Your Digital World: a new venture for Create My World Designs

As I promised last week, I have some news to share about a new (or another new) direction for Create My World Designs. I have opened yet another etsy store (now I have 3), where I will be selling computer graphics. The available items will range from high resolution, printable scrapbooking paper, cards and postcards, digistamps, custom branding and more. Here's a peek at my new store logo:

I'm not sure if I've ever mentioned here on the blog my previous life of working outside the home. I was formerly a designer for a paper printing company. I designed and manipulated patterns on the computer and I prepared the designs by separating them into stages for the process of printing. These patterns were used in the laminate industry. While I did enjoy the creative aspects of my job, there were many factors that went into my decision to leave, which I'll not go into here.

While I was somewhat versed in photoshop through that former self, my main task of computer graphic design back then was carried out on a highly specialized platform developed by Barco Graphics, so my photoshop skills were mostly self-taught in aide of transferring file formats for printing on our high res printer. After leaving that job to be a full time wife and part-time crafter, I continued playing around with photoshop on my personal computer, but never really went as far as taking a class or even perusing a learner's manual. I knew enough to get by, with altering some photos here and there, and creating basic graphics for personal use. Fast forward to about a year or 2 ago, my husband decided to take a photoshop class to allow him to integrate more technology into his job. After he was finished with the class, he asked me to donate the workbook to our local Re-useit store; I decided instead to keep the book and do a self-guided study of the textbook, to see if I could expand upon my own skills. Doing so reinforced my love of creating on the computer and really honed my abilities. I've since tackled a bit of Illustrator, self guided as well, to bring my hand drawn sketches to computer perfection by vectorizing the sketched lines. Here's an example; I had an idea to create a valentine card with the saying, "you're the bee's knees". So, I sketched out this bee on the left, and the bee on the right is how he looked after I turned him into a vector image in Illustrator (excuse the business watermark - there for my copyright protection of this original image):

I really need to find myself a textbook on Illustrator so I can put all of the tools of this program to work for me... but even with a quick lesson from an internet video, I'm pretty proud of what I can do with Illustrator already! ;)

It was about a month after I had made the decision to start selling computer designed graphics and after I began to play in Illustrator, when one of my online friends, fellow jewelry designer and polymer clayer Tammy Adams of Paisley Lizard, posted a question on Facebook asking if anyone knew the term for an image that is made up by the letters of a word. I had made one of those way back in Jr. High school, and made another one in college, but I didn't remember if there was a proper term for it, so I posted my response to her question. Tammy contacted me and asked if I would be willing to take on the task of creating a logo for a new etsy shop which she was opening to sell her whimsical line of jewelry. Tammy wanted a typographic illustration (from one of Tammy's friends we discovered the proper term), of a frog that was created by the word cactus. It seemed serendipitous, having just decided to birth a graphic design shop, plus I welcomed the practice, so I decided to tackle Tammy's project. 

I began with a couple of sketches of frog shapes and tried to work out how the letters would fit into the body of the frog. Of the 2 best sketch options, Tammy decided that she liked the shape of the frog in this sketch on the left, which I vectorized to what you see on the right:

After many versions, I finally struck upon a combination of colors, textures and font with which Tammy was thrilled, and so the new logo for Cactus Frog was born:

So, now you know the news that I've been working to unveil in the past month! I do have an exciting piece of preview news to add about my polymer world: I was also pleased to finish, last month, a tutorial article that I'm thrilled to announce will be published in a favorite polymer periodical! (more news to come, when the publishing is complete, probably end of this month/begging of next)! I'm so excited about that news, I had to post a teaser to it here! ;) 

In case you're wondering about my other shops, the Create My World etsy shop will always be designated to my first love (polymer) OneMoreUse will always be designated to upcycled materials creations and my very neglected Artfire shop is still open with a small sampling of older pieces (I really need to commit to either fully stocking it or letting it go... decisions, decisions). And now instant downloadable, high resolution printable, digital graphics can be found at Your Digital World on etsy. I've finally just opened the new digital shop this weekend, and have started stocking the store. There are some scrapbooking paper patterns available, a couple postcards and my heart bumble bee digistamp. I'm trying to create new items every couple days and hope to have a decent showing within a month. For now, won't you check out my new shop and give it some love! :) I'd appreciate some favorites from those who have etsy accounts. Suggestions are welcome too, if you have ideas of items you'd like to see me create... and custom orders (like Tammy's cactus frog above, and personalized invitations, announcements and greeting cards) are welcome to! So, go check it out at www.yourdigitalworld.etsy.com or use the tabs above (which now direct you to each designated store! - just changed that tonight!)

Oh, and please check out Tammy Adam's post about the birth of Cactus Frog and her logo here. While you're there, take a moment to browse the wonderful things she creates with art beads and polymer! 

So, what do you think? I'd love to hear your thoughts in the comments below!