Blog-Me-Do Part 2: House of Cards

Another thing that I don't get as much time to do as I once did, is making cards for friends and family for birthdays and other special occasions.

I still enjoy being able to do it, and it's always a fun challenge to come up with a new idea for a card for someone that I've known for a long time and already made a bunch of cards for, but it's also quite time consuming, so isn't always possible when I have other work demands and deadlines. But I did manage to still make more than a few cards in 2017. I've already blogged a few of them at the start of last year, but here are the others...

My Mum really enjoyed the all-female Ghostbusters reboot in 2016 (and so did I), so I drew her this card for Mother's Day:


My friend Saul is a big fan of My Little Pony, especially Pinky Pie, so I drew this card for his birthday:


I'm not sure I can really explain this card for my friend Jon. He loved it though!


This was a slightly odd commission that I received last year, where someone emailed me and asked me to recreate a Venice-themed birthday card that I drew for my friend Jess in 2013 that they'd seen online, but with their son in Jess's place...


My friends Anna and Paul got married last year, and here's a card I made for them:


My Dad loves cutting the hedge in the garden, and wants to do it most weekends, so I drew him this card for Father's Day...


My Mum was 70 last year! And here's a card I made for her:


This was a commission to draw a card for friends of my brother's fiancee, who were gettting married in Spain...


My friend Kate was 30 last year and enjoys playing the banjo, so here's a card I drew for her:


A birthday card for my Dad:


My parents celebrated their 40th Ruby Wedding Anniversary on New Year's Eve, so I drew this Red-hued card for them:


And finally, my Christmas card that I made for 2017:

Happy Birthdays!

Birthdays are like buses: nobody wants to sit next to the ranting drunk person. Also, you wait for ages and then three come along at once! And so it was at the start of February when my brother, his girlfriend fiancée and my auntie all had their birthdays within a few days of each other. To be honest, this has been happening for years, so I shouldn't have been so surprised...

Firstly it was my brother's birthday, and I drew a picture of him doing what he does best: sitting on his butt playing on his PS4! ;)


Next was Patricia's birthday. She's a big fan of Harry Potter...


And last, but not least, my aunt was turning 50 this year(!) so I drew a picture of her sitting on a bus (she gets a lot of buses) reading a book by Terry Pratchett, one of her favourite authors...

New Year, New Birthdays!

Hello 2017! Last weekend, my friends Anne and Anett celebrated their birthdays together. The problem with drawing cards for my friends' birthdays is that sometimes I find it really hard to come up with a new idea that is better than the last year, and (not to sound too big-headed about it) I think that I really excelled myself with both of their cards last year! Anyway, accepting the fact that I probably couldn't better myself, I decided to go for a fairly simple approach and draw a portrait of each of them enjoying some ramen (as we often meet up to go for ramen together):





The same weekend, it was also my friend Tadgh's birthday. Tadgh has been doing some excellent screen printing work recently, so I drew a picture of him producing a screen print of a birthday cake...

Blogs Of Future Past (Part 1: Birthdays)

I got a bit lapsed with updating my blog in 2015 and only managed a paltry Thirty-three posts last year. Part of this was due to the good news that I was pretty busy with commissioned work, particular in the second half of the year, but regardless, I want to ensure that I'm more active with my blog posts in 2016! Before I get into the New Year though, I thought I'd better catch up with a bunch of stuff I never got around to posting last year. So these next bunch of posts will be a bit of a retrospective look back at 2015.

Surprising nobody, I made quite a few cards last year. And in no particular order, here are some I never got around to posting...

A birthday card for my friend Ivy...



A birthday card for my friend Janice. Who likes Star Wars and goes to Pole Dancing classes...


For the last few years I have been making Jess a birthday card based on a different Hanson album cover each year. Because she is a massive Hanson fan, not because I hate her! And as if that isn't enough, this year she commissioned me to draw a Hanson card for her friend Clare. So once again, I traweled through Google Images to find yet another Hanson album cover to use as inspiration for her birthday card and ended up going with the cover to (what Wikipedia tells me is) their third album Underneath...




Here's a card I made for my friend Anna...


And here's a card I made for another friend of mine called Anna. She told me a story about waking up to find a cat in her bedroom, which reminded me of The Cat Came Back...


This is a video game inspired card I made for my friend Richard...


And here's a card I made for my parent's wedding anniversary which is on the 31 December. When I was telling my mum about seeing a Full Moon in the sky during Christmas, she told me that the last time there was a Full Moon at Christmas was the same year that her and my dad got married in 1977. 38 years ago!

Happy Birthday Tom Fog!

It was my mate Tom's birthday on Sunday and I drew him a card based on the Garbage Pail Kids trading cards, also from the Eighties...