My little Draw Your Monster sale was a success! I’ve got 3 Monsters in the queue, two of which are already sketched up and waiting refinement. Once they’re done, after the coloring book comes out, I might revisit the idea, so if you were waiting to see how things turned out you’ll have a chance.

I also got some great advice today from Naomi at Ittybiz about my Be a Cartoon sales page, and have added a bunch of new people to my Cartoon portfolio page, so check it out! I’m thinking of doing a Cartoon sale for Mother’s Day — maybe including some free greeting cards or something, what do you all think?

March was a hard month for a lot of us, but it seems like (once those tax payment checks clear, anyway) April is starting to look up. The sunshine, despite all my efforts to keep it out of the apartment, is starting to cheer me up and bring in some much-needed energy. Not to mention secret burblings of site updates, possible joint offerings with other people, and maybe even something teleclass-ish.

How’s it going for all of you?

Everyone has Monsters.

They’re those voices in your head that whisper discouragement and negativity, those stucknesses and blocks and fears that keep us from moving forward. I’ve got a few of my own, and I bet you do, too.

The little guy on the left there is one of my Monsters — he just wants to be friends, but his big scary teeth can get in the way of safe snuggling. Still, having seen him out in the light, I know he doesn’t really mean any harm.

The brilliant Havi Brooks has an awesome-looking new product in the works: The Monster Manual and Coloring Book*. And I really, really want it! But it’s tax time and money is tight, so I’m doing a limited-edition offering to help fund my own Monster adventures:

Draw Your Monster

We’ve all got our Monsters, real and imaginary. Do you have lurking fears that you’d like to bring out into the light? Is your dog sometimes a wicked creature? Do you just really want a cartoon of a cute monster?

I’ve got you covered!

For $59, you, too, can have your very own Monster — I’ll even mail you the original, or a high-quality print if we end up going digital.

What I’ll need to get started:

• A snail mail address for your original monster to be mailed to you.
• To talk about your Monster! If you’ve already got a vision of your Monster, great! If not, we can email back & forth until we have a clear idea of your Monster’s form. Questions to start with:
  • Fuzzy? Lizardy? Bat-winged? Multi-eyed? Insectoid? Tentacley? Fog? Wall? Creeping Black Void?
  • Is your Monster growling, hiding, making puppy eyes? Sheltering, blocking, posing nonchalantly?
  • Color preferences?
• Generally speaking, I will decide the medium (ie, pen and ink, watercolor, whatever) based on the special needs of your Monster.

I’ve temporarily reopened commissions for these — if you’d like one, just buy my Be a Cartoon package and let me know you want a Monster instead.

*Not an affiliate link so there nyeah.

Dance of Shiva Cards

First, I’m excited to see a project that took me a long time and a lot of painstaking work finally get off the ground. Frank Mitchell made a set of Dance of Shiva reference cards, and he hired me to illustrate the 8 arm positions in 64 combinations. I also made the results press-ready for him, so all he had to do was approve the images and then sit back while I sent it all to press (and pay the bills, heh). There was a card back and box art, and while I haven’t seen them in person yet, I’m crazy excited.

Cartoons

It’s been a week of getting back to cartooning, and I finally finished up most of the pending projects I had.

Elizabeth Halt asked me to draw her and her gorgeous puppy, Atlas:

And then my friend Rey wanted to be immortalized as a Weeble:

And finally, I drew up one of my Monsters (a la Havi Brooks), to show that he’s really a friendly, wee chap that’s worried for me:

Beach Cottage

Finally, I’ve got a sneak peek for you at the header for Cottage Copy‘s new look, an original watercolor including the Cottage Copy Spaniel and Holly’s dream beach cottage:

(Click to see it in all its full-size glory)

Bridget and I are trading guest posts today — enjoy her unique insight!

I work as an intuitive. I have a very unique job. I look at my clients’ chakras and in doing so, I see metaphors about their lives. Each chakra, to me, looks like a little room, or a set on a stage.

The intuitive experience is strange. It’s like Salvador Dali and Frida Kahlo and Lewis Carroll got together and had a party.

In the chakras of my clients, I see swirling or dancing furniture. I see strange people. I see thorns. Broken Glass. Laughing Children. I see colors forming and reforming.

It’s my job to see it and bring it out in the open where it can be useful for people. We use this information to help the client transcend their current conflicts and move forward in their lives.

In intuitive work, we take what’s at the edge of consciousness and make it conscious. We make the metaphors that shape our lives visible.

I want my blog to use visual metaphor just as beautifully, or as interestingly as my clients’ chakras do. So I look to photos and illustrations that capture the feeling of odd, yet familiar.

For example, I was recently writing about working at jobs that don’t sustain you. I wrote a blog post called “What to Do If Your Job is Dead.” Originally, I wanted to find a chalk outline of a dead body. I thought it’d be good to show that you shouldn’t stay in a job that’s killing you, because all you’ll leave is a chalk outline.

I couldn’t find a picture that I liked, but I found this foot with a tag on it, and a sheet behind it, that at first glance looks like ominous clouds. Feet are funny, too. There’s some dark comedy to this shot. It’s memorable, dreamlike and yet, it makes a point. Put a tag on it, it’s done.

Another example: I did a series on the Inner Me. This is an idea where we can talk with our soul and our soul talks back. We can access the warm wisdom within us. I wanted somebody that looks like me to appear in these posts. Since the soul seems ethereal, a hard to pin down concept, I knew I wanted the opposite. I wanted something very warm and accessible.

Coincidentally, I had taken Amy up on her Cartoonify Yourself offer. She had made a cartoon of me with a ball of fire and awesome boots. I realized that I was looking at the inner me! So I used her in a series of posts. Now I use her to illustrate my daily soul notes, a little note from the inner me for my readers. She will come up from time to time as I play with this idea of the inner me.

The most important take-away from this approach to the visual in my blog, is that it is mostly done from the place of “no-thought”. I don’t have a calculating plan of how I want my blog to be. I just find images that speak to me with visual metaphors that personify the idea that I am getting across.

Bridget Pilloud is an intuitive guidance counselor, an intuition teacher and a facilitator of energetic healing. She also works with people and their pets. Her work can be found at http://www.bridgetpilloud.com and at http://www.petsaretalking.com. On Twitter, she’s @intuitivebridge.

At least, in an ideal world I’d certainly be able to post cartoons every week and be forced to find other days for actual content. 😉

I’ve finally gotten a chance to draw a chibi cartoon of a client, so now there’s examples of someone other than me in all 3 styles. This is Camille Reigle, who’s still putting her Etsy shop together, but I’ll be sure to send you over there when she’s got it ready. She knits awesome stuff (and is kind enough to make special non-wool things for me!)

And then we have the sort of thing I draw when I’m idle, and then make into a Valentine.

If you’d like to prevent more of this sort of thing in the future, feel free to volunteer to Be a Cartoon yourself! The price is going up March 1, so get it while it’s still cheap.

I’m Holly, and thanks to Amy, I am now a cartoon. I am also proud to call myself both a client and friend of Amy’s. So, while I could easily spend all day telling you how awesome Amy is, if you’re reading this, you probably know that already. So, what I’m going to talk about today is going to sound like one of those Alice in Wonderland riddles, but it’s really a simple concept: How is a cartoon like copywriting?

For some background, I’m a copywriter. In particular, I’m a copywriter who specializes in capturing voices. Clients come to me with a sales page, and then a process starts. I listen to them talk, I read their material, and I find out as much about them as I possibly can. All so I can write the wordy equivalent of one of Amy’s cartoons. Which is quite honestly why I wanted a cartoon for my website. Her cartoons capture people in the same spirit as my copy does.

But rather than sound like an ad, I really want to talk about how cartoons and copy are similar, and can serve the same purpose on a website. It’s a whole different way to express yourself on your site, and equally valuable and interesting. Cartoons, by nature, reflect the truth of a person. Cartoons, by nature, are also exaggerated for effect. People are larger, louder, and more colorful in a cartoon. It’s still them, but maybe not the person you’d meet in a business setting, or at the park on a weekend. But that’s great, because if you’re a business, part of the key to making money is being yourself. Not just in a quiet way, but in a loud, colorful and powerful way.

Good marketing copy does the same thing. It captures the essence of you, and then exaggerates it in a way that draws people in, and shows off your personality loudly in the best possible light. Like a cartoon, this doesn’t always equate to loud and obnoxious writing. The true sell is in the details. On my cartoon, it’s the little sweater on my dog that has a royal crest, because he’s named after the canine knight from the movie Labyrinth. Someone is going to see that on my site and know what kind of person I am, just from that little detail. In the amazingly fun world of the internet, I would bet real money that someone would make a copywriting inquiry on that detail alone. That wasn’t something I planned or requested: it was something Amy added from her knowledge of me, and of my love for muppet movies and my dog.

In an ideal world, that’s what great writing does too. It captures the small details that make up who you are, and presents them in an intriguing and marketable way. It’s not about neon orange and green, or about large bold text with yellow highlighter. When it comes down to it, good marketing, in whatever form is always about people.

That awful overused saying that a picture is worth a thousand words? Sometimes, in marketing, it’s really true. And sometimes, you need the words too, but they need to paint their own picture; one that is equally real, and equally cartoony.

Holly is the founder and chief pirate queen of Cottage Copy, along with her canine co-manager, Sir Didymus. You can find her on twitter as @copygeniusgirl, and on her blog.

First off, congrats to CaZ (@candysbytes) for winning the Tiny Painting (and answering her email)! These take a bit longer than the cartoons, but I’ll be sure to post here when it’s done.

Second, we have a pair of cartoons. First up is Avonelle Lovhaug (@AvonelleL), who wanted to see herself with a sassy Code Poet t-shirt and her tablet PC:

And then Holly Jackson (@copygeniusgirl) let me draw her up “weeble style” with her beloved puppy, Didy:

I’ve had a ton of fun doing these, though they do seem to take longer than I originally thought, so if you want one, get yours soon! I’ll be upping the price on March 1 (once the awesome art sale is over).

Not Dead Yet Studios wants to help out.

I went freelance in January of 1998, so in a way my ittybiz is firmly in its tweens. Antemortem Arts, however, is only a few months old and just starting to learn to walk. So, to give the art site a boost, I’m doing two things:

• Buy any art piece off of AntemortemArts.com or my Etsy shop for at least $100, and I’ll make you into a cartoon for free (including the original, that’s a $45 value). Multiple pieces that add up to $100 will also get the cartoon — just make sure you let me know that’s your intention.
• For every sale I make, I’ll donate $10 to Doctors Without Borders (or a charity of your choice) to help with the crisis in Haiti. If I make $1000 or more in sales, that’ll go up to $20 a sale or $100 total, whichever is bigger.

The cool thing about this sale is that it includes pretty much everything the Antemortem site. Painting, prints, sculptures, you name it. The world is your oyster. And if you don’t find anything that really speaks to you, this offer is also good on commissions! You can commission paintings in several sizes and price ranges, all custom made to reflect your personal passions — and as long as you make the deposit before the deadline, it counts.

Sometimes you really need the perfect gift, but you can’t seem to find it. Well, I’m good at gift giving! I can help you take the stress off your plate and find a great gift for someone important in your life. (I won’t mention That Holiday, as it is scary and can cause panic, but this can help you with that, too).

Now, like anything in this world, there is always fine print. Orders made after February 5th may not arrive by the Big Holiday, as I am human and drawing a cartoon of your lovely self (or the person you love) takes time. I’m going away that weekend so I won’t be available to ship anything ordered after Wednesday the 10th, but the sale will run all the way through the holiday — President’s Day on Monday, February 15th, of course. (What, you thought I meant a different holiday?)

Just remember, commissions require a collaborative process, and while they count toward the offer they definitely will not be ready by the Big Day. So take advantage of the sale, but make sure you plan ahead.

Got questions, comments, or want me to help you pick out the perfect gift? Drop me a line and I’ll get back to you!

PS – if you’re one of my recent Be a Cartoon clients, never fear! I’ll refund $45 of any purchase you make that qualifies. Or draw your dog. Whichever.

I haven’t yet heard back from my Tiny Painting winner (check your spam folders!), so I’m going to delay that announcement for a few more.

Until then, we have — Cartoons!

First, there’s the official Contest Winner, Diane Stokes! She’s @DSinAZ on Twitter, and she’s already splashed her new face all over the place, awesome!

And then, the wonderful Bridget Pilloud (@intuitivebridge on Twitter) decided to buy a cartoon of herself, which was awesome. I had great fun designing her Chakralicious fireball, not to mention giving her designer knockoff boots.

I’m working on a third one for another paying customer (yay!), plus I got to do a great custom Moleskine of Anais Nin for Holly (@copygeniusgirl), as well as an elephantalicious custom journal for her. Sharpie Marker ftw.