Christmas, 11 months too early

Posted on January 25, 2013 in Illustration

I just recently finished some Christmas designs for my agent. When I say recently, I mean this month, January. Apparently, holiday designs are in demand all year round, with buyers in various stationery and art licensing shows looking for designs to license as early as January or February. Fortunately, the weather’s pretty cool and chilly here in Manila this time of year (it hit 18 C recently! Hello, climate change) so it’s not that ironic to be doing designs for December compared to, say, April or May, when the heat and humidity here is unforgiving.

And since I’m on a pattern kick lately, I made a seamless pattern from the border elements, too. I think this will look great as a gift wrap or on gift bags.

Also mocked up how it would potentially look like as a stationery set with matching sticker seals, envelopes, and packaging.

Happy holidays in advance! :P For art licensing inquiries, feel free to get in touch with me (contact form here) or Natasha from Advocate Art at natasha [at] advocate-art.com.

3 Comments | Tags: 2013, art licensing, artwork, card, cat, christmas, elf, gift, gingerbread, holiday, illustration, license, licensing, pattern, seamless, snowman, stationery.

Christmas 2012

Posted on December 28, 2012 in Odds and Ends

Non-committal, demographically-neutral holiday lettering, an excerpt from an ongoing project

How was everyone’s Christmas? :)

My December 25th is always spent with two sides of the family– lunch with relatives on my mom’s side, and dinner with relatives on my dad’s side. It has always been that way ever since I can remember. It’s set in stone. The days leading up to Christmas, though, is always a mish-mash of activities– Christmas shopping, gift wrapping, last-minute project-rushing… Three weeks before Christmas, I was working on a project (which I don’t want to talk about in detail just yet) and its deadline was several days before the 25th. I worked on it practically non-stop and when it was finished, I heaved a sigh of relief, sent it off to the universe (whut?), and sat down to wrap some presents! Time to get into the holiday spirit!

My free Christmas 2012 printable gift tags in use

I used pattern paper to wrap my gifts in, and I also used my 2012 printable Christmas gift tags. I was planning to print the gift tags on sticker paper but I realized I didn’t have any sticker paper on hand. I printed them on regular paper instead and ran them through my Xyron sticker maker, that nifty purple device pictured above which I bought several years ago. It applies a sticky adhesive underside on anything flat you can get through the machine.

Here’s how my packages ended up, with washi tape and paper twine trying to disguise the wrinkled mess. I call it sloppy chic. Did you know those four packages all have the same thing inside?!

I can’t wrap irregularly-shaped packages.

Vanya, an online friend from the early days of the millennium, also used my 2012 printable Christmas gift tags to wrap her gifts. Look at hers! So neat =\

In the meantime, Marlou downloaded my 2011 printable gift tags and used that instead, on recycled magazine pages. Clever! And still neater than mine.

I gave myself a Christmas present, too. I took off several items from my wishlist on Amazon but of course, I didn’t bother to wrap it anymore (and what, feign surprise when I open my own wrinkled gift?) :P

The 2013 Artist’s and Graphic Designer’s Market, which I purchased along with another book, Blog Inc. (and several toys for the cats). Stepping up my portfolio and self-promotion efforts this coming year!

Looking forward to a new year, as I do every year! :) Stay safe, everyone, and stay away from firecrackers :)

2 Comments | Tags: christmas, gift, giftwrap, holiday, lettering, presents, tag, wrapping.

Free printable Christmas gift tags (2012)

Posted on December 12, 2012 in Freebies, Seasonal downloads

Where did the entire year go?! I can’t believe 2012 is coming to a close =| You know what they say– time files when you’re having fun, and have fun I did this year! So much that I didn’t realize there’s only 13 days to go before Christmas, eek! And so I’m uploading this year’s batch of free Christmas printables– 2 days earlier than last year’s (hey, better late than never!).

Download link: http://www.wedgienet.net/ccount/click.php?id=66 (1.1 MB)

This year, I’m doing away with the traditional red and green Christmas colors and opting for a still Christmas-y blue, red, and silver. Classy. Also offsetting the clean vector lines in the illustrations with some hand-drawn, scribbly text to give these tags a “made by human hands” look. You get six tags all in all, laid out and ready to print on a single PDF sheet. Just print and cut! It would be great to print these out on cardstock, or on photo paper to get those vibrant, saturated colors. Personally, I would print these on sticker paper (matte or glossy) and just slap them on on my gifts :)

Excuse the politically-correct and neutral holiday messages; I originally made these illustrations for my agent/art licensing portfolio so I had to appeal to most demographics, hence the political-correctness (which I’m not a fan of!). Next year I’ll be sure to include some good old MERRY CHRISTMAS text just to piss off the overly-sensitive ;P

These tags are for personal use only, please take note! I hope you find them useful. Feel free to post a photo of your gifts and the tags on my Facebook page if you wish. I may be including them in an upcoming blog post :)

Printable Christmas gift tags download link: http://www.wedgienet.net/ccount/click.php?id=66 (1.1 MB)
My Facebook page: http://facebook.com/wedgienet.net
You can also check out and download last year’s free Christmas tags.

10 Comments | Tags: animal, bear, blue, christmas, cute, deer, download, fox, free, free download, free printable, freebie, holiday, illustration, kawaii, label, owl, PDF, printable, red, silver, tag, vector, woodland.

It’s the most wonderful time of the year

Posted on December 14, 2011 in Freebies, Seasonal downloads

It’s that time of the year again, when traffic is at a standstill (especially near malls), everyone’s rushing off to parties left and right, and malls close later to accommodate last-minute shoppers. Have you done your Christmas shopping yet? I haven’t— I’ve been meaning to but all I end up buying are things for myself :( And Christmas drinks at Starbucks (I’ll be glad when the season’s over!).

For the responsible ones with self-control who have their gifts all ready and waiting to be wrapped, I’ve made a bunch of FREE downloadable gift tags— just print and cut! Click here to download the tags as a PDF file (8.6 mb).

You get 7 tags all in all:

Download link: http://www.wedgienet.net/ccount/click.php?id=43

You can print these out on cardstock/board paper and use them as flat tags, or punch out a hole and loop a string or ribbon through it. Printing on glossy or matte sticker paper is a good idea too. I printed mine on inexpensive matte photo paper to really bring out and boost the color saturation.

So now I have a bunch of gift tags… but no gifts :P

Anyway, these tags are free for personal use. If you find them useful, you are most welcome (but not required) to post a photo of your gifts + the tags on my Facebook page. Enjoy! :)

2 Comments | Tags: candy, cane, cat, christmas, christmas tree, crafts, cupcake, cut, december, dog, downloadable, elf, free, freebie, gift, holiday, merry christmas, PDF, present, print, snow, snowman, stocking, tag, tree.

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