We celebrated another b-day this past weekend and Ocee turned 2. He went around all day saying “Happy Day!” Robots were the theme so I used the robot classroom decor I illustrated for Creative Teaching Press as the party decorations. I even use some of it for the cake.

All the food was robot themed too and we also used out metal robot collection for the table too. I knew those little guys would come in handy one day!

Close up of the cake:

Early this week a very close friend of my cousin was in a skiing accident and has severe spinal cord injures. Her name is Lindy and although I’ve never met her, she has been in my prayers and on my heart all week. Instead of checking facebook for my daily dose of what people are eating for lunch or what plans they have for the weekend, I check to find an update on Lindy and my newsfeed is full of people talking about her, several like me that don’t know her personally but are amazed by her story and are rooting her on. I think what hits me most is that she has a 6 month old son and the simple pleasure of holding him again is going to be an uphill battle. She has an incredible support system and her given motra has become “Believe in Lindy.” Please check out this blog post to learn more about her and her spirit. I #BelieveInLindy and after reading it I know you will too!

I participated in Cindy Ann Ganaden’s annual ornament exchange this year and to go along with my Santa theme I made these for my group. You can check out more of the ornaments here.

I’m posting a Santa a day until Christmas over on my facebook page, so be sure and like my page to see them all:

I’m also booking consulting for next year now, so let me know if you’re interested by emailing me.

Wanted to post this since I get so many emails asking about my consulting, but my last 2 month consulting “sessions” for the year will be September-October. If you’re interested and ready to start before the year is out, let me know by this Friday.

You can find out more info here.

Each session is personalized to you and where you are in your career. You can be relatively new to the industry or a pro who just needs to refocus on marketing and get more work coming in. The focus for consulting is children’s illustration but I tailor it some towards licensing if that’s of interest. We go over portfolios, finding clients, promoting & more. There is a lot of work on your end with assignments given weekly but at the end of the 2 months, the goal is to have a flushed out portfolio/website, a postcard mailer complete and a strong mailing list to send them to, and a consistent plan to keep you moving forward with your career.

I have two books coming out August 1st written by Lisa Bullard and illustrated by me. Daniela’s Day of the Dead and Hailey’s Halloween. I love how the final printed books look and how the color pops off the pages.

Spread from Daniela’s Day of the Dead:

Spread from Hailey’s Halloween:

*links above are affiliate links via Amazon.com

I’ve kind of taken a blogging break and have opted for mini blogging over on my facebook page. Seems easier and a better way to converse with others. I’ve been trying to stick to some daily warm-ups when time allows so this morning I came up with a warm-up that’s also a freebie for all you creatives out there. A cover image for your facebook page. It’s taken from a Matisse quote and then I added to it because that’s just what I do.

So click on the image below for the full size image, download it and add to your FB page.

I love coming up with new sayings for these and I really love this one. Oh, and I got my 1,000th “like” on FB today. Thanks to everyone for keeping my creative spirits up!

Just in time for teacher gift season I have some products available in Dollar Stores around the country and each one is just a $1!!

Note pad, notepaper booklets & note cards. Each sold separately.

Note pad, notepaper booklets, note cards & gift bag. Each sold separately.

Since last week I’ve started doing daily creative warm-ups to get my creative juices flowing. Here’s today’s and you can see the other on my facebook page:

It’s almost May and that means it’s almost May 5th and that means “Cinco de Mayo” and that means you can learn all you ever wanted to know about the holiday from my new book with Lerner Publishing written by the fabulous Lisa Bullard called Marco’s Cinco de Mayo! I love how the completed book turned out. It’s a colorful 9.5″x9.5″ hardback.

Our family loves Cinco de Mayo simply for the fact that we love Mexican food. LOVE IT!! The Woog would live off of quesadillas if we let her. When I had Ocee, the hospital had some killer quesadillas so I ate them for lunch and dinner every day while I was there. 5 meals of them I think. Every since I have been on the search for quesadillas as good as those and I think I finally found them at Chuy’s. Ahh…

So in celebration of Cinco de Mayo and yummy food, I’m giving away 3 signed (by me your loving illustrator) copies to 3 lucky people. But there’s a catch. You have to give me your favorite Mexican food recipe to enter!

I’ve closed comments on my blog after months of dealing with spam ones, so you will need to go and “like” HOLLi CONGER studios on facebook and look for the post with the Marco image above. Then, leave a comment with your favorite Mexican food recipe (it can also be a link to it on the web). That’s it! On April 25th, I’ll randomly draw 3 winners and announce them on facebook.

If you follow me on facebook I kind of showed step-by-step a new stained glass piece I was working on but I didn’t get it framed and hung until this weekend. Here’s my process:

Step 1 was designing a pattern:

Step 2, 3, & 4 was cutting, foiling, soldering and adding patina:

And here’s the final piece hung between my kitchen and bonus room doorway:

I originally wanted to learn stained glass so I could make side lights for my front door. Here they are matching my existing stained glass front door:

Can’t wait to make some more projects!

I was going through some past work this morning and found this editorial piece I did last year for Her Nashville. One of my few non-children’s pieces but it still has plenty of whimsy!

Sorry to have been neglecting the blog. Seems like I’ve been micro blogging on facebook more and more. I’ve also had deadline, after deadline since the beginning of the year on top of consulting with 11 talented illustrators and trying to build up my licensing portfolio during some free time. Licensing is taking a front seat this year and I’ve been actively building collections and doing a little bit of style re-branding too. I’ve created a new logo and thought I’d share some sneaky peeks of some new licensing pieces I’ve been working on.

Happy Valentine’s Day! Here’s a card I did for Design, Design earlier in the year. It’s a section from a 3 panel card with a sticker sheet.

The last 5 robots have been added for the fundraiser and the last chance to buy them in Tuesday, January 31st.

I mentioned in a earlier post that the Woog is going on her first mission trip to Alaska. I am so proud of her bravery and heart to go. She’s been raising money for the trip which is $1250 (big shout out to all her friends & family who’ve donated), she only has $250 more to go! So, to help her out I’ve made some original Junk A Doodles art to help her reach her goal. She helped pick out all the found objects and I put them together. Five are on sale now and five more will be added this week. They are only $20 (not bad for an original piece of art!) and shipping is only $0.20 to cover Etsy’s listing fee and I’m donating the rest of the shipping costs.

Go check out the shop for a look at them all. Here’s my favorite, little ERNIE:

If art isn’t your thing and you want to give a $1 or $2 to the Woog, she’d really appreciate it. You can donate any amount here:

I have robots on my mind this week that I hope (fingers crossed) I’ll get to show tomorrow so I thought I’d show you what I found looking through the new Creative Teaching Press catalog. I did this bulletin board set for them last year and I loved every minute of it!

I love making Junk A Doodles robots and this is the robot that started my junk style.

Hopefully more on robots tomorrow!!

Fall is just around the corner, so it’s time to start decorating! I illustrated a fun bulletin board set for Creative Teaching Press featuring all things fall. They also have them as stickers and some other items. I loved doing this project and got to incorporate some of my Granddaddy’s barn wood into the mix.

I ran by our local Target this morning and they were busy stocking their new boy bedroom decor and look what I spotted on the P.O.P:

I did the stretched canvas art for them that matched their Circo Build It collection. They were busy stocking it all so I didn’t want to stand there watching so I’ll have to go back and take a look at the finished product in a few days. It’s a 21″x21″ canvas and I think it’s around $30.

I also did a matching growth chart that will be available on Target.com:

So if you have a little builder at your house, these products would be perfect for him

Thought I’d post some fall themed work. I illustrated a cute bi-lingual pumpkin patch story for Highlight’s High Five magazine:

And I have a pop-up Halloween card out this year from R.S.V.P:

Tomorrow I’ll show you some of the fall bibs I designed that are available at CVS.

I have some new baby bibs out this fall that your baby can spit-up and drool all over. Some if not all are available at CVS stores. I’ve heard my local CVS has them, but I haven’t checked it out yet. Here we have one cute little man modeling one of the bibs:

I think my days are over with him sitting still for a picture. All the pictures I get of him now are blurry.

And here are all the bibs:

And tomorrow will be my last post of the year because I’m going off the grid until January of 2012. No blogging or social media but I’ll post about that tomorrow.

This is my last post for 2011. I’m going off the grid. No blogging, social media and very, very little work. It’s been a hectic 9 months and the last 2 have been insane with all the jobs that came in, plus I never had a maternity leave back in January, so I just need an all around break. The hardest thing for me will not be able to keep up with my friends and family on facebook, so guys, if you’re reading this, go old school on me and talk to my face, call me on the phone or even email me. You know, like the good ole days. And when my mom says “I saw so-and-so did this-and-that on facebook” I will have no clue so don’t let me be the last to know. Come October 1st, I’m deleting my twitter, facebook & google+ bookmarks and phone apps so I’m not tempted, but I WILL be back in January catching up on all the new-to-me news.

Do I think this will hurt my career by not keeping up appearances via social media and promotion? I thought long and hard about it and you know, it’s only 3 months and being the end of the year, a lot of people are checking out anyway so I don’t think it will impact it at all. It was funny how when I decided that I was taking 3 months off, I got flooded with jobs but fortunately, most of those jobs have been completed and I only have a few ongoing projects the next few months. I’m so used to juggling 5-10 jobs at one time it will be an adjustment to only juggle a few.

There are a few things I wanted to get done before the 1st (like that e-book a lot of you have asked me about) but I haven’t had time yet so maybe I’ll work on them here and there and you might see them pop-up on my website one day.

Also, I’m going to start illustration career consulting in 2012. If you’re interested, please shoot me an email using this link so I can email you once the new year rolls around and I can give you some more info. There going to be a lot to do on your part so be prepared to work! Right now I think my pricing structure will be:

$200 for an intense 1 month
or
$325 for 2 month consultation

If this is something you are seriously considering, think about paying in advance to get the write-off this budget year, or ask for it as a Christmas gift. If you’d be interested in that, email me and I can set it up with you early.

That’s about it. I’m going to be taking a lot of naps, wear pj’s all day and just have time to PLAY. See you next year!!

Happy 1st Birthday to the SWEETEST little boy I know!

And of course, a special lunch box note today for the Woog (“AaBa” as Ocee calls her):

We celebrated Ocee’s 1st Birthday over the weekend and thought I’d share some pictures.

“Pup cakes” decorated with a few different dogs I illustrated:

The spread. All dog themed food lie puppy chow, bagel dogs, corn dogs, etc:

And then the digging in began. He didn’t get as messy as the Woog did on her 1st:

HAPPY BIRTHDAY OCEE!