Happy Friday!!  This week my debut book, Queen Quail is Quiet: and other ABC Tongue Twisters was released for e-readers for Kindle and in print and I can’t stop skipping around.

This book teaches the alphabet by illustrating each letter using each sound of every letter. Younger children will learn to associate the colorful letter with the sound and older children will enjoy wrapping their mouths around the funny, tongue-twisting text.

What do you think about a Queen Quail is Quiet giveaway? Here’s the deal:

1) Leave a comment on this post any time between now and 11:59 PM EST May 24 to be entered.

2) Want to up your chances? Post about the giveaway to either Twitter or Facebook and that counts as a second entry (just let me know in the comments). Or if Instagram is more your speed, write “Queen Quail is Quiet” on a piece of paper, take a photo of your masterpiece and tag it with #queenquailbook.

3) I’ll choose the winner randomly using this tool.

4) The winner will get one digital download (works with Kindle, the app, etc) of the book.

Good luck!!

Queen Quail is Quiet: and other ABC Tongue Twisters came out today for e-readers for Kindle and in print!

Queen Quail is Quiet grew out of my love of learning and drawing.  I wanted to be a little different to approaching learning the alphabet. Creating a sentence illustrating each sound for every letter sounded challenging.  I started out by thinking of words for the letters and then forming a sentence I could illustrate.  Sketching of thumbnail ideas came next and was much easier to do once I realized this would no longer be just a project, but a book.  Most of the sketching was just on plain computer paper and once I refined the sketches into final artwork, I scanned in the images onto my computer.

To read more, go to one of my friend’s blogs where I completed guest posts this week.  Much thanks to PBJunkies and Charlotte Cooke !!

Today is my first Mother’s Day as a mum and I love it.  Thank you for the greatest joy Addy.

Enjoying the day with my daughter, mom, MIL and fam.  Just wanted to take a moment to wish a happy happy Mother’s Day to all of those women who make your little ones feel empowered and special.

You truly make the world go round.

So you guys, I have pretty big news.  I can’t believe I am typing this actually.  Means it is really real in a way.

The project I have been talking about forever, is that I have a book coming out. I am PUBLISHED.  If you have been a long-time follower, you know I have had a pet alphabet project and it went through many different forms.  But now it is going to finally grow up to be a book.  Available in print and for e-readers through Amazon.com.

I am so excited.

The book is called Queen Quail is Quiet: and other ABC Tongue Twisters, it is an alphabet book where each letter demonstrates the sound of each letter throughout a sentence.  Like, for the letter L the sentence is “Lemon Licks the Lollipop”. I am the author and illustrator.

I hope it makes my baby girl even more interested in reading and I hope it makes its way into your kid lit libraries as well. The book should launch May 15, definitely this month.  Here is the link for pre-sale for Kindle.

Somebody pinch me, please!

I have been killing projects left and right.  One of those projects was getting everything together for my baby girl’s first birthday in a little less than three weeks.  I wanted to do something different and add my own design as well.  Didn’t think I would be able to do it but her birthday falls in spring and then bunnies came to mind and then “Some Bunny is turning ONE” appeared.  I’m happy with the invites and since they are out now, I can share with you.  These were created in AI and I was able to make my handwriting into a vector illustration for the type.

Plans are still underway but I wanted to document some progress.

I’ll tell you more about the other project VERY soon.

A long time ago I painted a watercolor of green leaves and someone had suggested I make a print out of it.  There is a great site called Spoonflower where you can submit designs and they will turn those designs into fabric.  So fast forward probably three years later and I have made my first fabric.  I love how it looks and the quality is just better than I imagined.  There is a blizzard coming so I scanned in the fat quarter proof I ordered.

What do you think?  So now I have one print for sale and I can’t wait to make more.  Whenever I can get more time I want to learn how to screen-print as well.  Never done it and would love to see what it’s like.

There will be some DIY projects and I’m excited to see them finished.  Everything can’t be created from scratch though and I’m okay with that.

Did you learn a lot from your baby’s first birthday? Anything you would do differently? I’m all ears.

P.S.
Where did the time go?  I can’t believe she will have been here for a year in just a few more weeks.

We have big plans so far.  We’ll possibly go to a community Easter egg hunt if we can get up early enough.  Baby-cakes is only 10 months old so she won’t be heartbroken if we don’t make it.  Would be fun though.  My parents are coming tomorrow and spending the night so Raul and I can go celebrate a friend’s birthday downtown.  I can not wait!!  We are “pub crawling” which involves walking from pub to pub.  Cocktails and food?  It’s been awhile and I don’t care, just glad to be getting out at night, with adults and having a good time.  Then Sunday will be Easter grub at my parent’s house.

Hoping to get a chance to make these marbleized Easter eggs at some point too.

We’ll see!

Wishing you and yours a very happy Easter weekend.

I’ve been looking longingly at my camera and at my painting supplies for awhile now.  I vow to document more and play with my process of shooting and filling my blank watercolor canvases.

Right now my process is making a sketch, scanning it in and adjusting the size in Photoshop.  For this one the final is 6 ” x 8″.  I then print out the sketch with crop marks, cut it down and place it on top of watercolor paper on top of my light box.  Then I lightly trace my sketch onto the watercolor paper.  This whole time I am thinking of a color scheme and just putting the colors together in my mind.  I have pictures I’ve been inspired by in magazines or catalogs (love Anthropologie, Madewell and JCrew).  They are great places to look for color combos.

Now it’s time to paint and I jump from section to section around the painting, waiting for sections that are right next to each other to dry completely.  A little over a week ago I finished this peacock painting and it took all day.  I was entertaining my 10 month old in between waiting for washes to dry and I posted the progress bit by bit on Twitter.

This beautiful peacock can be flown to your home because he’s been added to my shop!

One of my dreams is to have a show in a gallery, I want it to come true soon.  Thanks for reading, I hope this gives a little insight into how these illustrations come to life.

I’ve been consumed with a whole bunch of this.  Giggles, squeals, clapping, “talking”.  The whole nine.  Baby A is the best and she has transformed our world as we know it.

I have New Orleans roots so gumbo is one of the foods I grew up on as a child.  I had never attempted to make it before, left that up to my mom.  Since we were going to most likely get a lot of snow this weekend, be stuck inside the house and I have had a hankering for some gumbo; I decided to try my hand at it.

Although I found a couple recipes to work from, I needed my mom to walk me through the way it’s really done (thanks xox!).  I used king crab legs, shrimp, bay scallops and little-neck clams. Only burnt the roux once!  Raul had three bowls and when I brought over some leftovers to my parents, they gave it a big gold starred seal of approval as well.  I loved it too but it is a long process, won’t be making that again for awhile.

We went to Whole Foods for dinner and there was an illustrated sign for this Sumo fruit.  There was sumo wrestling fruit in the illo!  I had to try this citrus at this point.  It’s pretty okay, a milder type of orange is how I would describe it.  They are only available for a little over a month, go try it too.

We got more snow this weekend but these bird pics are from the weekend before.  Raul noticed the birds first and they were everywhere.  I love their little round fat bodies so I snapped some shots before they kept it moving.