Potato Bugs and "Insects"

School is keeping me quite busy, but in my spare moments I'm working away at a new set: Creepy Crawlies!  So far these two kids have come to life, soon to be followed by a ladybug and a potato bug.  The ladybug sketch morphed into being quite easily, but the sketch for the potato bug turned out to be challenging.  I turned to an image search for inspiration.  I knew the cute little creatures had many nicknames and "potato bug" wasn't the most common, but I was surprised when my screen was flooded with this creepy guy:

Image by Franco Folini
Wikipedia: Jerusalem Cricket

I got distracted reading about this fascinating, alien-looking creature, but eventually a search for "pill bug" turned up the familiar little armadillo of the insect world and the sketching resumed.  This image, in particular, has been a wonderful inspiration for his face!

Image by Peter J. Bryant
UCI: Pill Bug (Wood Louse)

Thanks to this experience, "potato bug" is definitely not in consideration for naming the image in the finished set!

I have always been mesmerized by (friendly) insects.  As a kid, I loved finding them under rocks and letting them crawl around on my hands.  Pill bugs were easily my favorite creepy crawly, and my love for them continued into adulthood.  I didn't think they could get any more fascinating, but recently I learned that while roly polies play the role of insects, they are actually crustaceans!  It's easy to see, now, thinking about their armor and that of a lobster, but at the time I was quite surprised.  That discovery lead me on a path through Wikipedia, following breadcrumbs and links through more and more distantly related species, until I discovered the giant isopod:

Image by unknown photographer
Wikipedia: Giant Isopod

Now, that thing is cool!  Look at those fantastic eyes.  It looks like he's smiling, too.  His face would be perfect on an alien.  I'm thinking future set?

Well, that tangent aside, keep an eye out for more posts as the Creepy Crawlies slowly find their way out of my imagination and into the next set!

Colorful Teddy Bear Playing Cards!

***New set sale through 11/16/15!***

It's been a while, but I'm back!  I've finally wrapped up the finishing touches on the teddy bear cards and uploaded the set to the shop.  Check it out:

Add some fun to your lessons and games with this teddy-bear-themed playing cards clip art! Want to print the deck out, but having trouble getting the fronts and backs lined up just right? Included in the set are digital papers you can print on the reverse side of a sheet of cards, thus avoiding the frustration! Each of these 118 pieces was a joy to create. I hope these silly teddies bring you and your students a little joy, too!

Contents:
• 54 colorful playing cards with teddy-themed royalty
• 4 teddy-themed card backs
• 4 matching 8.5 x 11 inch digital papers
• Black & white versions of all images (56 total!)

I'm ready!

What an inspiring week!  I am beyond grateful for the encouraging and exciting atmosphere of the 2nd annual Teachers Pay Teachers conference.  I came away with some great advice and ideas for how to improve my clip art and my TpT store.  The main points from the workshops I attended were: 1) the importance of treating a TpT store like a job, not a hobby, 2) be a person, not a salesman, when interacting with customers and 3) find a niche and stick to it.

I've been very casual with the creation of my sets, putting time into them only when I felt the urge, and creating things based on whims, rather than clear plans.  The wonderful conference, and the discovery that my clipart was used in a recent TpT blog post, have inspired me to change the way I think about Silly Pillies.  If I put in the effort, exciting things will happen!

On that note, here is a (raw) taste of the next set: Teddy Bear Playing Cards!

Happy Valentine's Day!

The Valentine's Day Clip Art pack is finished, just in time for the holiday!  Check it out in the Silly Pillies shop and add some Valentine's Day fun to your projects with this 26 piece set!

The set contains:
• 13 curly hearts
• Pink mailbox
• Valentine
• Beautiful rose
• "Bee" mine bumble bee
• Cute butterfly
• Snuggly Valentine's Day teddy bear
• Line art for each image (7 total!)

"Bee" mine, Valentine!

My latest images have been Valentine's Day themed.  It's not my favorite holiday as an adult, but I do love the cute decorations!  Making this clip art is reminding me how much fun the day can be for my creative side.  I liked it much more as a kid, when teachers gave us supplies for creating little mail boxes or pockets for valentines.  Mine usually ended up covered in paper doilies.  I also loved picking out valentines and figuring out which ones to give to whom.  It was important to be careful that no card could possibly make the recipient think you "liked" them!

Candy is one thing I still enjoy about the holiday.  I hate cheap, gross American-made chocolate, like the kind that takes over at Easter.  For some reason, though, I absolutely love those $1 heart boxes with four really cheap chocolates inside.  I buy several of them every year!  Conversation hearts, on the other hand, are absolutely disgusting.  If I wanted to eat chalk, I would go for a regular stick that wasn't pretending to be candy! ;)

Clipping in a Winter Wonderland!

Life has been quite crazy lately, but I've finally managed to squeeze in the creation of another set.  Check out the new Winter Clip Art pack in the shop, on sale for the first two days!

Winter is one of my favorite times of year.  I've lived in Los Angeles for the last few, which means I missed out on all the fun (and frustration) of snow.  I still love it, and the season just doesn't feel right without it.  I have so many memories of creating paper snowflakes in school and for fun at home, and I'm absolutely fascinated by photos of actual snowflakes taken with powerful microscopes.  Nature is full of such beautiful art!  As an adult I still love cutting little shapes out of folded paper, then opening it up to see what amazing patterns I unknowingly created.  I've discovered that the more I cut out, the more intricate and beautiful the snowflake becomes.  The trick is to leave as little paper behind as possible, while making sure you never cut all the way across.

For Christmas my mom surprised me with an Adonit Jot Touch with Pixelpoint, and I love it!  It allows me to use my iPad to create my clipart, and I then refine it on my computer.  I made paper snowflakes over the weekend and loaded photos of them into my favorite drawing app, ProCreate, then used my new "toy" to trace over them and create the four snowflakes in the set.  I hope I've done justice to these wonders of nature!

Super Cyber Savings!

I haven't been able to work on images lately because school has demanded all my time and my computer chose to stop working a couple weeks ago.  I'm back from cyber-death, though, and as soon as finals are done in a few weeks I'll be able to spend time cranking out the clip art!  In the meantime, check out the Cyber Monday sale coming up on Teachers Pay Teachers.  Everything in my shop will be 20% off, and if you use the promo code TPTCYBER, you'll get an additional discount!

Enjoy your weekend and your holiday season!  Keep your eyes peeled for updates near Christmastime!