issue... is floating eyes. Singular, actually. As you can see here.

AHH! That hand. Don't look! Just keep staring at that eye. Or the pointy bit at the end of that dude's nose... that's my favorite.

with love - M

Sketch Diary: bird just hanging out

I can't remember where I was or whether I was looking at a picture or a real live bird when I sketched this... that's so spooky. It was while I was in Japan and they do indeed have huge ravens there so it could have been live. Anyway, I feel pretty good about it. I know, another old sketch but I've been busy workin', alright! Got's to pay bills. Hah. Get it? Bills. Bwahahaha.

with love - M

Sketch Diary: facial expressions practice

Sometimes folk ask me how to make faces. I don't know. I just make the expression on my own face and look in a mirror usually. There's also TONS of tutorials out there on practicing facial expressions. I obviously have my own favorites (distrusting, eager, and sad... although my favorite version of sad isn't on her. I guess it's more of a concerned look). So go search face tutorials/examples on deviantArt or anywhere. I probably used one to do these though I can't seem to find the link. If you are familiar with it, please link to it in the comments for me! Thanks!

with love - M

Sketch Diary: old Sherlock sketches

One of my favorite past times is sitting down to watch a movie I love and periodically pausing it to do sketches of what I see. This is a thing best done... alone. Typically, no one else enjoys doing this with me since the pause can take up to 20 minutes. Makes for a really long movie. Regardless, I highly recommend it because it's helped me tremendously with depth and angles and dimensions.

I know, this is an older sketch - but never before seen! I vividly remember doing this sketch so it's near and dear to my heart: sitting in my tiny apartment in Japan, on my floor couch thingy, my little heater blasting, day dreaming about the next trip to the local kaitenzushi (conveyor belt sushi eatery).

Btw, hats are hard...

with love - M

Re-Post: The Noun Project - Making my life easier everyday

Original post from my old WordPress blog: "The Noun Project might be old-hat for some but I only just learned of it this year. Thanks to my Creative Director at work, I now have a resource that I come back to time and again. I wanted to help support this wonderful site but sharing it.

So what is The Noun Project? “The Noun Project is building a global visual language that everyone can understand. We want to enable our users to visually communicate anything to anyone.”

From my experience, in a corporate setting we use these symbols in brochures and catalogs to help convey or reinforce an idea. Instead of bolding or headlining something you want to call out like ‘Fresh foods’, I might use a carrot symbol. Or instead of ‘weather resistant’ I might choose an umbrella. And it can get deeper than that, no doubt. I look forward to using more of these symbols, making smart selections for witty correlations.

Now I hope you all use this resource to help better your designs and communications. Some are free, some are not. Even if you’re not a designer, next time you think about using clip art, I hope you’ll decide to step outside the box.

They download as .svg so you’ll need a program capable of reading it and saving it as an .eps or .png. If you don’t have Adobe Illustrator, Gimp is a free open source program that does the job just fine."

Some updates to this - now you have to sign up with the site in order to download and all of the icons must be attributed unless they are bought, under $2. Once downloaded, the zip file now contains the .svg AND a .png so you no longer have to have a program to change them into .png. They also have cool 'kit' options now, kind of like a lightbox on some of the major stock photo websites. The premium paid levels are really varied, too. I mean really, $10 a month to not have to attribute all the time, that's a pretty good deal.

It always amazes me how many designers don't know about this site. It makes me wonder how many awesome sites are out there that I don't know about...

with love - M

Re-post: RõSõz Logo Design and Branding

Original post on my old WordPress blog in October 2010: "A freelance seamstress thought she just needed some business cards and ended up creating her own brand with me as her design guide. Time and money were limited for this first step of branding but we managed to agree on these two as the final designs."

So this was for my Mom. Why I didn't just say that, I don't know. Being so close to Mother's Day, I felt it appropriate to revisit this piece. The whole project was as simple as - she asked me if I could make her some business cards and I did. However, this was when I was establishing how I wanted to ask questions to clients so I experimented with a questionnaire on her for establishing a brand. Questions like "who are your competitors?" and "what animal best represents your company?" and so on. She was a great test subject and gave me a bit of a challenge with the typefaces, if I remember correctly. I had a whole list and she kept wanting to pair up typefaces that I specifically separated. The flower design was the easiest part because it was a vector version of a photo I took of a hair piece I had made out of satin. And the name - RõSõz - is kind of ridiculously perfect. Her last name is Rowe and she sews... done.

When it came time to choose a design for the business card, it just wasn't happening. She liked them both and wanted both versions to hand out. Maybe she thought the more colorful one would be good for artsy people and the standard one for the more square folk. She says she got a lot of compliments on them and ended up giving out my business card to folks, as well. I haven't heard from any of those people but hey, promotion is still promotion. 

Personally, I think people have been scared to talk to me (and other designers) about design work in the past. Like I was some artsy seraphim that can only be called upon for the most serious of projects. Seems like folk are wising up though. Trust me, no matter how silly or small you might think your idea is, there is a designer out there just itching to help you. And I'm not saying that like "oh we're so desperate for work" because even I have turned down work in the driest of seasons because of various reasons (usually because the client was untrustworthy or rude). What I am saying is that we love to take ideas and make them into functional works of art. Love it.

I hope ya'll don't mind a few more re-posts from my old blog. I just really like a couple of the topics and didn't want to leave them behind in WordPress land. 

with love - M

Abby Howard and why I think her work is fantastical

Thank you, Penny Arcade folks for introducing me (and many others) to a wonderful artist and blossoming story teller - Abby Howard.

The Nerve of Some People

Before I go any further, let me preface this whole post by saying I feel a little odd talking about a person here. Typically, I'm used to discussing websites or tools or pieces of work... not a person. Let me know if I'm doing it all wrong, please. I'd rather not have her or her fans get upset and make me go insane by hacking my computer and installing strange programs and make it look like it has a mind of it's own or that it's out to kill me or something. Not that they would do that... that's just where my mind went.

ABBY HOWARD has changed my life. Not in that extreme I-was-going-down-a-dark-path-but-no-longer-thank-to-Abby kind of way. More like the I-now-have-a-better-understanding-of-things-I-want-to-accomplish-in-this-life-and-how-to-get-there kind of way. That was way too many dashes. 

This is also why I thanked Penny Arcade at the beginning of this post. They played a large role in it all. If you haven't already watched Strip Search, maybe it's time you did. If you have any interest in every creating your own comic (web or otherwise), watch it. I found it super enlightening and entertaining. Within it you will watch heroes rise and fall. Heroes like Abby. She went through a lot in that little web series. I don't feel like I know her or anything but I could definitely sympathize with her and several of the others. Being female myself, it was empowering to see fellow ladies-at-arms, not behind their web comes on the internet but out in the open for all to see (and judge!). Abby specifically seemed the odd ball at first but as with most human beings, the more we saw, the more we understood... her genius. 

Let's get to the good stuff. Abby now has two running web comics. The first is called Junior Scientist Power Hour or JSPH. It's light, it's fun, and sometimes my face hurts it's so funny. Always, it entertains me. Maybe my kind of humor is a little different... whatever. JSPH is her long standing comic with no over-arching story, just funny slice-of-life kind of stuff. After her experiences at Strip Search, she decided to dive in face first and do a kickstarter (that was way successful) for her new comic The Last Halloween. It's several pages in and the art style alone is enough to keep me hooked. Every week I look forward to these two comics. But why...

Maybe it's the dark material, maybe it's the style of illustration, or maybe it's that cat. Whatever it is, it makes me smile and that's what matters. I know I can peruse through older posts and find a treasure I had forgotten about. I know I can look forward to new pieces of  web comic gold each week.

Draw on, Abby Howard. Draw on.

with love - M

The Designer's Survival Guide: Thank you Richard Baird

Go here. Do it now.

This site has been sitting on my top bar in Chrome since... well since I've had Chrome. Which is a long while. I feel the need to pass it on and discuss it in all it's glory. If I ever were to make such a guide, I hope it will be as helpful to others as this one has been to me.

You may be asking yourself - "Why do I need a guide? I'm the most glorious designer that ever was and I have clients coming out the wazoo." Good for you. I hope a spider lays eggs in your ears. Show some humility! As for me, I grab at every 'guide' I can get my hands on because I don't want just one perspective, I want all the perspectives. I want to be prepared when I get that project that makes me jump through hoops or that client that doesn't has trouble communicating what they want. I want to know ALL the ways I can promote myself without blatantly advertising.

There are 22 categories now. When I first saved this site, I think there were half as many. I'll just touch on a few of my favorites.

• Education - Obviously, I'm personally a bit beyond this issue now but this section still holds lots of useful information. Being a college-grown designer, I did loads of research into what I want out of a school for a graphic design degree and it astounded me how many schools I visited fell short of even the most basic standards. It was a lot of work but I feel I made a better choice because of it. And I didn't even want to be a Graphic Designer to begin with - I wanted to be an Herbologist... Anyway, I know some other folks that didn't need college or just took a couple courses here and there on specific programs (with the internet how it is now, you can learn all about the design programs without ever stepping in a classroom). I'm glad it's still acceptable to not have a degree and still be a great designer. 
• Self-Promotion - SO IMPORTANT! I have witnessed a broad spectrum of types of self-promotion by freelancers and business owners. Sometimes it's dead-on. Sucks me in, makes me curious, establishes a sort of conversation/relationship. Sometimes it's just annoying. Like a person on a bus or train talking to everyone and no one about themselves and how deserving they are of your money. Of course sometimes I meet wonderful designers in my freelance travels, designers with a wealth of knowledge and a constant updating collection of wonderful work... but no one knows about it but me, the designer, and maybe they're cat. If you create things in any capacity, please read this guide. 
• Pricing - I still struggle with this on a regular basis. The one system I always come back to was actually one recommended to me by an Etsy seller. (h * t) + m = x     Where h = per hour rate, whatever your time is worth to you. Be sure to think about taxes here, too! t = amount of time spent on project including meetings, emails, phone calls, etc. m = materials used be it a percentage of what you pay for that design program or that laptop or the paper and printer you used to make comps. x = the total, duh silly. Thanks to guides like this, I constantly re-evaluate what I charge for my time and how I explain it to clients.

Why are you still here?! Go check it out. Put your new knowledge and perspective to good use. Make your own guide. Spread the word. Tell me about it! I'm always looking to add to my blogroll.

And thank you, Richard Baird. You've made a difference in this designer.

with love - M

Sketch diary - snake girls

I do love me some serpentine women. No seriously, I've always been attracted to drawing mermaids, snake ladies, whatever. Something about the half and half thing is cool but I'm pretty sure there's something else going on, too. Snake-ity-snake. Snakes are really amazing creatures. I think I just want to switch out my lower half. That's probably what it is. I don't need legs. I wanna hang around in trees and swim all snake-y in the water and wrap my tail around my boyfriend so he can never leave... cough.

Anyway, I like their faces. In the sketch, not actual snakes. They don'e make faces. They have one face. Silly.

Ugh what is up with that HAND. Weird.

with love - M

Sketch diary - webcomic test run panels

And here is a test set of panels for the webcomic-yet-to-be. Five panels is a bit much, right? Nom nom nom.

with love - M

Sketch diary - random webcomic test sketches

These are more sketches from that webcomic that has yet to be.

with love - M

Sketch diary - expressions practice

Sometimes when I get stuck on something, I just move on. So doing a series of facial expressions can be a good way of moving the brain around those road blocks. This page was for a character based on a friend that I was chatting with at the time about making our own web comic. Hasn't gotten traction yet but I think it's good to get those ideas out there. See what flies. Or falls. Regardless, these were fun to do. I feel like some expressions aren't so different between characters but it all ends up being "well maybe I'll put that eyebrow here- look at that! and maybe the mouth a little bit lower - yuck, definitely not". Makes me feel like a scientist... of faces.

with love - M

Sketch Diary - just dancin'

 This started as a sketch of a pin-up style lady but things didn't work out. The hair came from a wig I have (in purple and blue, of course). Not sure what she's wearing though. I enjoyed sketching it out nonetheless. What does she look like? A Jane maybe? I'm feelin' Beatrice or Anna.

Sketch Diary - monster day

Creature feature! So a little known fact about me: I like drawing creepy things. Monsters, creatures, aliens, abominations, whatever. There's a lot to be learned from drawing natural human forms and I love classical portraits but there's something freeing about losing all constraints on the imagination. Want to add an eye on it's elbow? Sure. Maybe switch the mouth and the eyes? Go for it. There are no limits. I've gotten weird looks from people sometimes and I know it can be scary for parents and caregivers out there to encourage a child's imagination when they are drawn to possibly horrifying ideas, but please encourage them anyway. I tell family and friends all the time about how glad I am that my parents let me watch imaginative, though sometimes frightening, movies and video games. I'm getting older now, so these were movies like Alien and Aliens, Indiana Jones, Star Wars, The Labyrinth, The Dark Crystal. And I was 5-7 when I saw most of these for the first time. Now, I didn't fully comprehend them until more recently, of course, but the imagery was so impactful that I continue to use these films as inspiration today. I'm not saying run out and show your child Prometheus. I just want people to think about how limiting the imagination to only soft, safe, or classical exposure doesn't have to be the only way to go. We don't have to be scared... of being scared.

Phew, did not think that was going to be so much to type. So about the actual sketches: I looooove my razor mouth dude in the upper right corner. It's very 'sandworm of Dune' inspired. Don't know what's up with the other guy on the right. I was watching The Thing at the time. And the guy on the left was going to be a real monster but turned into kind of an alien in the end.

Sketch Diary - just another pretty lady

This is a sketch from January but I'm behind a day or two on my sketch diary. I can cheat. It's my diary, after all. So this was a quicky done on the train one day that I was going into Philly for freelance work. I'm trying to get back to sketching just what I see in my head at that moment instead of thinking about it too much. 

I don't know what to title these posts. These sketches rarely get so refined that I can give the characters a name or association of any kind. But maybe I'll do that. Whip out a baby name book and just start naming these people. 

Sketch diary

A quick pencil sketch of a dancer waiting her turn. I was supposed to be doing warmup posture sketches, like 3 minutes per pose. But I didn't make it past the first pose. Ah well. Next round.

Sketch diary

Time to start a digital record of my sketches. For motivation? Indeed. But also so I can share my journey with some of the world. One of my favorite things to do when I make a new artsy friend is to browse their sketch book. It is such a raw look at a persons thought processes and I feel more connected to these friends after viewing their sketches.
So here goes. This was an attempt to get back into color pencils but... I still don't like them much. I'm too impatient at this point in my life. Watercolor and markers are much more satisfying for me.

Oh god this photo is terrible... tried taking it with my phone to see how I liked blogging from my phone. Looks like that won't be an option.

Useful Design Tools: Google Drive

'What?' You might say. 'Design tool? Google Drive doesn't have anything to do with design as we know it!'. And in a way, you'd be right. Drive has a drawing tool but I haven't found much use for it yet. And then there's all the little add-ons like Conceptboard or Mind Map but I still prefer a good ol' fashion spreadsheet most of the time.

But you want to know what I encountered? While freelancing with a very small company recently, I was bombarded by their awesome use of Drive. It was a real 'duh' moment for me. Of course! Why not use Drive to store everything! As the day went on, it started to look more and more like an asset library and I was finding myself getting more and more excited about the possibilities.

The Cloud. Que the ooh and aahs surrounding this buzz word. But seriously folks, it has the potential to be a powerful tool. In my mind, small companies and individuals stand to gain the most from these tools. Obviously one of the best things about Drive is that it's free. There's Dropbox and other tools like it but none of them have all the other features that Drive has, at least not for free. And there stands another great thing about Drive - it's a tool box.

Remember way back when it was just Google Docs and it was goofy sometimes and didn't always work as awesomely as we all might have hoped. All you could do was upload other doc or excel type formats and pray the formatted properly. Then things just kept evolving until WHAM they made it a 'drive'. Now I can create a document, spreadsheet, form, presentation, or basic drawing, the formatting actually works, add people to it for editing or viewing only, and create folders to organize all this stuff in. THEN I can add any kind of file, regardless of Drive's ability to read it (yet!) and organize that into these folders and subfolders for these same people to use.

Amazing, I know. In case you're still confused at all about the awesome power of this setup with regards to a small company or individual, let me further explain that gig I mentioned earlier. Only two of us were there, the editor and myself as the designer. It was a small newspaper style publication, about 30 pages. There were no servers, no company emails with huge file size capabilities, no giant backup drives to pull files from. I assumed the worst - going back and forth with usb's or something similar. But no, the editor began sending me all the files I would need via Gmail and Drive. It was like magic. And as I finished a round of changes for her to review, she'd make her own changes on that version for me to add in while I moved forward with other changes on other pages. It was like magic. We were a model of efficiency. And I knew that if something happened to those computers, we would have the last round of changes saved via Drive. Being a freelancer who has often worked without a backup drive, I cannot tell you how comforting that was.

I'd love to hear what other folks have to say about Drive so please leave a comment. I'm going to go dive into the forums now to see what others have to say about this so there might be some edits or second post on this later. For now, this is just my experience and understanding of Drive and how it can relate to workflow efficiency. Can't wait to use it with the next client!

with love- M

Photos: Katrina and Brian sunset photo op

Another photo post! This was a very spur of the moment shoot I did with some friends during another friends wedding. It was at a lovely country club this couple asked if I could take a photo of them together. I stood up excitedly and thought "A photo?! How about 100!" and hurried them outside to find a good spot.

I got to hand it to them. They had their poses down pretty good. I don't remember having to give any corrections to their posture or anything, which is rare. Looking back, I wish I had taken more time to adjust my settings and do some more close up shots...and I wish I had brought my tripod...and some under lighting... But hey! When it's spur of the moment, I don't like missing these wonderful opportunities for portraits.

I just hope they enjoy the photos as much as I enjoy taking them. Check the rest of the gallery out here.

with love - M

Pregnancy Photo Shoot: Nicole and The Bump

Memories...This little photo shoot was done just a month or so before my dearest friend Nicole had her first baby. It's true what they say, she really was glowing. I definitely have a fascination with how beautiful the baby bump looks on women. Hopefully I'll be luck enough to shoot her again, should the need arise ^.-

Taking these shots was so easy in some ways and so hard in others. Easy because Nikki is almost always so picture perfect, it's hard to take a bad shot of someone who smiles so genuinely. But super hard because I was stressed out she wouldn't like how she looked in the photos. Even if I thought she looked fabulous in a certain pose, it can be hard to convince pregnant women of that fact. Sometimes all we see is all that extra weight, right ladies?!



But I stand by my choice of shots. I wish I hadn't made her get up and down and walk all over the complex as much I did. I think she's forgiven me.

This is my favorite shot. Click here to go to the full album. New growth, new baby, new beginnings.


with love- M

IFTTT: So many possiblities

Old hat to some, looks like Latin to others. IFTTT. If This, Then That. Such a basic concept but so important!

I remember taking my first logic class and having my mind blown every time my teacher walked us through an especially difficult equation. Maybe I'm not the logic master she hoped I'd grow to be but I sure do appreciate the impact it can have on absolutely everything. Case and point is this wonderful project, IFTTT.

Basically, there's a trigger (if this) and an action (then that). How about a real world example. If I drop a ball from my hand, it will hit the ground and create a sound (and then bounce all over the place and make my dog go nuts). In our online universe of websites, all separate and unique, this can become a similar equation. I can tell my blog to post to google+ in it's settings menu so it knows 'if a post is published, then send a blurb to her google+ page about'. Genius, right?! But what about facebook, linkedin, twitter, tumblr, and the rest of the social network sites out there?

After a short while, I suppose folks started to realize how irritating and time consuming it is to manually post to all these different avenues of social-ness and a revolution happened! Well not really, but some smart people in San Francisco decided to create an easy to use website with equations that anyone could create and use (yes, still talking about IFTTT). They call these equations 'recipes'. Makes it easier to swallow for those of us who loathe math. Anyone can make a recipe from any of the many 'ingredients' or pieces of data (like a post url).

But the fun doesn't stop with social networking! It can use data from emails, calendars, news sites, and just about anything else with text. It's quite inspiring for me. A permanent addition to my web arsenal.

with love- M 

Blog Switch: Leaving Wordpress

And back to Blogger! I started messing around with Blogger when it first came forth years ago but at the time, Wordpress was way more appetizing. Now the tables have turned and I find myself using more and more 'google stuff'. Looking forward to some quality time here on my blogspot.

A quick update on some different compartments in my life.

1. New house in April. Very exciting but very stressful. Had to say goodbye to a beloved freelance gig because of the move.
2. Got to experience a bunch of cool (and very different) freelance gigs in Philadelphia and Wilmington since then.

And here I am trying to keep up.

Some fun illustration stuff to keep the blogging hounds at bay.