MAKE YOURSELF COZY Pre-Order!

I'm so excited to share the news with you! 🎉 My second book, Make Yourself Cozy: A Guide for Practicing Self-Care is now available for pre-order! Click here to find the links for ordering online. You can check with your local bookstore too!

Make Yourself Cozy is a soothing guide with heartwarming illustrations that promote the importance of “me-time” and its necessity in self-care. Drawing inspiration from the Danish concept of “Hygge,” this book encourages all of us to seek well-being through slowing down, creating an atmosphere of coziness, and taking genuine pleasure in the ordinary.

The origin for Make Yourself Cozy was inspired by my own experience with having anxiety and the tendency to greatly overthink everything. Do you ever feel like your mind can be your best friend and worst enemy at the same time? Me too. Over the last few years I've learned to put a priority on practicing self-care to help combat my overactive brain and the resulting anxiety that comes with it. This illustrated guide was developed from tips that I have found useful in my own life that will hopefully become a part of your self-care routine too.

Make Yourself Cozy will officially be released on October 2, 2018 and be available everywhere books are sold. Stay tuned for more sneak peeks soon!

Best Foods of Summer

Summer food is here and I am in heaven. I love eating food all year long, but this time of year is especially good 🍅. As I was enjoying some of my favorites recently, I decided I’d like to draw them all and share them with you because maybe you love food as much as me. 

First up are tomato sandwiches, something I could eat every single day. White bread, mayonnaise, and juicy ripe tomatoes from the garden. Sometimes I make it fancy by adding super garlic-y homemade kale pesto and toasting the bread beforehand. 

Are you a fan, too? 🍞

Below is a time-lapse progress video of the illustration. I drew this in the Procreate iPad app and the time-lapse video feature is one of my favorites. I think it's so mesmerizing to watch the process of how drawings are created.

Birthday Treats

Did you know you can get special birthday coupons if you sign up for my newsletter?

In addition to following my blog, you can also subscribe to my newsletter! If you haven't already, you can sign up for that here: http://eepurl.com/ds9tvv. Make sure to include the month and day of your birthday! My newsletter is a great way to get sneak peeks of new products I'll be releasing soon, special discounts and coupons for my Etsy shop, and updates about local events I'll be attending. 🌼

If you already are subscribed to that and want to get in on the birthday fun but haven't included your birthday information yet, let me know and I'll make sure to update it for you!

Coloring Tutorials with Posh Coloring Studio

I recently had the exciting experience of creating coloring video tutorials with Posh Coloring Studio, an online community and membership program for coloring book enthusiasts.

As a member of Posh Coloring Studio, you choose your own coloring adventure by skipping the books and hand selecting the exact coloring pages you want. As a fan of coloring books myself, I think this is a perfect way to get unlimited access to a highly curated collection of designs from awesome artists right at your fingertips. In addition to over 1,000 coloring pages to choose from (including pages from my coloring book Don't Worry, Eat Cake), the online studio also features coloring tips, tricks, and techniques, as well as the option to create coloring pages from your own photos. 

One of my tutorials is a video about coloring with Copic markers. If you aren't already familiar with those, they are alcohol-based markers that are awesome for blending and coloring. They are a little intimidating to use at first, but once you learn some of the basics about their labeling system and the process of how the markers work, anyone can have fun with them! Here is the video where I cover exactly that:

My other tutorial is a video about adding cool textures to your coloring pages with colored pencils. It's exclusively for Posh Coloring Studio members though, so be sure to sign up here to get special access to it!

Here are a few behind-the-scenes shots of the shoot:

The video was shot by SouthSixty and produced by SPACEMOB Studio. It was really awesome to work with these guys, and they made the whole process so fun and comfortable!

My initial reaction to the proposal of doing these tutorial videos was to say no because I always feel incredibly awkward and nervous, and also because I've never done it before, so it sounded terrifying! But I'm happy to report that it was actually very exciting and not that scary! :) I often have to take a step back before answering in situations like this and figure out if I don't want to do it because it feels wrong somehow, or if it's because I'm simply scared. The latter is when I should say yes, because often in the end those are the most exhilarating experiences!

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Whether you want to relax, inspire the artist in you, or simply have fun, you'll find endless possibilities with the Posh Coloring Studio! Become a member here. 

Mother's Day Cards

Mother's Day is just around the corner. Take a peek below at the new cards I released this year in my shop. 

All cards are available in my Etsy shop here. If you are local, you can find these at Riverow Bookshop in Owego and Amuse: Modern Cottage Industry in Ithaca.

Book update!

Woo hoo! This weekend I submitted all final files to my editor for my second book, MAKE YOURSELF COZY.

This fall and winter I was a little quiet on social media (and not very social in real life either) because I was hunkered down working on this nearly every day until bedtime. Big projects like this are exhausting I think, but when it's a dream project, it is entirely worth it. I started this book early last year, so it is super exciting to see it come together after so many months of working on it. I am so thrilled with how it turned out, and I can't wait to share it with you and the rest of the world when it's published this fall with Andrews McMeel! Stay tuned for more sneak peeks over the next few months!