A Friend In Need

UPDATE 23rd June 2011

I've taken the decision to remove this post.  Unfortunately I have not received a very good response to it and I'm not prepared to bare my soul and tell you lots of deeply humiliating personal secrets if it's just going to be met with a wave of apathy.

My circumstances are still pretty dire.  I'm currently appealing the decision that led me into trouble and I've managed to arrange a payment holiday on my loan, so hopefully that will help me along a bit.

I'll keep the payment button on my blogs and I would still ask you that if you enjoy anything you see on here or the Scrapbook then please try and find it in your heart to leave me a little donation.  Anything you could afford would be gratefully received and will be a massive boost towards getting my life back on track.

I would like to sincerely thank the few people who did come to my aid and offer help in various forms.  Your generosity will not go unrewarded and forgotten.  It's times like this you really get to learn who your friends are.

Thank you.

New Café Press Goodies - Part 1

Those busy bees over at Café Press have been sourcing dozens of new products for us to offer our customers, so right now I'm in the process of updating all my shops (apart from the Christmas ones which will get an overhaul in the autumn).

With nearly 50 new items to add, design and price-check, this is no quick job! Four of the shops are ready to re-launch, so here's my pick of what's screaming "buy me" right now.

Sleep with Kevin the Octopus! Pyjamas available in a range of styles and colours for men, women and children.

As if all those teensy little hearts weren't cute enough, now you can wear them on a fun range of costume jewellery.

3 new water bottles add to the Sigg bottles already in store. A great choice of must-haves for your favourite sport.

If ever an accessory screamed to have a rosy red apple on it! Perfect for jazzing up your beloved gadgets.

Don't forget all these designs are available on all the products, feel free to mix and match to your heart's content. The five remaining animal designs will be getting upgraded next, so watch out for news on that and my second pick of the best new products.

To browse the stores, look for the buttons on the left of this page and just click on your favourite design.

Happy shopping!

Patriot Tees

Having made my first set of Zazzle tee shirts, as shown in the last post, I really got in the mood to do more. Spring's made an early start here in the UK and we're all on the look out for nice cool clothes and hopefully plenty of chances to show them off.

What should my next range be?  Well I have all those flags I'm really proud of.  Although they were designed to go on little round things like badges, there was no reason why they couldn't be scaled up for a bigger product.  All it needed was to resize the files and knock out the background colours.

So now all my existing range of countries - UK, USA, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Japan and South Africa - can be worn proudly on your chest on a wide selection of colours and styles for men, women and children.

A snapshot of just 6 of my new tees.

Almost all of them are available in the same colour combinations as the badges - one neutral background and one for each of the flag colours.  Due to the range of shirts offered by Zazzle, unfortunately at the moment I'm not able to offer Ireland on an orange shirt.  This still leaves a choice of 30 unique designs, something for almost every day of the month!

There's also the flexibility to customise the designs with text if you want.  Plus, apart from the black and white tees, there's also the option to choose another shirt colour.  So don't feel bound by what I've laid out, get creative and make yourself something that's totally one of a kind.

Grunge outline added to the stars to make the American flag work on a white tee.

The badge of my Japanese flag on a black background unwittingly became a best seller following the tragic earthquakes and tsunami in March.  Now it's also available as a tee shirt.

To see the full range visit http://www.zazzle.com/valwoodhouse and search for tee shirts.  Don't forget all these flags are also available on badges, magnets and key chains.  More countries are in the pipeline, I'm looking forward to showing them to you!

I'm now working on giving my Café Press shops an overhaul.  The company has added lots of new products recently so this is going to take some time!  Watch out for my pick of the coolest must-haves over the next couple of weeks.

Also I'll be taking you on a trip through the archives as I'm sorting out some of my old work to scan in for my portfolio.  It'll be interesting to see how much of it has passed the test of time!

2011 - The Story So Far

Yo blog, long time no see.  How's things?  Crikey, where's the time going?

4 months into 2011 and this is my first post of the year.  Stuff has happened in that time which has forced my hand professionally but hopefully in a good way.

For family health-related reasons, it's now no longer a good idea for me to be out of the house doing a 9-5 job.  I could see the day coming and maybe that's why I've been a bit reticent about throwing myself into applying for jobs.  So I'm no longer prepared to compromise, it's becoming a home-based freelancer or nothing.

Money has always been the stumbling block stopping me from going for it.  Hopefully that's about to change as the government is about to introduce an updated version of the old Enterprise Allowance Scheme (which helped me start my first business in the late '80s).  This should offer more of a financial cushion to support me with materials, marketing, etc, if only for a few months.  The trouble is nobody knows when this scheme's starting or exactly what it's going to offer!  So right now I'm badgering the Job Centre every time I visit and I've been booked in with a new business support group who will hopefully be more use than all the other idiots I've been shunted off to see over the years!  Ah well, we'll see.

In the meantime, I'm giving my online shops a spring clean and over the next few weeks I'll be adding new designs and products for your purchasing pleasure.

First up, I've taken some designs I originally submitted to T-shirt design competition site Allmightys and added them to my Zazzle store.  They're inspired by 3 of my favourite animals and are bound to turn heads as part of your summer wardrobe.

(The following images are mock-ups.  The finished products are available in a variety of styles and colours although I have presented them on the colour I feel suits them best.)

A mean-looking red deer stag confronts his opponents with his vicious antlers, ready for the rut.  Shirt available in light and dark formats.

Hundreds of individually-drawn feather details on this glorious peacock, strutting his stuff for the hens.

A salmon makes a death-defying leap up a raging waterfall to reach its ancient spawning ground.

The shirts cost from $22.95, giving you a practical, hard-wearing garment and also a unique piece of artwork you will never find anywhere else.  So if you enjoy reading this blog or my Scrapbook, or if you like to follow me on Twitter or Facebook, please do what you can to support my shops and spread the word to new followers.

Next in my shop spring clean I'll be adding new products to my Café Press stores, putting some of my Zazzle designs onto new items and also unveiling some new additions to one of my ranges.  Watch this space!

Last Post In Time For Christmas

Well it's been a tough few weeks with my darling iBook being poorly.  Apparently it needs a new DC-in board which I haven't dared price up yet.  I've just managed to borrow a PC so I can get some internet access, more than the couple of hours a week I'm allowed at the library!

Of course with my Mac out of action I can't do any artwork, which scuppers my plans for world graphic design domination somewhat.  So please accept this Olde Skool scribble as my little Christmas card and thank you for following me this year.  Click on it to see it in all its glory.

If you want to check over at my Electric Scrapbook in the next few days I'll post you up some nice goodies to see you into the New Year.

However you're spending the holidays, have a great time, don't abuse your liver too much and try not to get into too many family squabbles.

Congratulations, It's a Blog!

Big news today as I'm giving birth to a brand new bouncing baby blog!

Not literally of course, that would be rather painful.

It's called Val's Electric Scrapbook and it's going to be a place where I keep all the best things I find scattered about the Internet.  So that could be art, design, photos, adverts, illusions, videos or absolutely anything.

There'll be stuff from people I admire, things that have influenced me... oh who am I trying to kid?  Most of it will end up being silly and puerile.

It looks like this.  Better still, click it and see for yourself.

It also means I can keep this Work In Progress blog for what it was really meant for - my work in progress!  Us creative types get easily distracted, you know...

The 2 blogs will always be linked together and if you follow me on Twitter or Facebook you'll be the first to know (after me) when either of them gets updated.

So I hope you'll join me over there for some fun.  If you need any more enticement, Issue 1 comes with this free cut-out-and-keep Freaky Staring Dragon!

What are you waiting for?  Click me!  Click me now!

September Round-Up

The nights are closing in, the weather's getting colder and we're now into the last quarter of 2010 already. This may be news you love or dread but it's time to start thinking about Christmas shopping!

I've been busy in my Zazzle shop making sure it's ready with lots of exciting goodies for you to treat your loved ones to. I've added 2 new flags to my collection: Ireland comes in a choice of 4 background colours and Japan comes in a choice of 3.

As always, the flags are available to purchase on keychains and a selection of different sized badges and fridge magnets. They look stylish on their own or even better displayed as a full set.

For my second Zazzle range, we move from flags to whole islands - in fact the most fantastical islands you've no doubt ever seen. Prepare to be blown away by the incredible world of the Font Islands!

Using a combination of Photoshop and the 3D landscape generating software Bryce, the Font Islands were created by me in 2002 as an experiment to find a highly original style I could use on monogrammed gifts. The range features 26 of the best known fonts, each one individually selected to show off the elegance of the chosen letter. Textures were generated for the islands and water to conjure up a mixture of lifelike and surreal land masses.

Thanks to the flexibility of Zazzle, I can now offer you these stunningly detailed graphics on your choice of mugs, mouse mats and tote bags. The mugs and bags come in a choice of sizes, styles and detailing. All of the gifts offer the chance to personalise them further and this works especially well with the mugs.  The graphic comes presented in the middle but you can move it to one side or the other (for left or right handed use) and add the recipient's name in the blank space. There are so many fonts, colours and other options to choose from, every one of these products can be one of a kind. Your special someone can receive something that's truly unique to them. You'll never find anything so individual in any shop or catalogue!

I really can't recommend these gifts highly enough. Whether you know someone who loves 3D graphics, typography, fantasy art or just appreciates something unusual, you definitely can't go wrong by visiting my Zazzle store this Christmas shopping season. Just click the Zazzle panel on this left of this page to get started.

If you want to see the Font Islands in all their glory, you can see larger versions of them in the Giftware & Greetings folder of my Coroflot portfolio.