Life With Girls, Fairy Tales and SPACE

The last couple of months have been crazy busy. Between the start of show season at Green With Indie, then vacation to Arizona with Abby (who just turned five), followed by St. Louis ComicCon and the Small Press and Comic Expo in Columbus, Ohio, I haven't had much time for anything. Then, when you add in the Life With Girls web comic, finishing up Volume 1 of the Handmade Fairy Tales book, and client work...well, you get the picture. The thing is though, despite being exhausted and more than a little stressed out, this is still the best part of my life so far. :)

S.P.A.C.E. is the yearly Small Press and Comic Expo, held in
Columbus, Ohio. I shared a table this year with my friend Leighton Connor, the writer and illustrator of Laser Brigade, and creative director over at Hex Games. It was a lot of fun, we had a late nite adventure putting his comics together at Kinko's (which I chronicled over on the Life With Girls blog), the best barbeque I've ever had, and got to meet some really great creators.  No matter how ready I seem to be leading up to a show, it seems like I'm always up until 2:00 in the morning the nite before, making "one last thing". For this show, it was bookmarks.

There have been a lot of late nites recently, as I've been working towards some major milestones on personal projects. I got the first volume of the Handmade Fairy Tales book done just in time to order have them for S.P.A.C.E...Actually, I was sweating their delivery a little bit, as they didn't arrive until after noon on the day I was leaving for the show. They came out fantastic, and all six stories are so good. We're really excited to finally be able to share this first volume with you in our online store. You can also check out the first story, "The Brave Little Tailor" by Brandon Graham as a free download, in the downloads section of the site.

 

Getting a good print run of the "Life With Girls" comic was another huge project for the show. We collected the first twenty-four strips of the 100 themes project (plus a couple of others) into a 5.5 x 8.5 book. The story of a stay-at-home dad of two daughters, the comic has both day to day "slice of life" type stories, as well as more fantasy stories, looking into the minds of the children, and the people they love. It's also available now in the shop, or you can read it for free on the Life With Girls blog.

One last shop update for the day. It's Watercolor Wednesday! Today, we have this handsome corgi pup, and cozy coupe. These are both original watercolor and ink drawings that are also available as part of the story starter chip set.

Thanks for stopping in! Until next time, take care and be good!
Your friend,
Jeffrey

Strange Folk Wrap Up

It was a super busy weekend...a super awesome weekend. We got to see tons of old friends, and make some new ones. One of the things I love most about doing shows is getting feedback on our work in the moment. This weekend was definitely good for us, reaffirming that just maybe we're on the right path. Awesome as it was...I forgot to take a single picture. I feel more than a little sheepish about this, because I really, REALLY wanted to share some of our experience with you all. Luckily, we have good friends, and they DID take some pics!

 

Our friend Beqi of Beqi Clothing got this one of Mrs Handmade and I setting up our tent on Saturday morning. We decided to add a third table, and change the way the gridwall was arranged, and I think this is our best set up to date.

  

And the finished set up. :)

 

Karen from Binx Ceramic stopped by and got this photo of me and the new playhouses I made for the weekend.  Karen's always so funny and fun, it was great seeing her.

 

And finally, some of the loot that I left the show with. Clockwise from the top: "Out of the Woods" Limited edition printed shadow box by Sadly Harmless. Ragdoll and plush fox by Riley Construction. Soap by Buddah Body and Bath. Carlton the Cutesy Vampire necklace by Morbid Unicorn. And Sammy the Soda painting by my friend Alecia's daughter. 

It was a fantastic weekend, and I'm still recovering. There's lots of work still on my desk though, so no time to take a day off!

 

In other awesome news, "The Brave Little Tailor" as retold by Brandon S Graham with illustrations and layout by me is in a show on the fifth floor of the Columbia College Library, in Chicago. The opening reception will take place on Oct 5th, from 5-8 pm.
624 South Michigan Ave
Chicago, IL 60607
I hope some of you can make it!  I've made the layouts available on the Downloads page of my website as well, so you all can check out a little of the book progress. I'll have more big news on that front next week.

Until then, take care and be good!

Your friend,

Jeffrey

Little Houses on the Hillside...Crafting Strangefolk

Last year when were deciding what we wanted to be when we grew up, Mrs Handmade and I went to a lot of craft shows and festivals, testing the waters of the indie-craft scene. In late September, we went to the Strangefolk Festival in O'fallon Il. We were hooked. I wrote about the show afterwards, and remember how excited I was about it. Shows were definately something we wanted to do, and Strangefolk was at the top of our list. With the festival coming up this weekend, I've apparently decided to test the limits of "mind over matter" as I stay up doing client work, working on the Handmade Tales book, and getting new product ready for the show...Building a little neighborhood of little houses and people, in fact.

These little handmade playhouses started out life as a doodle on my desk blotter and have grown into these. There are two types, above are the Deluxe version where the face is painted, and the interior has a chalk board paint coating so that kids can customize their inner playhouse.

 

There's also the anywhere version with both faces painted with chalkboard paint to allow for maximum versatility in scenario location. I'm really excited to show these this weekend, and will be adding them to our online shop as well after the festival. 

 

In other news Brandon Graham, who I collaborated with on the Brave Little Tailor story in the Handmade Tales book has printed out the spreads of his story and my artwork to be included in a show in Chicago. How awesome is that? Next week, in conjunction with that I will post that layout here, as well as a downloadable pdf with the preorders for the book in our online shop...but more on that later. :)

Until next week then, take care and be good!

Your friend, 

Jeffrey