Introducing Mopey Dolls

Unfortunately I didn't blog as much as I had planned to last year. I'm going to start 2013 by posting some pictures of cards I made over past eight months. I have a series of cards I've nicknamed "Mopey Dolls" which featured a chibi styled girl. These are fun to draw and lend themselves to bright cheery backgrounds.

First up is one of my favourites, this blue-eyed cutie was the first time I tried colouring in the image with pencil crayons (on the dress) in addition to markers and it came out better than I expected. It's embellished with coloured paper, ribbon and stamped words embossed in gold:

For this next one I used a more horizontal design. The face and eyes were coloured with Copic Markers the rest is coloured with pencil crayons (Prismacolor) and embellished with some ribbon and heart shaped punches:

The next card I decided to cut out the "Mopey doll" image and glued it to some coloured paper. I then experimented with stitching a boarder around the image. It's embellished with paper flowers and a gold embossed stamped word: 

When I made the next three cards I was trying out a ribbon cutter that cuts a pattern in paper that makes it easy to tread a a ribbon. Two of the cards used a stamped background and  the middle card features more stitching and some paper punch flowers:

Finding Creativity

Sometimes trying to be creative is a very difficult thing. It just doesn’t seem to work on demand. There are days you may want to do or make something, but you find yourself clueless about where to start. Other days you can have so many ideas that you’re left figuring out what to do first.  As the saying goes, “when it rains it pours”.

But what does one do when there is a dry spell? How do you handle days where nothing you draw looks right or you just can’t think of a subject to write about? Everything I’ve read on “writer’s block” suggests that the only solution is to keep pushing through. If you’re a writer just write, or if you draw just draw anything. It doesn’t need to good or have a point, you just have to keep moving. So I do what is suggested in the hopes when inspiration hits me I’ll be at the ready, pen in hand.

What my inner psychologist wonders is why this happens in the first place and whether there is a way to predict these ebbs and flows.

This week’s card I created when I was thinking of card that a son might give his mother. Once again I took one doodle and presented two ways: one for Mother’s day, the second as a birthday card.