ellenmillion | Entries tagged with #smaugust

Sometimes I feel so full of gratitude and so glad for my life and my friends and my family and all the blessings and brightness that are around me that I'm afraid to say anything, like it's something fragile and shy and making eye contact with it will scare it off.

But I am so, so grateful for all of it. For all of you.

We had a beautiful dinner. We roasted a chicken, since none of us are nuts about turkey and there are only three of us. It turned out beautifully, all golden and crispy and moist. We had it with a green bean casserole made with heavy cream instead of milk, and a boxed stuffing. I also baked a dutch apple pie that blew my last pie out of the water, even though the top got a little dark in the middle. It was all quite amazing, and we ate ourselves silly.

Today's artwork is one of the #smaugust/#inktober pieces that I did for my Patreon patrons:

(Since Thanksgiving is now behind us, posting Christmas artwork is fair game, right??)
The sponsor gets first dibs on the original, but it may become available!

And last but not least, the Sketch Fest ACEO print sale is open! It runs through the Black Friday/Small Business Saturday/Cyber Monday weekend.

https://www.ellenmilliongraphics.com/sketchfest/sketchfestaceos.php

If you find bugs, let me know. This was a bit of a stretch to my programing abilities, and I learned all kinds of fancy new things to apply to this. I think it's a pretty slick system, but if you find a way to break it, I'll get my bug-fixing hammer. You'll note that there are even ways to search the prints! I'll be applying this search engine to the greater site after the sale is over. If you've been lax about checking categories, you may regret it!

Artists, you can still upload prints - I'll be approving them whenever I can throughout the weekend. Login and browse to your page - the upload link is underneath each thumbnail image.

Now I'm going to watch Clone Wars and fall into bed.

My studio is about 85% back together - I still need to sweep (AGAIN) and put the rug back down and move a few boxes and put down some 2x4 stand-offs, but it's USEABLE again, and about 100x neater and better organized than it was. And dry. Thankfully, the only things I lost were a few boxes - priority flat rate or boxes I'd been saving to re-use.

I have orders out.

My inbox is down to about 50.

I got my artwork mailed to a show in Seattle.

I got two new digital downloads up at Etsy shop - two new pieces from my Wild Teas of Alaska coloring book that I haven't posted here yet. Go see! And you can use Fall40 to get 40% off anything at my shop until the end of the month... which is only Friday!!

I have been steadily refining the sketches from #smaugust to ink in #inktober.

On that note, I am SO EXCITED about #inktober! My darling, darling husband who is the bestest got me the Artsnacks #inktober chest and I adore it and cannot wait to try it all out.

The edits to the Wild Teas book have been made and sent to the printer. There is at least a chance that I will have them on hand for Senshi-Con this weekend.

And on that note: Anchorage! You are on notice! I am coming to Senshi-Con next weekend! Come and raid the Bargain Bin, see my wonderful books in person, get things signed! I'll have limited stock of some special edition 78Tarot goodies, and copies of the Clockwork Queen of Oz, and all KINDS of wonderful, amazing things.

Laundry and various mundane tasks, like exchanging propane tanks and making a fire (not actually related...), have been accomplished and herein documented so that I can feel like I've done something today...

Besides rebuilding the studio, the weekend was also spent rearranging Guppy's room. We got a gorgeous, hand-carved, all-wood piece of furniture from a friend who was moving to put in her room, but when we put it in the space I'd made for it, Jake looked at how crowded it looked and said NOPE, so we spent a good while moving the bed and the bookshelves until we'd completely redesigned the room into something airy and really wonderful. It's a marvelous space now. Guppy loves it.

Today was the first day of preschool, and although Guppy had to be pried off of me with a crowbar to stay by herself, she had a wonderful, wonderful time and came home bouncy and full of energy and cheerfulness. I lurked at the closing and got to watch her actually COME at the whistle and get in line. (This is a minor miracle, people. Last year she had a tendency to bolt in the opposite direction when the whistle was blown.)

I got up early this morning and scanned many things, including two new coloring pages, a portrait adoption, and 21 #smaugust sketches. They are all here: http://ellenmillion.com/smaugust.php

This one is my favorite - it is on hold for

haunted_blood, who prompted it:

Patreons will get to pick one of these to sponsor into a finished ink piece for #inktober. (I am regretfully skipping #sketchtober, because sanity.) This month, they get a new coloring page. :)

I also updated my Etsy shop and renewed a number of my holiday designs.

I got just 226 words on my not-a-book, but this was on the tail of a very productive weekend - I've been getting up before 6 AM every day to get words in, and I've cracked 20k.

I still need to do an August wrapup... and maybe July??

Must wrap a small bundle of energy into bed now... and persuade her to stay there.

Today, so far, I have:

*Gotten my flat tire repaired (to be fair, I have to pick it up tomorrow, because I don't want to go back in today).
*Refilled propane
*Bought a replacement headlight for my car
*Replenished the ridiculously expensive prescription catfood
*mailed an order
*cleaned out the freezer
*3 loads of laundry
*some emails
*arranged to restock one of my retailers
*realized I was missing a set of certificates for a portrait adoption. *ARGH.*

The last precipitated a full certificate count and file purge. I am to the Hs so far, and there are several head-scratchers in my files. Some I suspect are people who have changed their names (marriage, etc.), a few are people who never registered at the site *tosses*, but there are a few oddballs I'll have to track down. Illegible signatures for the argh. I'm getting rid of reams of paperwork, which is nice, and tagging everything I identify so I don't have to do this again.

I did 4 sketches for #smaugust over the weekend: https://www.ellenmilliongraphics.com/sketchfest/sketchfestartist.php?id=9&date=78

I got a massively flat tire on my way to gaming and discovered that I need a cheater bar in my car because I could not BUDGE those nuts.

Now I have to go empty the van because it gets serviced tomorrow and I have dance class tonight! *flies*

About 1 this morning, I stumbled into a lovely pile of cat vomit and hairball. Pets are so... rewarding. I cleaned it up, used up all the paper towels, had to get more paper towels from the basement, and staggered back to bed feeling wide awake (and grossed out) and sure I would never get back to sleep, and then the alarm was going off and I was not ready to get up at all.

Fortunately, the day improved markedly from there, with many spots of sunshine. Lots of kid-giggles, too.

UNfortunately, the printer I have tried to order three times now was CANCELED on me, the seller claiming they are out of stock even though it's still listed on the page. (I have deep suspicions that they weighed it to get a shipping estimate to Alaska and panicked because they were going to lose money.)

Working on getting more stock to Amazon, poking at another two potential wholesale buyers, all the various fun things with self-marketing and such. Also trying to get Guppy back into swim lessons, which we honestly both need. I have been sooooo lazy this summer.

I do think I figured out what was so terribly wrong with my third not-a-book that was causing my wheels to spin, and how to fix it. It will mean cutting several thousand words, which is always painful when you write as slowly as I do.

I am making good progress on #smaugust. Here are some of them:

If you want to prompt one, you can donate $1 at my site, or become a Patreon patron. Patrons in October will be able to sponsor a sketch to a finished ink piece for as little as $1, as well.

Sketch Fest is NEXT Friday! I'm already excited for it!

I am more tired than the hour warrants. But, I come bearing artwork!

(Some I can share, some, I cannot...)

This is the first #smaugust sketch. It's a bit on the rough side, but I think it captures what I wanted it to. It may get refined in October... or it may not!

This was prompted by Angie at Patreon, and the way this month is shaping up, I may only get to the patron-suggested prompts!

No words to report today (I am logging this to keep me honest), and it's August somehow, so I need to do a July roundup. (I fear it will be slim!)

I made an everything turnip au gratin, and I fear this one was not a success. In no small part this is because I didn't have any of the correct cheese (3 leftover cheeses of the wrong kind were used), I was out of milk (fortunately, I had powdered milk to work with), and turnips are juicier and tougher than I expected. It's... not inedible. And the flavor is actually quite nice. The texture is just not au gratiny.

Guppy "helped" me, and it was entertaining listening to her talk in her non-stop way. Her imaginary friends helped her, and at one point, she chortled about the baby shredded cheeses crying for their mothers. "But I already ate the mommy cheeses!" she declared. Are all four-year-olds little psychopaths?

Off to work on a sketch and an anthology illustration, and watch some Charmed because that's about my mental level. Guppy is still making noise upstairs (I can hear her rearranging her bed for the fifth or sixth time) and it may be an early night for me if she gets quiet soon.

I have a three-month dragon plan!

#junicorn was so much fun that I was delighted to hear there was such a thing as #smaugust, and I am throwing my hat in. I noodled with the idea of doing colored ACEO cards like I did with the unicorns, but decided to go a different direction, and work on some more coloring/card designs, possibly even doing a little coloring book at the end of the project.

But! I have a lot on my plate over the next couple of months. A ridiculous amount, even for ME.

So, I'm going to break this into two parts. In August, I will be doing pencil sketches, 30 in 30 days. If you have a dragon YOU would like to see sketched, you can pledge at my Patreon for as little as $1 a month. Suggest a sketch - you can even provide, say, a photo of your pet that you'd like to see with a dragon, or any keyword or suggestion you'd like. For patrons, you are guaranteed a sketch. I will pull other inspiration from the August Sketch Fest (date to be set SOON), and I've got a lot of ideas of my own. SOME of those sketches will be inked as part of #inktober (in October). Patreon patrons for the month of October will get to choose sketches to sponsor into completion, whether they prompted that sketch or not. That guarantees that the sketch gets inked, and also gets the sponsor a high resolution copy of that piece to download and color. SOME of the inked dragons MAY get included in a limited edition mini coloring book. (Some will also be added as downloads through my Etsy shop.)

If you don't want to pledge at Patreon to join in the fun, you may donate $3 (or an amount of your choice) at my webpage for the same perks: http://ellenmillion.com/index.php (There is a donate button on the left.)

All patrons (either place) will also receive 50% off the original of any of the finished pieces.

See? I'm not entirely nuts. That's a totally reasonable breakdown for a project I'm really enthused about. (And I reserve the right to stop at less than 30 if life and work become too crazy, because safety valves are good to have.)