In the meantime the competition to win a Dunny and some limited edition prints (see my previous blog post) will continue until the store is actually launched. To all those that have already entered – many thanks and sorry for the delay.

1st Prize – Custom Dunny ‘Finkle’
2nd & 3rd Prizes – One limited edition print of your choice from those available in my store at launch

All you have to do to be in with a chance of winning is join my mailing list, which you can do from the right hand column opposite.

The draw will happen on the day I launch the store, so around the end of May 2010, and I’ll be picking the winners at random from everybody who is on the mailing list at that time. So you just need to be on the mailing list on the launch day in order to be in with a chance of winning one of the prizes!

I’ll pay the shipping to whoever wins and I’ll announce the winner on the blog and email them for their postal address. Obviously I can’t be responsible for any import charges the winner’s country may apply, should there be any – you would be responsible for those.

I’ll be using the mailing list once the store is launched to announce new products, special offers and news. So, to be in with a chance to win Finkle or your choice of a limited edition print and keep up to date on my store, please do join my mailing list. And if there’s anything in particular you’d like to see in my store, do please let me know.

The boring rules stuff is below

Competition Rules

1. You must be subscribed to my mailing list when the draw happens in order to win.
2. Competition closes when the store launches – people who join after this time will not be included in the draw. A blog post will be made to mark this and the time it is posted used as the cut-off.
3. Only one entry per person.
4. I will pay shipping but will not be responsible for any customs import charges your country may impose.
5. If you win you will be emailed asking for your postal address. If no response is received in 7 days a new winner for the prize will be drawn and you will no longer be eligible for the prize.
6. This competition is available worldwide.

If you want to check out my childrens poetry, my website FizzyFunnyFuzzy is where you’ll find it all.

As part of Enter3D Glen asked for permission to use my Bugapilla characters in some video tutorials on how to create characters from simple primitives as they’re ideally suited to this method. These tutorials are now available on Glen’s Southern Graphics web site and, if you’re interested in moving into 3D, they are well worth looking into. It’s great to see one of my characters in 3D and it’s something I feel that Glen’s tutorials will help me get into as well in the future.

Also started a new painting on 2nd January that I’m hoping to finish this week. It’s on a professionally hand made canvas which is wonderful to work on and I’m tempted to drop Loxley and just use these canvases from now on. The frame and canvas quality is top notch and well worth the extra money.

My exhibition in the local cafe finishes in a couple of weeks and it looks like one or two of the paintings are going to new homes, which is nice. I will most likely put the others up for sale online later this month once I’ve got a shop sorted.

Anyway, I hope you’re all sticking to your New Year resolutions and that 2010 is a corker. I’ll be back soon with an update on my doodling and painting.

This notebook itself is fabric covered, containing high quality watercolor paper and matching blue end papers on the inside of the front and back covers. It is A6 in size and filled with 48 pages (96 sides) of Bockingford 300gsm watercolor paper, bound using coptic stitch. The notebook is entirely hand made. I originally had these notebooks bound by Kala at Chalk Hill Studio.

You have until midnight (PST) on November 6th top enter the giveaway. Head on over to TokyioBunnie to find out more.

If it wasn’t already obvious, the site is built around a blog but with some extras to keep you interested – such as the Gallery (where you can see my art), Extras (where you can find out about some of the other things I’ve been known to do), Downloads (grab yerself some stuff!) and…well that’s it at the moment, but there’s a couple of other things to come along in the next few months. Shhh, I didn’t tell you.

The blog’s a bit thin on the ground at the moment (well this is day one, what do you expect – I didn’t just want to fill it with wibble) but I am determined to write regularly, and hopefully coherently. After using Twitter for a while sentences over 140 characters really make me sweat though, so no promises

I guess I should explain a little about how the site was put together. I now understand why the majority of blog owners pick off the shelf themes for their blogs, even if they’re designers – Wordpress’ templating system is ‘orrible. Maybe it’s just me but it’s like pulling teeth But the design itself was quite nice to put together – I drew everything you see, scanned it, turned it into vectors and played around with it in Illustrator from which everything was exported for final cutting etc. in Photoshop.

For the doodles I used black Posca markers on a Copic marker pad which ended up giving nice sharp results (sharper than using a Copic on a Copic marker pad!) There was quite a lot of re-drawing that had to happen (especially with the handwritten titles, each time I decided to change the wording I felt the need to rewrite them all so they were consistent – it’s amazing how much my handwriting changes between “takes”). I think it’s turned out well – it’s not where I was aiming when I started but I appear to have got a fortuitous ricochet

Anyway, more to come soon I promise.