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