Baby Duck Bath bookplate and stickers

Two more items I have just added on my shop. Baby Yellow Duck personalized bookplate and Yellow Duck Stamp Stickers.

I love making bookplates. I feel happy when someone buy it and has it personalized with someone else's name. It reminds me of my best friend who bought me Barnes & Noble's gift voucher. With such book-related gifts, what else could make book lovers happier?

The stamp sticker is another thing that I enjoy doing. It requires more labor in the cutting part. Have I told you yet that all my items are homemade? I print everything from my Epson printer and cut and make envelopes by myself. This way I can control color quality and I can experiment with different kinds of paper easily.

Anyway, I used to collect stickers years ago and before that when I was a kid, my sister, my brother and I had a bedroom door full of stickers. You know...the way kids put stickers on their stuffs but we had the whole door panel! It's very pretty, I have to say, with all colorful stickers attached neatly on the panel by my sister.

I moved out from that house some twenty years ago. My cousin's family stays in that house now and the door is still there. Sometimes, I just think that we should have brought that door with us too. It's an art piece and our childhood memory :-D

There will be more stamp stickers coming in this 10 Million Love collection If all goes well, I plan to have more stamp design because I really love the format and the words, 10 Million Love, don't you?

Thanks for coming and commenting. I may be a bit quiet but I'm still here :-)

As always, have a merry day!

Introducing 10 Million Love design collection

Today I have just put some new items on my shop. Not sure if you remember my baby bath illustration I posted last year. This yellow duck comes from that illustration. I fixed some part of the girl's face, make her cuter and put brown background. I think you know how much I love brown paper by now :-).

Then I thought this illustration could be played with. I could make it into a bigger collection. I started this design last year and it took me very looong time to complete with all other things getting in the way. Now I have finished the whole collection.

I proudly present you my very first design collection called '10 Million Love'!.

The wording came to me when I was designing a card for my friend. She wanted a matching stamp sticker to go with the card. So, I put the number 10 on the design as a start and then the words 'million love' just popped in my head. I thought it sounded sweet and simple and I could play with the types very easily too.

I'm so crazy with this design that I actually made 10 items for this collection! I spent my whole last Sunday taking photos of all the items like crazy. I got really exhausted after that!

Right now I have just listed 2 items on my shop. Can't wait to list more but I need to find time in between my book jobs though.

You can see more pictures of this collection but right now I only have 2 items on my shop here:

10 Million Love Gift Card

10 Million Love Sticker Tags

What do you think of this collection? Do you have any stationery items you would like to see in this collection?

I'm very excited with this new design, I hope you do too.
Thanks for coming. I wish you a merry day!

Sketchbook : friendship is a sheltering tree

I'm super busy again. But I will try drawing at night :-)

I want to stop the time...

That's what I thought this morning, to pause the clock and do whatever I want to do with no care of job deadline or future success.

Right now I just want to...

Read a good book.
Enjoy good blogs.
Watch some nice tv programs.
Oh...need to have my hair cut too :-)

I may or may not be back to work this afternoon.
Just let me have slow life period this very moment.

Be it a slow Monday :-)

Some more sketches

Have you ever been like me? Have tons of ideas going on in your brain but zero energy to work more on computer to create things. That happens to me right now and I'm feeling a bit frustrated :-( But I guess I have to take care of my health first. Going to take a rest. Charge my work battery for next week. Enjoy my weekend! :-D

By the way, I did my friend-theme sketch at night. I intended to have only black and red but, with poor light, I mistook blue as black! Well...I guess it still looks OK :-P

I'm going off line to sit back, relax and read something now. What are you going to do this weekend?

Oh...almost forgot. My Merry Rabbit bookplate got to Etsy front page yesterday! It's the first time for my shop, so excited! ;-D

Congratulations to One World One Heart Giveaway's Winner!

Congratulations to Barbara Olivo Cagle! You are the winner of my One World One Heart Giveaway. Hope you like my handmade label and stickers!

Thanks everyone for playing. I may be slow in visiting back but I will do my best to see all of your blogs. Thanks to those who have just followed my blog too!

Hope you have a merry day!

brown sketch

Hello. How are you today? It's only one day that I didn't blog but it seems I'm quite away from my blog. Don't know why I feel that way.

I am quite busy. Book layout job can take all your time. I almost finish one book and going to start the next. I enjoy doing it but just wish I could speed up my work for my shop too. I think ever since I participated in Art Every Day Month and The Sketchbook Project last year, ideas come to me more smoothly and easily. That's a good thing. I just have to make all ideas into real things.

By the way, I just got mail saying that my sketchbook got there already, those who are in the US please be prepared for the tour and don't forget to see mine!

Also, you can still play with me in One World One Heart giveaway until this Friday. Good luck!

Book Beauty Monday : The Lion with the Bird's Nest

Book Beauty Monday is back :-) For those who may happen to be here for the first time or have just followed my blog (thanks! :-D), Book Beauty Monday is weekly post about children's books I collect. It disappeared from this blog for some weeks as I had so many things to take care. Children's book illustration work is like my main source of inspiration. I open it when I get bored, when I feel sad and when I can't find ideas for work. So, I feel obliged to talk about this art to honor those wonderful artists :-)

Today's book is an old Japanese picture book called 'The Lion with the Bird's Nest'. These images are taken from Thai edition. The book was first published in 1960, written by Eriko Kishida and illustrated by Chiyoko Nakatani.

It's a lovely story about Jojo, the lion whose strong aura scared all animals in the jungle. He's getting old and quite lonely. One day he let a gray bird lay eggs on his crown. He spent his time with his new friend while taking care of the eggs on his head until little chicks hatched out. They became friends with Jojo and now other animals were not scared of him anymore :-)

What I love about this book apart from the cute story is how the illustrator rendered her work. Her illustration has a wonderful combination of nice texture and beautiful color selection. I especially like the transition from dark opaque green and blue to sweet, airy light green and pink at the end. It reflects the changed opinions that other animals had towards the lion at the end, I think.

Please note that I only post sample images of the book to show its illustration style, not the whole book.

Hope you enjoy this post. Have a merry day!

PS. Have you entered my One World One Heart Giveaway yet? Come and play here! : http://haveamerryday.blogspot.com/2011/02/one-world-one-heart-giveaway.html

One World One Heart giveaway!

Last week my lovely friend, Conell sent me a link of this wonderful event called One World One Heart. I am really excited about this. It sounds interesting and fun. If you haven't heard about it yet. Go to the link and see the details :-)

So, I'm participating in One World One Heart now. For those who already follow my blog, this will be an official introduction of me and a fresh hello to those who come here for the first time :-)

Here we go, My name is Pavinee (aka MerryDay or pilarcat in the cyber world). I'm a Thai graphic designer living and working in Bangkok, Thailand. English is not my mother language so if you find mistakes in my posts, feel free to tell me. It's one of my purpose to have a blog anyway, to practice English :-)

I'm a freelancer working at home. I work mostly on book design, layout and book cover. It's not until a couple of years ago that I realized I wanted to work in illustration field too. So, I started a blog called 'In Search of My Style' doing just like the title said : searching for my own illustration style. It's kind of struggling year for that blog. But after posting on and off, I gradually learned what I wanted to draw. That blog name doesn't exist now because I think I have found my style already :-)

It's not the end of the journey though. I still have to learn more to improve my design and illustration skill. Having this blog helps me a lot, your kind comments just keep me going :-)

I think that would be all. It's already a long post. Don't want to make you bored.

And here comes the exciting part, the door prize (or a giveaway). What I have prepared for the lucky winner is these :





A set of this cute label design I'm working on. The lucky winner will receive:
• 12 merry round stickers as seen above (6 blue and 6 orange)
• 24 merry girl label stickers as seen above (12 blue and 12 orange)
All designed, printed and hand cut by me :-)

The drawing comes from my daily doodles. I never tried printing on colored sticker paper before. It's kind of a new experiment. At first I thought about my illustration prints but something practical might be more interesting :-) You can use these as address labels, in gift wrapping. Put it on cookie jar, small organizing boxes. Anything, just enjoy!

Want to play? The only rule is you have to be an active blogger whose blog I can visit and share comments. That's the purpose of this event: to meet new friends through blogging. Just leave me a comment here. Tell me anything you want. Make sure to leave me your contact email or blog link so that I can find you if you get lucky. The winner's name will be announced on February 17.

Thanks for coming. Looking forwards to know you more.

Have a merry day and good luck! :-D

***UPDATE***
Comment on this post is closed. The winner will be announced in a few minutes!

my sketchbook (plus some secrets :-)

No, I haven't forgotten my sketchbook yet. Although it is pretty slow, I'm always thinking about it :-) This week is a good (and busy) week. I have got five shop orders, one book layout and three book covers to manage. Plus two exciting things I have to take care.

One of them I cannot tell you yet because I'm not so sure about it at this moment. I think it could take months to be certain enough to tell the world (and it's possible that this thing will never happen too!) The other thing I think I can tell you as soon as tomorrow :-)

Too many secrets? Here's a hint for the latter: go and read this link. Browse around, enjoy and don't forget to come back here tomorrow!

Thanks for coming. Have a merry day :-D

February free desktop calendar :-)

Hope it's not too late for this February desktop calendar :-) I thought I would use other colors because this true red might look too strong for a desktop wallpaper. But other colors didn't look as charming as this red so I stick with it.

Come to think of it, it might be the right choice for this month, the month of Valentine, of course, and also of Chinese New Year Day, in which, red is the lucky color. So, now you have love, luck and wealth with this true red desktop calendar :-)

It's free for you to download. Just click on the links below:

1024x768

1680x1050

Talk about luck, I think I'm getting a habit of saying 'Wish me luck today' when I get up each morning. It doesn't always work, of course (just a wish anyway), but when it does, like today, I feel like saying it everyday.

What's my luck today? I sold 5 items from my shop, so excited! I have nice ideas for my book cover job and I could do 45-minute exercise (35 minute used to be my max.)

In all, it's a merry day :-)

How about you? What makes you feel merry today?

PS Thanks for all you comments about my time management post. I'm starting using the timer now, will tell you how it works.:-)

Sweet green beginning?

This week is a week of Chinese New Year Day. So...Happy Chinese New Year Day! I wish you all good luck, good health and wealth! :-D

These apples are among fruits we have for celebration. The color looks so fresh and 'green'. I guess I could say that it's the color of the new beginning, the color of Spring which I can tell some of you can't wait to meet after such heavy winter :-)

Thanks so much for your comments for my previous post. I'm still struggling with finding my balance. I thought it was my laziness that everything didn't seem to move. But after thinking about it more seriously, I found that I already tried hard to create things. My true problem is time management. I think if I can find my own strategy in managing time, my creative work, for both my work and my shop, should be much much better.

For this problem, I was suggested to use a timer. Set myself some specific time to create for my shop or to promote via twitter or FB each day. It could be 20-30 minutes or an hour that I have to really focus on my creativity and do nothing else. The trick is I have to stop immediately when the timer goes off. That way, I will be more eager to begin again in the following day.

This is not a new idea. I used the timer for a time when I had problems with my eyes. I set the time to remind me to get away from computer every hour to save my eyes. But I forgot to use it constantly :-( Need to make it a habit now!

And I think I need to schedule blog posts in advance too. So that I wouldn't feel guilty when I don't have new post!

How about you? How do you manage your time? I know some of you have full-time job and kids, I am always amazed to see those who can manage successfully with kids running around!

Thanks for coming, I promise to be more disciplined. Poke me if I'm not!:-D