Lunch Box love- Part 2

YO HO HO!!!!
For today's "Lunch Box love" I made my boys pirate notes. Last night after dinner we had some fun together doing origami and made the hats together, even my 3 yr. old daughter got into the action. I thought it would be fun to surprise them with their own handmade origami hats incorporated into the lunch box notes. I poked around my craft boxes and found some googly eyes, scraps of fabric for the bandana, and some trusty tinfoil to make an earring-"ARRRRR".  ;)

Lunch Box Love

First off, Happy Belated Valentine's Day!!!

I am joining a little challenge suggested by the super talented Holli Conger. Any of you Mommies(and Daddies) out there would love it too! For this week we are doing a "A little Lunch Box Love Challenge", so drop by Holli's blog for all sorts of cute ideas and info.
I have sent little notes in my kiddies lunches every since my oldest, who is now 9 yrs. old, was in JK. Now with 3 in full time and one in half day nursery school 2 days a week, my morning routine in like a whirlwind. Getting 4 munchkins fed, dressed and out the door on time is no small feat, so most of the time my little notes are a quick sketch on an extra napkin, nothing as pretty as Holli's cute creations.
I am amazed at her ability to whip up something so cute and thoughtful so fast with a teeny newborn and daughter to get ready every morning! Way to go Holli!!!

So on Monday, which was Valentine's day, I sent each of my little men a box of 10 homemade love-heart cookies instead of a note. Yes, it is true what they say - the way to a little boy's heart is through his stomach too!! :)
All of my boys have severe anaphylactic food allergies to nuts, eggs and milk, so I baked safe cookies for them to bring to school to celebrate.

For today, I came up with these pop-out 3D notes with a foam hand cut-out to "High Five" my boys. I'm all about positive praise and reinforcement. It is sometimes tricky to come up with something that all 3 will enjoy as they are into very different things at there ages.  I also changed up the messages so that each one reflects their reading level. Nothing makes me more proud than to hear my little guy say "Mommy I read your note to me all by my 'sewf"', in his little-guy accent.

I hope they didn't get mangled before lunch ;). Now to start thinking up tomorrow's notes. 

Great idea Holli!!

Website retweek

Hi everyone,
If you have been over at my new website, you may notice that did a little retweeking. I rearranged the layout of the "Home" page and changed the way the portfolio images are viewed. At first the portfolio images  opened up in a new window but I changed them to open in the same window for ease of navigation. I took the great advice form my friends in the zero2illo forum, and also moved up my image rotator on this page so that most of it is visible once you land on the page and then you don't have to scroll down to get the full image. I also decreased the height of my header as well, to help create more space for the image rotator. At the top are my favorite 2 of the 9 variations I came up with for a new header design. I know 9, yeah...totally type A of me- hahaha.
 I opted to go with the top header image. If you have a preference I'd love to hear it!:)
Now that the website is live I am looking forward to getting back to messing around with my plasticine and get creating. I have a project I hope to finish in a few weeks so stay tuned for updates.
Bye for now!

New website is LIVE!!!

Hello,
I just launched my new portfolio website suzannedelrizzo.com. I had a few glitches but I think is up and running now.
I was hoping to get it up yesterday but we've had a nasty bout of stomach flu on a rampage thru the house and all the kids have come down with it ON SEPARATE DAYS!!! So this website launch has had to wait.
I hope you will all take a second to read through the content, and check out all of my images and if you notice any typo.s or have any suggestions, please don't hesitate to share!
Thanks hubby for being patient when I was frustrated and tired, you are the best! But I think it was worth all the work!;)
If anyone is thinking of creating their own website I highly recommend the Headway WP theme. It really made it easy once I got the hang of it.
Enjoy! Let me know what you think!!

Fresh new look to match my new website!!

So this is the reason I have been so absent from my dear little blog lately.....I'm finally putting a proper website together.  Here is a sneak peek of my new portfolio website, well a screen shot of the top half of the "Home" page at least. I am so excited to share it with you all, but it isn't quite finished yet. I hope to launch it next week if all goes as planned!
We've had a case of the stomach flu hit the family so fingers crossed it doesn't make the rounds to all of us and slow down my momentum!
I am using the Headway theme from Wordpress and it has been tons of fun playing around with it.

I wanted to have the same look and feel on both my website and this blog. But since it looks a little more complicated  to make the switch from Blogger to WP, I've decided  to stay put and just match it up as best I can for the time being.
So I switched templates, customized it a bit by changing the background to my cool plasticine image, re-sized my cute header, and changed some fonts and colours and voila!
What do ya think?
I hope everyone will please check out my website once it goes live at suzannedelrizzo.com, and give lots of constructive crit.s and comments too.

It looks like Febuary is going to be a busy month with artwork that has been put on the back burner while I've been getting the website put together so I promise to have lots of artwork illustrations to show soon!:)

New Website Header

Well, I am busily working behind the scenes on my website. I know, I know, it is about time. This is something I have been wanting to start for a while as I feel it is imperative to have a portfolio website for clients and AD's to be able to check out your in a more professional setting. I have been wavering between the idea of hiring someone to design it or making it myself.
After much thought, I have decided to make it myself, even though I know it might take me 5 times longer than a designer and potentially take time away from my already squeezed "art time", but I think I have all the right tools to get the job done right (hopefully!).
I am a huge fan of Jonathan and Lea Woodward's  zero2illo website. I purchased their amazingly helpful 12 week challenge kit, which also has some fabulous video tutorials for setting up Wordpress, and the Headway
theme. I have been a very diligent little student studying these tutorials and basically trying to become as familiarized with Wordpress as I can. I admit it felt overwhelming at first as I felt like such a fish out of water, but now that I have been doing my research I feel more prepared and I know that if I have any silly questions or get stumped I have resources to get unstuck.
I am really excited to have full creative control over my website, as I have so many ideas ready to be realized.
I have been working on a new Header for my website. I want one that's not quite as big as the one I currently use on my blog. I plan to have the same header on each page of my site, that way AD's and clients have an easy reminder of who's site they are visiting and my contact info. is right at the top so they can jot it down.
I have incorporated the image of my little mousy into my header as she has become my brand mascot. To be consistent she is also in my Twitter background  and blog header too.
I played around with the background colours in the image above, which do you prefer? Right now I am leaning towards this:

I don't want it to be too dark and compete with the info on each page. I would love any feedback as always :)

Hoping for more snow tomorrow! The kiddies have been having a blast on their new mini-luges they got for Christmas and their zippy toboggans.

New Year, New Goals, New logo...

Instead of making a list or resolutions to achieve this year, I decided to choose a word or phrase( in my case) to follow. I noticed a few other illustrator/designer/creative people who's blogs I follow have opted to have a "word of the year", and I thought it was a grand idea!

So for 2011 my phrase is: Be brave, and go for it. Basically I plan to keep saying this to myself as a little mantra, whenever I feel like I'm stepping out of my comfort zone. Which...may be often, as I am a very shy person by nature, and I have always found it kinda difficult to put myself out there with out the fear of rejection.
I think many of us have this fear, and we need to just be brave, and go for it. Easier said than done I think. But I have come to realize that I need to embrace my fears. All that jittery, butterflies-in-the-stomach, what- if-this-doesn't-work-out fear, could also be deep rooted excitement  because I am finally realizing and following my dream career!
 I have to thank my wonderful hubby and family and friends for being the little nudge(read big shove) behind me, who cheer me on, and I also want to thank  Michelle Ward, a career coach extraordinaire . Although I have never had the pleasure of speaking with her in person, I have found her blog, especially  her Tough Question Tuesdays to be very insightful and helpful. Thanks Michelle!!

So to start off 2011, I am getting down to business and checking things off my list from last year-ekk.
I redesigned my logo. There is it up above this long post. I love it. I think it really shows my personality and is totally me.

I have joined Twitter. And boy is it fun! I followed along on the #kidlitart Thursday night 9pm twitter chat last night. why the heck I didn't do this sooner.... what a perfect networking tool to follow the "pulse" of Children's book illustration, and to meet many more in the industry.

I also joined SCBWI. I had joined CANSCAIP last year, and now I will have many more opportunities to gain insight and meet other illustrators and industry people.

I plan to enter some other illustration/art competitions too, more details on those to follow another day.
 
So I've been a busy girl these first weeks of January 2011. And I've got some momentum now to get the other stuff checked off from last years list...website..portfolio series...character study..facebook...
 I am proud of myself for being so proactive and brave. My mantra is working!

Now if I could just get to folding all that laundry that's been patiently waiting since I joined Twitter-hmmmmm