I took a few minutes to work on a simple Christmas card design for our family–with a focus on showing off the babes, of course. Now let’s see if I actually work up the ambition to get them sent out before the holiday!

I’ve had inquiries about custom work from a couple of my best customers since I had Gwen, and I thought I should make a shop announcement: I’m not currently taking custom orders. Between family and work, my free time is limited, and I’m currently focused on WordPress theme design and development and getting my fat butt into some semblance of shape.

So I apologize, particularly to my regulars–ya’ll are awesome and I very much appreciate your continued support over the last few years. I’ll make another announcement when I’m accepting custom orders again.

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We welcomed miss Guinevere Charlotte, aka Gwen, on September 7th! We’re absolutely in love, and she’s keeping us very busy. Ellie is especially smitten with her new baby sister! I took a little time during Gwen’s nap to update our little family portrait.

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And some cute matching item labels/cards:

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What the heck have I been up to lately? Incubating a human being, that’s what!

We’re very excited to be adding a new member to the Doodles family. According to our last ultrasound, baby girl #2 will hopefully be making her debut sometime in late August. We were able to get one somewhat blurry profile shot to share… this little girl is very active (just like her big sister) and I have a feeling the next few years are going to be a wonderful whirlwind. Sisters! Oh my.

The shop is still running despite my absence here–I haven’t been very good about updating it, but orders are still being filled and I’m taking on a limited amount of custom design work, so don’t be shy if you’re in the market for a new shop banner or logo. I have a feeling things will be quieter around here until after baby joins us.

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(I got so caught up in the holiday that I completely forgot to post this earlier! Oh well. It’s still seasonally-appropriate, and better late than never!)

One of the great things about putting my work out there is when someone stumbles upon it seemingly at random and has an idea for a new and creative way to use it.  I was pleasantly surprised when Caron from Green Imaginations, a new printing company based in Portland, Oregon contacted me about creating some custom window clings from my snowflakes desktop wallpaper in exchange for a couple sets of the clings. I’m pretty picky about trades, but this was a no-brainer–I’d even been musing the other day about how my windows needed a little extra holiday pizzaz. I got the clings just before Christmas and immediately put them to work–and I love them! And I’m highly impressed by how well their equipment preserved the intricacy of the designs (my photos don’t do them justice.) Now I’m seriously considering creating a few sets of window cling doodles for different holidays and offering them in the shop next year. Thanks again, Caron!

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One thing I’m working on is filling up the Print-a-Doodles section of the shop with new goodies. One thing my daughter loves to do is draw and color, so I thought, why not create some printable coloring sheets for kids? These ones are seasonally appropriate, but I’ll be adding more options soon.  At only $1 for the set of 3, they’re inexpensive, and you can print as many as you like! Hold a coloring contest or keep the kids occupied while you’re making Christmas dinner. Season’s Greetings from Calobee Doodles!

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Hey, look! My Calobee Doodles website design won a free WordPress shirt from wpshirts.com for its creativity in design and use of WordPress. Pardon my geek-ness for a moment, but for those of you who love WordPress as much as I do, WPShirts is all about showing the love–literally. I will wear my new “Powered by WP” shirt with pride.

Speaking of the website, I decided it was time to swap over to the new website design for snow season. It’s beginning to look a lot like winter here! Brrr!

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Presenting December’s free holiday desktop wallpaper! As relatively new parents to a two-year-old, last year was the first year my husband and I really got to play “Santa” to our daughter. I can tell you right now, this Santa thinks living at the North Pole is overrated. If this Santa had a choice, she’d jet off to her winter home in the Carribean every January.

I’m just sayin’. Please enjoy!

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1. Create a new document in Illustrator. If you want your snowflakes to be white, it’s helpful to set a background color so you can see what you’re doing. I usually drag a quick rectangle shape to fit the document, set the fill to my color of choice, and lock it by selecting the rectangle and going to Object -> Lock -> Selection.

2. Draw the first “leg” of your snowflake by creating an elongated shape or pattern of some kind. I do this mostly using the line and circle tools, but you could experiment with any shape. This is the shape that will be repeated in a circle to make the snowflake.

3. Once you’re satisfied with your shape, click on the Rotate tool. Hold down the Option key on your keyboard and click on the bottom center of your snowflake’s first leg. This will bring up the Rotate dialog.

4. The angle of rotation should be set to a number that, when repeated, adds up to 360 degrees. I usually go with 30, 40, or 60. The lower the number, the more legs your snowflake will have.

5. Once you’ve set the degrees to rotate, hit the Copy button. You’ll see one repetition of your initial pattern appear… if you don’t like what you see, hit Ctrl+Z to undo and repeat steps 3 and 4 to try a different angle. In this case, I initially set it to 40 degrees but decided 60 would look better.

6. To finish off your snowflake, simply hit Ctrl+D to repeat the pattern until you complete a full circle. Voila, you have a snowflake!

7. You can play around with different angles and shapes to get the look you want. For smaller or more detailed snowflakes, you’ll probably want thinner lines. For larger snowflakes, thicker lines look best. It helps if you group your final snowflake (select all the pieces, right-click or Ctrl-click, and hit Group) so you don’t lose bits and pieces as you create more and move them around the page.

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