Hearts and Laserbeams

Or it feels like it, anyways! Between getting to baby classes and finishing up projects before going on maternity leave, it seems I’ve fallen a little behind in my updates for you fine folks.

Last night I finished one of my last projects that needs to be done before leave happens! I was commissioned to create a custom 3D wedding cake topper featuring my robots done up with details to reflect the bride and groom, and it turned out really cute! I got to bust open my stash of vintage 50s plastic flower beads for the headpiece on the bride, and all of the 3D elements came together better than I could have imagined. Click on the pic to see more images of this cake topper, and make sure to like the Hearts and Laserbeams Facebook page while you’re there!

Did y’all see the Etsy Storque Blog today? Amy Zurcher from ShopScad, a boutique with locations in Savannah, Atlanta, France and online was a guest curator for a post. In her piece, she featured some of the great work by Scad students, alumni and faculty that are carried in the shop that are also available on Etsy. Click here to read the piece, and as you get near the end… You may recognize our panties!

I went to Savannah College of Art and Design from 1995 – 1999, graduating with a BFA in Computer Art (with a concentration in 2d hand-drawn animation – something that is probably pretty easy to see in a lot of my cartoony looking artwork!). If you happen to visit ShopScad at one of their shops or online, don’t forget to look for Hearts and Laserbeams goodies while you’re there!

I got some really exciting news this weekend! Hearts and Laserbeams has been working with a licensing agent for the last few months to try and get some deals going, and get our characters out there in stores. It looks like we may have a deal with a tee company in the near future! If all goes well there may be shirts with Hearts and Laserbeams  characters on them in actual major stores by the end of this year! If all goes not well, there may be a Hearts and Laserbeams employee (me) crying in the dark with a bottle of wine… er… apple juice (until our little boy is born. then bring on the vino!).

I’ve been taking a break working on the licensing stuff for the past couple of weeks because it’s been ungodly long work days for the last few months, but now that a deal is pending I gotta make like Devo and crack that whip and finish up what this company’s gonna need art-wise so all goes smoothly when/if a deal gets signed… I just wanted to share the excitement – keep them fingers crossed that this thing goes through! Hooray!

I just wanted to share the progress on a wedding cake topper I’ve been commissioned to paint for an upcoming wedding! I love working collaboratively on projects like this, it really turns out a unique result. The bride has all kinds of quirky, eclectic and handmade elements she’s incorporating into her wedding, including a bouquet made of vintage brooches and earrings. It was such happy kismet when I poked through my collection of vintage plastic flower beads for the girlBot’s headpiece and found one random sparkly flowery vintage clip-on earring that looked perfect to use as a bouquet!

I can’t wait to show you guys more progress on this piece – I’ll be continuing work on it this weekend!

A few weeks ago we started getting tons of tomatoes from the dozen or so plants we have growing in the back and front yards – to the point where I got all Martha Stewart and tried my hand at canning em so they wouldn’t go bad before we ate em!

But then, as we got more and more tomatoes and I canned most of ‘em for later use, I started thinking… what if, as a newbie canner, I didn’t quite do it right and they tasted bad? I better crack open a jar and use it just to make sure, seeing as there was another big ol’ bowl of tomatoes sitting on the counter waiting to be processed. So last night I made up a chicken recipe using a jar of our tomatoes – it turned out so freaking delicious that I’m gonna share! (The recipe. Sorry, the tomatoes are much to delicious to hand out, especially since it takes a few hours for each batch of canning to get done!)

Caprese-inspired Chicken Dinner!
Serves 2, takes about 20 minutes in the kitchen to prepare.

You’ll need:

2 defrosted chicken breasts

1/2 cup grated mozzarella cheese

1/4 cup fresh basil, chopped

1 pint jar of tomatoes (or a 14.5 oz can of crushed tomatoes)

5 cloves garlic, minced

olive oil

salt and pepper

red pepper flakes

We served it up with:

some frozen asparagus

frozen garlic bread

***

1) Start up the frozen garlic bread, which takes about 15-20 minutes to cook. (We like that texas toast in the white and green box. You know the one. Delicious.)

2) Heat up the ol’ George Foreman grill. What? You don’t have a George Foreman grill? Hmmm… then I guess heat up whatever cooking implement you’re gonna use on your chicken? While the grill’s heating up, go ahead and generously brush some olive oil on each side of your chicken breasts, and give em a little shake of salt and pepper.

3) Throw em on the grill when it’s all heated up, and let em cook til they’re not pink in the middle anymore.

4) While that’s going, heat up a medium skillet with some olive oil in it. (Over medium heat is good.) Throw your minced garlic and some red pepper flakes in, and sautee those for about 2-3 minutes. Then add your jar of tomatoes, liquid and all. (Be careful, though – one of the two kitchen fires I’ve started in the past was caused by pouring a can of tomatoes and liquid into a pan of heated olive oil… remove the pan from the heat, add the can carefully, put the pan back on the heat if you’re super cautious like I am. Fire will do that to ya.) Add chopped basil (but save a little for a fancy garnish at the end!).

5) Let  the tomato mixture get all nice and hot – soon your chicken and garlic bread’ll be done cooking. Get the garlic bread out of the oven, and do whatever you like to do to keep it warm til serving. You could get fancy and wrap it in a towel and put it in a bowl, or you could have your husband sit on it for a while. Turn up your oven to the broiler setting. Put your chicken breasts in a little pan, and give em each a good smattering of mozzarella cheese. Put em in the broiler for 2-3 minutes.

6) Incidentally, that’s about how long it takes for frozen asparagus to heat in the microwave. So cook that goodness up while your cheese is getting all good and melty on top of the chicken!

7) Take the chicken outta the broiler and put it on yer dinner plates. Put some of the tomato-basil mixture on top, sprinkle a little fresh basil on top of that… serve it up with the asparagus and garlic bread! Marvel in your culinary amazingness!

I wish I had gotten a picture of this dinner cuz it’s probably one of the first times I sorta winged it making something up in the kitchen, and it was so effing tasty! Instead, you get this hastily-drawn representation of the final product! The end!

There’s still some work that needs to be done on the Hearts and Laserbeams website, but sometimes other projects just need to take a higher priority! My brother in law Chris opened a new canvas shop in Oregon City, Oregon last month and in this day and age a website for your brick and mortar store is pretty much mandatory. I spent this weekend working on the Seven Seas Canvas website, and I’m pretty happy with how it turned out – if you’re in the Portland area and have boats that need covering you should give him a call!

Chris does some pretty amazing things with a needle and thread, and Seven Seas Canvas isn’t limited to boat covers – if you’ve got a project in mind take a look at his site and give him a shout to receive a quote!

About a year ago when I was commuting 40 miles south to Mission Viejo every day to a job that was in a less than positive environment, I started doing Fancy Coffee Friday. Instead of drinking the free coffee at work, I’d detour to the Starbucks on the way to the office, get a medium mocha with no whip cream on top, sigh, and pat myself on the back for making it through another week.

Now, a year later, I’ve kept that little ritual going. Except now I’m doing a job I love with zero commute (except for the occasional drive to L.A. for a meeting), and with the prego-ness I’ve made the temporary switch to Fancy Hot Chocolate Friday. It’s nice that the ritual has a happier tone to it now, a more “YAY it’s the weekend!!!” and less “Good god how am I going to do this again next week” feeling.

Do you have little weekly rituals like that, and what are they? Happy weekending everyone!

Here’s a little sneak peek of style guide stuff I’m working on this week – check out some fun apple characters!

Ok so last night was a blasty at the Long Beach Museum of Art! They were having their After Dark event, and invited Long Beach Craft Mafia to set up shop to show off and sell our wares and do some demos throughout the night. I set up my merch (which Tamara of Crayon Fawn was awesome enough to sell for me!) and then sat down to an evening of caricaturing.

It’s funny how self-conscious I get about my drawing sometimes, and caricatures is even worse because someone is right there watching you do it… What if you screw it up? What if it doesn’t look enough like them? Good lord what if they hate your drawing?!?

What was different last night, as opposed to other caricature events I’ve done, is this one was mostly adults. And they were just as enthusiastic about my drawing as kids at 8th grade grad nights. So it’s time to stop worrying about whether or not my drawings are good enough. They’re fun, and they’re funky, and that’s all you need to know! I know I’ve mentioned this before, but if you’re in the LA or Orange Counties I am definitely available to draw at your party just email me and we’ll make it happen!

Also awesome about last night – I changed one small technique in my caricature drawing towards the end of the night, and it solved something that’s always been a little bit of a problem for me! Thumbs up for progress and change and practice and drawing! Here’s a few warm-up sketches from last night – I’m hoping my buddies Steph and Ellen will scan in their caricatures so I can show ya a couple of finished drawings!

In closing, I want to go back through all my almost 8 years of blog posts and find out just how many of them start with “ok so”. The end!

(Also, when I research the “Ok so” thing, I will count how many posts end with “the end!”)

I’m so close to being done cleaning up poses for the new Hearts and Laserbeams style guide! This little guy is by far my favorite new robot pose:

Just two more poses to clean up before I can move on with this project!! But first, I will be doing a whole lot of relaxing with the remainder of the holiday weekend. How was your 4th of July?