MerryDay Holiday Collection and a big sale is here :D

My newest stationery design collection is here! The theme is merry holiday. November is coming up and also the happy season of Christmas and New Year. I initially designed this for Make Art That Sells part B first week assignment of holiday card. Then I decided to make a whole collection for my shop. The idea started from Christmas ornaments and the rest just came to me. I had so much fun creating this design set :D

You can look at each item's details in holiday/christmas section in my MerryDay shop. I hope you enjoy this bright and cheerful collection. It's something that I'm proud of :) Don't forget to look around the shop and see if there's anything you would love to have. It's special occasion and I'm having big shop sale now until November 25, 2013! Remember to use the discount code : MERRYHOLIDAY13 when check out. If you could spread the word, I would be very grateful :)

Now some of you may wonder how I have been after last post about my creative struggle. I actually got a message from a facebook friend. She's following my Page and she wondered why I had been so quiet. I was so touched and thankful that someone would care for me and my work enough to stop by and leave a message. It's one of the things that help me go through the struggle, which I think will be a helpful story to talk about.

Not today though ;) Now I just want you to go and take a look at my shop and enjoy! :D

PS. Please note that I create and ship everything from my hometown in Bangkok, Thailand. It will take about 1-3 weeks for international shipping from Thailand. You may want to order early to make it in time before Christmas :)

Remember the 10% discount code : MERRYHOLIDAY13 !

Behind the Lines and Colors : My Peace illustration, personalized bookplate and notebook

My merry bookplate design with illustration originally from one of my 365 days I draw sketches. The topic is PEACE.

What is peaceful to you? To me, peaceful means when I am at home with book or pencil and sketchbook in hand. When I take evening walks with my mom around my dad's garden and sit down on soft green grass when mom needs to rest. When we listen to the wind and little birds chirping in early mornings. When I do yoga to start the day and when I take my eyes from book I'm reading for a while to listen to quietness of night time.

I have been thinking about pattern in my art, meaning what I mostly have in my pieces. I guess swirly flowers may be that pattern. For this illustration, I drew the flowers first and imagined my little girl spending her time alone (with her little bear) in a tiny rowboat floating in a little pond after the rain. A book in her hand, a greeting from the butterfly and a glimpse of rainbow up in the sky. In her peace, my imaginary peace :)



When I took this sketch to put it into design, I decided not to add anything more, just change the colors to make overall picture brighter and more refreshing. I had dark green for flower stems first but liked this purplish blue better. I hope you like it too :)

This illustration is for sale on my MerryDay Etsy shop in various kind of product-- a set of personalized bookplates as well as One and Only Limited Edition MerryDay Notebook and also art print to brighten up your place.



I have just realized that having this shop and talking about my work process for each piece on this blog really help me in many ways. It keeps me on my track and when I look back and think of what I thought and did on each artwork, it seems that I see something new. I just hope I can carry it along and apply it to my next pieces :)

Thank you for coming and if you have just happened to be here, you can learn more about me with my post of the history of MerryDay here and other work process posts in Behind the Lines and Colors category :)

Blog Parade and the history of MerryDay

Today is Blog Parade day! It's a blog hop project initiated by Linda Tieu. The idea is for us, Make Art That Sells class fellow students, to get together and post on our blogs on the same day. Then we link to each other and kind of parade through all of them.  I get to know more people and you will get to know more wonderful artists too :D

Since, there will be new people coming here, I think it's appropriate to let them and you, my readers, learn more about me and my work. I remember writing the history of my drawings years ago. The post is about my drawing style development.  It was in year 2009 and I ended the post saying that I didn't feel like I found my obvious style yet. Now is 2013, after practicing drawing and learning, I think I have reached what I can call my own style finally. This post is about how I come to be MerryDay today.

My very first collection of MerryDay design.

So, after I wrote the the history of my drawings, I decided to open my Etsy shop a few months later,  in January 2010.  The move is a combination of my cleverness and stupidity. The clever part is that I had thought about opening a shop since 2007 but never got enough confidence to do it. To finally start something even if you were not ready is what I have been grateful for because everything needs a beginning. If I hadn't opened the shop, my art would never have got a chance to be as it is today. The stupid part is that I didn't devote enough time to create new designs and promote them. I sold a few items and decided to put the shop on hold.


MerryDay collection in 2010

But it's always on my mind, I have a feeling that if I really put my heart on it, the shop should work. During the time I spent my time drawing and updating my work process on my facebook page. The page was set up to promote the shop at first but it gains followers by my daily drawings and especially my 365 days I draw project.


This is the 100th drawing of my 365 days I draw project. I have managed to 130 drawings so far. You can look at the whole collection on this flickr set


Having MerryDay Page and doing 365 days I draw are second best things I have done. I got a lot of encouragement from my page followers and I develop ways of thinking and drawing style I really enjoy through 365 days I draw. Then, from that project, I created a new drawing collection, made them into cards and stationery design and opened my etsy shop again.


MerryDay shop reopened in April 2013


My current drawing style. MerryDay Notebook, My Peace. Also available as personalized bookplates

So, this is my MerryDay story. I'm still learning and improving my design and my shop. They say that art style constantly changes as you grow. I don't know how my work will look like next year or years to come but right now I'm enjoying my work and always feeling happy with my order packaging time :D


Thanks for coming. Now that you have learn more about me, you may want to know more and be inspired by new artist?

Just hop over to my friend, Molly blog, won't you? :

Have a merry day!

Behind the Lines and Colors : Let me tell you the story of my heart mini card

Busy time again, with work and classes. I thought of writing some posts since Monday but when I had time to write, I was just too tired. It's not good to write something when you cannot concentrate, especially in English which is not my native language.

Yesterday I got a message from Coralie, my collaborative art project friend, From Paris to Bangkok. She wondered why I was kind of quiet around here. It suddenly occurred to me that I'm not writing this blog just for myself. One of my facebook followers once told me that she enjoyed following my work process updates. She said that it inspired her to do her own art. I think that is the best compliment :) I guess that is the same with my blog. I get inspired from so many blogs that I follow. Maybe, readers from somewhere out there might be inspired by my posts too? Whether this is true or not, I will keep it in mind and will try to write as regularly as I can :)

Enough for my rambling, Today's Behind the Lines and Colors is my most favorite MerryDay mini love card, Let Me Tell You the Story of My Heart. Again, I developed this card from one of my 365 days I draw project. The topic is TALK.



Not sure how I got the idea of tin can phone. Maybe from some children's book I browsed while I thought about this word. I like tin can phone. It represents many things, childhood, connection, friendship, love and relationship. It also says a lot on how we talk in these modern days, how we email, send text messages and chat on Line. I'm not opposed to such technology. They are useful and convenient tools but I'm sure there are times that some of you might miss talking or sending thoughts in your own voice or hand writing :)

So, when I worked on my Love is... collection, I immediately thought of this drawing. The drawing was already lovely. I really liked how the line connected the two cans spelled out into words. But since Love was the main concept, I should have more beautiful wording for the card. Remember your period of falling in love? You talk long hours with your love even though you are not that naturally talkative just because you want to hear his or her voice? The topics can be as silly as why he or she is attracted to you and you to him(or her). This comes my wording of 'Let me tell you the story of my heart'. I tried to think of something else but the wording was just stuck in my mind :)

Now the drawing is ready, the words are perfect. Next is how I can put the whole image in a card. The problem of this design is the same as of Mr. Giraffe and Merry Girl mini love card. The drawing is horizontal and long. If I put it in standard 6x4 inch card, it would be too small and you couldn't see the details. I had to work with a better paper format. The idea of hidden design came when I thought of the phone line that could be pulled out.

So, I designed the card folding in a way that you see the boy and the girl with cute paper cup phone first (the top picture)



Then open it and you will see the hidden big pale pink heart shape inside.



Unfold it completely and you have the sweet message of 'Let me tell you the story of my heart' with a lined space for you to fill in your own story :)

I'm really happy with this card design. It went through some thoughts and imagination. Hope you will love it too.  The card is available for sale on my Etsy shop, you can look at the details here :

MerryDay mini love card - Boy Girl Talking Love through Tin Can Phone

If you enjoy reading my behind the scene, you can read more of other design under the category of Behind the Lines and Colors. Coralie and I also have updates for our art project, From Paris to Bangkok. I will post about it soon :) or you can just hop to Coralie's site to see the sneak peek! :D

Thanks for coming. Have a merry day :)

Behind the Lines and Colors : Sweet Candies MerryDay Notebook

What do you usually draw or doodle in your spare time? I guess most of you draw flowers. I do too. It's like a simple common theme. Another most favorite topic I love to draw is sweet things : cake, donut, cupcake and specially sweet candies.

I love drawing candies. Mostly because they have a sense of happiness and merriment. You can feel happy just looking at different interesting shapes, bright and beautiful colors and especially cute and fun designed wrappers.

Above is my MerryDay's Notebook : Sweet Candies. The cover design is developed from my candies doodles, one of them done for Sketchbook Project 2011. The pink and black spread below.



I like playing with the wrappers' details, adding patterns, cute little faces and doing lettering. I thought I would design the notebook cover just like above close-up candies. But I found that the big, close-up drawings didn't go with other designs in my notebook collection, which has clean and airy feeling.

So, I made everything smaller, spread them out making it more like a pattern. I liked the overall look but was afraid that they would look too small and would not stand out. But when I tried printing it out, I really loved it!

I normally print my work at home using Epson Inkjet (affordable with great printing results). But I cannot make notebooks by myself. I sent the files to a printing service. The designs were printed digitally on nice, slightly textured white paper with blank, unlined paper sheets inside. They turned out so lovely that I almost wanted to keep them for myself :D



I also played with the back of the notebook. You can say that it's me drawing a candy here :)

The notebook is my MerryDay limited edition. It's for sale on my Etsy, just click on the link if you are interested to see more details :

MerryDay's notebook : Sweet Candies

You can also take a look at other notebook designs in the collection here :

MerryDay's notebooks limited collection

I hope you like my behind the scene here. I'm currently working on my new drawing collection, the Secret Garden. Each artwork has its own story and I will try my best to record it and post it here when it is launched.

Thanks so much for coming. Have a merry day :)

Behind the Lines and Colors : Will you be my honey bear?

One of MerryDay's card that I love. This design is originally one of my 365 days I draw challenge. The topic is SMITTEN. Not sure what came to my mind first, drawing a bear or the caption 'Will you be my honey bear?"



I really struggled with drawing a bear here. As you can see the bear's shape looks so strange. It looks funny and reminds me of some big fat grilled turkey :( The drawing was done with marker and I could not fix it so I just left it as is. I really like the girl loving gesture though and the word 'honey bear' is kind of cute. Then, when I decided to make this drawing into a card, I kept overall idea and fixed two things : redrawing the bear (of course!) and replacing the 'o' in the word 'honey' with a little honey pot to add some dimension :)

Now, instead of the grilled turkey, I think of Winnie the pooh with his honey pot, the beloved little bear who always makes me smile :) I guess my ultimate goal in this career may be that when people look at my work, they will smile and be happy just like Pooh does to me :)

The card is available for sale on my Etsy shop here :

MerryDay's Will You Be My Honey Bear Love Card

You can read more of my work process for each artwork under the category of Behind the Lines and Colors. If you would like to learn more about MerryDay, I update my MerryDay facebook Page almost daily. The page has reached 2,500 likes today, I think I'm going to do a giveaway soon ;)

Behind the Lines and Colors : Mr. Giraffe and the Merry Girl mini love card

I have noticed lately that my 'I'll be with you, no matter how far' mini card gets more favorite on Etsy and I have already shipped out some of them to new customers. This really heartens my spirit as, although I have been working on my Etsy for a couple of years already, I'm still really a newbie in selling my art.

I am especially excited with this card sales because it means that my idea behind the design is working.



This drawing of little Merry girl having a date with Mr. Giraffe is one of my Love is... drawing collection which focuses on animals, something that I needed to practice drawing. The idea was to simply practice drawing a giraffe at first and then I wanted to have something to play with the height of the animal.  Then I thought of the ladder and the girl climbing up to kiss the giraffe. The idea was similar to what I had drawn for my 365 days I draw project here.



So, I put a different story to this design. I made up a scene of Merry Girl having a glass of soda pop with her date, Mr. Giraffe. How could she be with her tall boyfriend? She needed a ladder so I drew one. Then the design still looked too blank. How about some lettering? This was when the concept of long distance relationship popped in my head. I thought of the phase 'no matter how far' and tried different fonts and ended up hand lettering it myself. I incorporated the lettering to the ladder making it as one of the ladder's steps. The black cat and the '...or how hard' was then added to make it cuter. I thought I finished.

But not yet. The illustration was in portrait format which would look too small in a standard 4x6 greeting card. Since I printed all cards by myself using a nice Epson ink jet, I had to figure how to make things fit in A4 paper sheet. I thought of long card 4 by 11 inches but the image looked awkward and didn't really fit in. Different folding might be key. I tried cutting A4 sheet in half and folding it down in accordion way. It looked nice but I didn't want to have too many folding creases on my image. So I moved the image to the lower part of the paper and added the final touch of 'I'll be with you' in the blue bubble to complete the story of long distance relationship :)

I really enjoyed the creative juice that flowing during the process. It really gave myself more confidence when I launched it out on facebook and got good feedbacks on this piece. It also made me realize that the design format, the size and shape of paper were also important in making a successful work.

Hope you enjoy my work process. This card is available on my MerryDay shop. You can look at the details of this card here :

Mini love card - I'll be with you no matter how far

Etsy Treasury : Smile, Live a Cozy and Happy Life !

I have not made Etsy Treasury list for months. It's really a great way to help promote sellers with beautiful products and pictures. For me, I find that while browsing all those beautiful items, my eyes are trained to look and learn how this or that image attracts me, how teal can look so great on brown wooden background or how putting an item in surprising context will make it more charming. It's just a matter of observation, which I have just learned.

I always love the combination of bright orange and peaceful blue. You can take a look of this Treasury here. If you like what you see, please share and support these hard workers :)

Have a bright orange and beautiful blue day, will you?

My MerryDay shop is reopened today, please wait for my big announcement :)

My MerryDay shop is reopened today finally! :)

I'm not shouting it out loud yet because I need to add some more items to the shop. I want to have enough items for those who take their time to visit my shop to browse through. I think I'm going to make an official shop reopening announcement soon after that.

I'm excited about this reopening but my experience from the past tells me not to expect sales right away. This craft business takes time and it mainly depends on my hard working and determination to make it happen. This reopening is my step one. Step two is to create more art and that art must be unique and wonderful enough to sell itself. I think that is very challenging to do. I feel so enthusiastic and energized already :D

There are tons of things to learn and while my shop is in baby step, I don't mind learning along the way. Because I think I have succeeded in my first step already. That is to start doing it. :)

The official reopening announcement will be within this week. Next week I'm going to start creating my new drawing collection!

PS. In case you are curious, you can take a peek at my shop here >> http://www.etsy.com/shop/MerryDay

Fear revisited and my etsy about page

After a lot of thinking, fussing, preparing and thinking again (too much), I finally went back to my etsy shop which had been put on hold for about six months. I walked (virtually) around my shop thinking which part I would adjust, which items I would maintain. I had already did an adjustment on shop banner (the girl with the balloons really enchanted me). Changed my profile and added the shop about page. I made sure that all the billing and credit card details were in check and then suddenly I was afraid.

It's just like that. Fears can come to you at any time. I was fearful what if something wrong with my account, there might be some bugs on my Paypal, my items photos might not be good enough. Maybe I cannot interact with my future customers properly, what about shipping problems and so on.

Sometimes I really hate my imagination...

But I know in my heart that I need to do this. I MUST make it happen! Then I thought of a very good quote I got from Creative Courage e-class. It says :

Sit down and take action. The only way you can overcome fears is through action.

So, I did. I sat down and began drafting my items' descriptions.

The shop is not open yet but if you are interested you can view my about page here >> http://www.etsy.com/shop/MerryDay/about/

I really like the photo slides section. Etsy has just added this feature to their system. I think it's really a great way to tell the story of shop owner. I hope you like it too and I would be very grateful if you could give feedback about this page.

Thank you for coming. Have a merry day!

Pavinee

MerryDay's Christmas design set

So, It's December already. The month of celebration, the month of thinking about the past and planning for the future. It seems to me though that December is actually a pause period for working. Everybody is busy thinking about parties, gifts and family reunion. I especially love the cool breeze in the morning and the sky looks clearer and more beautiful than in other seasons :)

And good weather really affects my mood for art :D Above is a gift card designed for MerryDay's Christmas card set. The illustration is actually a blown-up version of my Christmas Girl's hat which I drew last year.


Last year I did this girl as an e-card and postcards for my friends, didn't make it for sale but this year I'm still in love with her, so how about making her a small gift card ? and since I cannot find small envelope, I also make its envelope by hand with kraft paper :)


I love making things in set, making Christmas Girl gift tags seems like a good idea :) I love the red wine and pumpkin orange ribbon, don't you?


As if it's not enough... sometimes designing stationery set is like a game for me, I can keep on thinking about it, make it big, make it grow... Here another tag design, Red M and snowman Christmas gift tags :) Just love the red Christmas color! My friend told me that the letter M looked cute and reminded her of cookies. it's just like a compliment somehow :D

   All of these Christmas items are available now on  my shop. I enjoy making this design set. Hope you love them too!

Yellow Swirl on White or Brown

This little flower design comes from one of my doodles a year or so ago. Before opening my shop on Etsy, I had a hard time finding my own style. It took me some time to finally learn that I love drawing curve lines, something whimsical and swirly like this. I usually let my mind blank first when I put the tip of pencil on paper. Then just let the lines flow. Sometimes it ends up in something nonsense and no good for design. Sometimes the lines turn out very nice and I begin to think of next steps.

There are some times too that the original sketches in pencil which look really cool at first turn out very lame in final production. It depends...

As for this swirly flower, I printed the illustration on white paper first. It looked nice just as I expected. Then I wondered how it would look on brown paper, so I tried. Some says the one on white pops out more than the one on brown.

As the creator, I have to say I like them both. What do you think? Do you like this design on white or brown?

You can find these mini letter sets on my Etsy shop here:

Yellow Swirl Flower White mini letter set

Yellow Swirl Flower Brown mini letter set

Introducing the brown series mini letter sets

So, I have been in 'no-mood-for-blogging' period again. I haven't been too far from my computer though. I think I could say that my time has been well spent creating some new items for my shop.

Above is one of my mini letter sets I just listed. I also would like to call it 'the brown series':-) The illustration may look familiar. It's one of my Sketchbook Project pages I did last year. I had always wanted to make something out of it. First I thought of a big print, then postcard design. They didn't seem special enough for me. I wanted to print the illustration (I retraced and colored the lines in Adobe Illustrator program) on brown paper. But the paper stock that I have is too thin for card design. So, I thought of notepad and letter set. By that time, my sister bought me a round paper shaper and I found cute set of mini envelopes. They are just perfect for making mini letter sets :-).




The feedbacks I got for the first brown mini letter set: fleur was pretty nice. So I enjoyed making more. Here are what I have so far for the brown series. You can find them all on my shop

FruityCute Girl and inspired doodles

I have two things to show you today. First is my most favorite character, FruityCute Girl :-D. The design is one of the first drawings I did when I started my Etsy shop. The very first version of this girl looks very different. Her face was fat and she didn't smile prettily as the latest version does. It's the same drawing but just a bit of line adjustment can make the two girls look so different. :-)

You can find my FruityCute Girl notepads on my shop now.

Second is my inspired doodles! Here are my doodles for the topic of 'library' and 'sunshine'. Click on the image to see the larger version:



I like the idea of mobile library although I have never seen one :-)



I have always wanted to publish my own book, written, illustrated and designed by me. I guess I have to start writing a complete manuscript first!



Lollipop looks like sunshine and it makes you smile, doesn't it?

The Sunshine girl on the right page is a character I would like to be. She is always positive, energetic and she can be happy even in cloudy days :-D

Hope you enjoy my post. Have a merry, sunshine day!