Mark Your Place

 

Because everyone and their brother makes a New Year's resolution to read more (yours truly included), here's something to help you out: a bookmark tutorial.

 

You'll need cardboard (I used a leftover mailer), paint, a paintbrush, a pen and scissors.

   

Trace the template onto your cardboard (full size = about 1 3/4 by 4 inches). Cut out, then carefully make a slit for both arms, slightly rounding out the hands once free. After you've cut out the figure, fill in features with a pen and add accents with paint. Let dry.

To use, place arms over the page you want to mark, slipping the body a few pages behind. Happy Reading!

Seven

Hope your new year's are off to a delightful start. I've been busy this week and last, working on a round of revisions (hence the quiet). But...

Next week marks seven years of blogging here for me. In light of that and the new year, I retooled the design a bit and changed some other things. On the sidebar, you'll find an updated list of other places on the internet you can find me, a "subscribe by email" option and I'm slowly adding labels to old posts. I'm also brainstorming some new ideas for this space. My goal this year is to add more DIY projects with an illustrative bent and more process posts. I've also had a few questions about having an email list and I'm mulling that one over.

Now, some New Year's resolutions -- it's not too late for those, right?

* Finish a book dummy.

* Dust off my Spoonflower shop

* Get ink on my hands again (translation: more printmaking).

* Participate more regularly in Illustration Friday.

*And I might have started doodling something tentatively titled, The Continuing Misadventures of Moth Girl, so that's a thing.

And you?