Here is a new painting I have created just for fun. I will have it available to be purchased as a card in my Zazzle shop.

Home Tweet Home Blank Greeting Card by loniedwards

My new Zazzle greeting card, “Home Tweet Home” was featured today on the blog, Inspiring Gifts. Please visit Inspiring Gifts to view the article. To see my “Home Tweet Home” card as well my other line of greeting cards, please visit my Zazzle shop. I am planning on adding more cards this week so please check back.

Hey y’all! I created a little something for Canada Day (July 1st) –A free downloadable 5×7″ greeting card! Just a little something by me to share in the festivities. : )

Below is a sample of the front. The inside is blank. Just click on this link  to open up a printable pdf version of the card. Then download, print, fold and trim (Careful with that X-Acto knife!). Voila! A card is born!

Thanks, and have a great weekend!

This impeccably cute Fifties era Hallmark booklet was drawn by Louie Schmitt (1908-1993) and painted by Stan Spohn (b. 1915), both of whom were Disney trained artists. Schmitt had animated at Disney since the mid-1930s, but is best known for being Tex Avery’s layout man and character designer for a series of MGM shorts in the late-1940s such as Little ‘Tinker (below), The Cat That Hated People, Lucky Ducky, and Bad Luck Blackie. Spohn was an Art Center-educated Disney background painter who did some terrific development artwork on “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice” sequence in Fantasia.

Around 1948, give or take a year, Schmitt and Spohn met J. C. Hall, the founder of Hallmark Cards. Hall offered them a lucrative deal to come and work at Hallmark’s headquarters in Kansas City. Schmitt and Spohn told their story to cartoonist Dean Norman, who recounted it in his fantastic self-published book Studio Cards: Funny Greeting Cards and People Who Created Them:

“When we first came [to Hallmark] they said they didn’t have space for us yet in the art department. They really just didn’t want us to corrupt the sweet young girls that worked there, because our language can get sort of salty. So they made us work in a tent on the roof. It was hotter than hell in the summer in Kansas City. After a couple of weeks of sweating it out in the tent we came down off the roof, found an empty office and moved our stuff in. The Old Man thought the girl artists would be jealous, because we got an office while they worked in booths. But they didn’t mind. We got along fine and didn’t corrupt any of them…We thought we would go nuts. A whole building full of twittering young girls, and the stuffy work rules! We hated it, but it was good money, and we did get to do complete art on our cards. Mr. Hall loved our art. So after we had been here a few months, we told him our wives missed California so much that they were going to leave us. We was awful sorry, but we had to quit. Well, the Old Man did what we figured he might do. He offered us contracts to mail in our art from California.”

Schmitt, who I believe did the drawings for the “How to Take Care of Baby” booklet, had a style that was pure syrupy cartoon formula—historian Michael Barrier dismissed Schmitt’s designs as “bargain-basement-Bambi flavor”—yet he also had terrific command of cartooning principles and knew how to inject personality into his characters. It’s easy to understand why his work was so highly valued by Hall, especially when contrasted to the listless illustrative style that was predominant in the greeting card industry at the time:

It seems that Schmitt and Spohn worked as a team, and even had an art studio together after they moved back to Los Angeles. Schmitt died in 1993, but Stan Spohn is (I believe) still with us at the age of 97. There was an article about Spohn in the Monterey County Weekly a few years back where he was holding up one of his Hallmark paintings:

Just part of something I’ve been working on…

My Christmas card for 2011 in print. Cards always seem to look better when grouped, yes?

I thought this old illustration would work well for today's Illustration Friday topic and be oh-so appropriate for the upcoming holiday season:
I painted an early version of this image in art school and then re-painted it shortly after I graduated. Looking at it now I can only think how much better it would look if I re-painted it yet again. It's kind of fun (and occasionally painful) to look back at old work and see where you've improved (and where you still need some work!). This painting had a brief life some years ago as a greeting card for a charity card company and it's been more recently revived as a greeting card once again in my CafePress shop. Need Christmas cards? Get them here!

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I’m working on some greeting card ideas and this was one of them. The card depicted above, I mean. I am experimenting with type and Painter’s digital watercolors, which I use a lot.

Here are two wildly different Eastery images to at least acknowledge the holiday. Neither is new, but its the best I can do.

This was a card for NobleWorks a while back. I actually re-purposed the image from another larger illustration I did, adding the grass and a few other Eastery touches.

And this mango just looked like an Easter egg to me, so I kept going with the colors and took it all the way.
Its colored pencil on illustration board.

I boiled eggs today and am starting to put my baskets together.

Hope you all have a nice holiday (if you celebrate it). Otherwise, have a happy weekend!

My submission for Illustration Friday's "phenomenon" is my Holiday card this year. I decided on a non traditional colour scheme to make it a little different and special :) I have been making cards for 30 + years in every combo of colours and so each year I try to make something a bit out of the ordinary.

Thank you to all the folks that came by this year to see my art and ideas! I was a little lax in posting this year and my fifth year of blogging here passed by and it means so much that you visit and check out my stuff and comment :) Thank you and have a lovely holiday season too!

Nowadays, "phenomena" are often, but not always, understood as appearances. They are themselves sometimes understood as involving qualia.

Last week I started making Greeting Cards Available in my New Whimsical Fantasy Etsy shop. Getting ready for the Holidays already.

Wicked Christmas Bunny Greeting Card is a fun illustration for anyone who wants a little wicked twist in their holiday cheer. The bunny is cute, but in a creepy kinda way.
If you like dark humor during the holidays, this card is for you and your loved ones.

The illustration is printed on heavyweight archival ink jet paper. Beautiful vivid colors.

It is 5.5″ x 7″ folded and flaps open from the bottom. Inside is a blank space for personalized messages. The back has a small butterfly icon and credits in small letters.

$5

Received news from Zazzle telling me that my "Fabulous At 40Rty Dark Card, has been hand-picked as an example of creativity at its finest", and that out of the billions of designs on Zazzle, this was chosen for being one of the best. It will appear at the top of the 40th Birthday Cards page in the "Featured Designs" section for approximately 2 weeks.

AND this Fabulous at 40rty Card has received the same Award but is to be featured for 2 weeks on the 40th Birthday Gifts page.

Just had to share :)

Today my giveaway is a gift of Greeting Card Printing. Please leave a comment and you will have the opportunity to win 50 greeting cards
with 50 plain envelopes shipped right to your door. This is perfect for an image you would like to tryout as a short run. You can always order more later ;) This giveaway is brought to you by Digital Room.com which is another name for Uprinting.com. I will announce the winner on Monday the 28th and please feel free to sign up even if you have won before :D I will be receiving a free set of cards for hosting this giveaway :)
Below are the particulars:
50 7x5 Folded Cards with Plain Envelopes
14pt Cardstock Gloss
Outside Print Only
4 Baronial Blank Envelopes
Half Fold (Scored only)
Limited to US residents; 18 years old and above