Designing an enamel pin

Video is coming soon 🙂

The fuel ignited one day. I was watching Baylee Jae polish the enamel pins that she designed and i started looking into pricing and then how-to.

I am curious to try designing an enamel pin of my own. For a small initial investment, I think the payoff will be so satisfying. i’m hoping my style translates well on this type of medium though. My style is more loose & raw compared to the demos displayed on the enamel pin site i will be ordering from. I spent some time walking through the purchase process.

I started brainstorming by pulling out my acrylic paint pens and drawing everything that came to mind. It wasn’t long before a “halloween house” took shape.

i looked through some open source photography websites for reference and then sketched out a first draft. The acrylic paint markers are fun to sketch with and because they are opaque, i can continue to layer in the details… so long as the paper holds up.

At some point, i felt like the image was too symmetrical and i wanted more variation so i thought maybe a different type of window on the left side would work better… and layered that in … and then I wished i had an undo button.

When one wishes for an undo option, it’s time to move the design into digital form. i took a picture and then pulled it into Photoshop. I spent quite a bit of time redrawing my image in Photoshop.

One good little lesson i learned about art: horizontal lines can be forgiven if they are angled but vertical lines must always be straight: obey the laws of gravity. i setup my vertical grid lines first and warp, distort & cut/paste the photo to match my grid.

Gold outlines were completed first (on multiple layers) grouped together.

Black & navy colour background layers were added and placed behind the gold outline.

Then the blue bricks & white stones layers were added behind the gold outline.

Black fine line was added last.

Once the image was complete, there were still adjustments and readjustments to all of these layers. When i was done, i resized and uploaded my file to order my pins. Now i wait… 🙂

Designing a thank you card

With every store purchase, i want to include a thank you card. Because i will reopen with autumn & halloween products, the design for the card was already in my head what i wanted, so this entire process went very quick and easy.

i’ve done a little digging around for manufacturers and decided to try Jukebox. The online ordering process was a simple form & upload of my files (front & back designs).

about a week later, the order was shipped to me and i was kind of blown away by the Jukebox brand packaging. unfortunately, the beautiful storage box was damaged, the bubble wrap mailer wasn’t enough protection.

The artwork could have used some more white balancing (there is a blue overcast), which i noticed prior to submitting but i thought i was just nitpicking. i forgot about the golden rule to print: mistakes are magnified on print materials, so i should have corrected it.

You gotta see the BABY!

yup, there’s a new fur baby in the house, a new family member to cure the woes of missed companionship. it’s been over a year since bazil and i have been alone and we are both ready for a change.

i’m a little worried because bazil has been super snuggly and attached at my hip. he’s old and bored, so it’s time to find him a playmate and snuggle buddy.

i started scoping out the humane societies

in my region where i found a 4 year old siamese whom i applied for adoption. During the review process, i wandered into the shelter for a visit and boy was that a mistake… i bonded to the poor little thing and was devastated hours later when someone else had their application accepted.

i scoured kijiji and happened upon a breeder with a litter of only 2 siamese kittens. i fell instantly in love the second i opened the door to meet the adorable “Blues Brothers” babies for the first time. the beautiful kitten known as Blueberry immediately greeted me with a meow despite waking from a slumber, securing their place in my heart. On the May 2-4 weekend, i brought home a 7 week old male siamese kitten. He fit right into our home. It’s been such a long time since i’ve had a baby kitty in the house, i forgot how entertaining they can be.

He responded to me calling out “Where’s the baby?”, but i needed to come up with a proper name. it took me a few weeks before settling on “Twitch”. 4 weeks after bringing him home he was due for visit with my vet, then a little shocker… “he” is a “she”. thank goodness i didn’t have to change their name, it took me so long to figure one out, lol.

Upgrading my drawing tablet & learning Affinity

Affinity is offering a 6 month free trial and i would like to replace my Adobe workflow with Affinity. I plan to use Affinity to draw both in pixel & in vector, but it is time for a new “drawing tablet”. The Wacom tablet i have works fine and is great for learning, but i’m ready to upgrade.

After a lot of research and online shopping, i found a great deal on an ipad with an apple pencil (approx $500 CAD, including a case too).

Creating enamel pin backing cards.

using the new iPad, i set up Affinity and was well on my way to designing the backing card for my enamel pin. My enamel pin is 1.75″x1.75″ and Vistaprint has a “Square Business Card” at 2.5″x2.5″. I layered the moon, a tree & a cloudy night sky in Affinity photo and uploaded the exported image for printing.