This totally made my day!

A while back, an American fan and friend of our Repo! shadow cast told me that she loved my Littlest Gentern illustration and was toying around with the idea of including it in her Repo! sleeve. I thought she was crazy… who the hell would want my drawings permanently inked on them? Well, today she posted this photo up on her Facebook profile and now I’m totally stoked and tripped out at the same time. Someone’s got my illustration tattooed on their skin! Yay!

Hickey Hiders – $25. All one-of-a-kind in different colours and sizes!

Lucky Pierced Pins – $1 each. Get the whole set at the fair!

More previews coming soon! Hope to see you at the Toronto Erotic Arts and Crafts Fair on February 13th at the Gladstone Hotel!

Some new merch that I’ve been working on for our shadow cast. We’re just gearing up for our one year anniversary show next week and this merch set is going to be available for $5. It’s wonderful having my own pin press at home!

Nothing else really inspired this series except for the fact that I love piercings and I love drawing penises (penii?), vaginas and boobs. I just want to blow these up and frame them in my bathroom. Hah!

The wonderful people at Come As You Are will not only be popping my solo art show cherry this July, but they will also deflower my crafts fair virginity at the 2010 Erotic Arts and Crafts Festival. I couldn’t be any more stoked about this. I’ve got plenty of wonderfully sexy projects in the works and this is the perfect event to launch them at. If you’re in the Toronto area on Saturday, February 13th, come say hi to me at my little pink booth on the second floor of the Gladstone Hotel (and perhaps buy some of my creative crap? That would be pretty sweet!)!

2009 has come and gone and I couldn’t be any more content with this year. Of all the 24 years I have had, 2009 was probably the most eventful and accomplishing. This is probably the year where I have felt most comfortable being myself and I have gained so much because of this.

While I am still not where I want to be in my creative career, I definitely made some big steps in the past year that helped steered me in the right direction towards my goal. In the beginning of the year, my dream of becoming a unionized film production designer was put to a halt due to some trivial technicalities (long story…).  Looking back on it now, I’m actually glad this happened. For the first time, I felt my creative options opened up for me and I realized that even if I had a film degree, I didn’t necessarily need a film career with the big shots in order to fulfill my creative mojo. I just wanted to create and it was better for me at this point to create on my own terms and not under someone else’s direction. I further explored other creative outlets: my illustration, toy customizing and even stage production. The experiences I’ve had this year have been incredibly rewarding and I feel like I’ve grown a lot more doing what I’m doing now.

Earlier this year, I started participating in vinyl custom toy shows. I’ve shipped my little creations to various places in the States and they’ve been in gallery shows alongside many artists of my generation that I admired. Wouldn’t you know, I even sold my first vinyl custom at the IWG Humans Beware Custom Show! Even if I wasn’t able to attend the opening, still being able to share the experience of displaying my own custom for a show was wonderful. I’m making it a point to improve my sculpting skills so I can participate in more custom shows this year… and maybe perhaps design my own resin toys when I feel inspired enough!

2009 was also a great year for me to grow as an illustrator, especially when it came to erotic art. Earlier this year, I managed to score a solo art show for July, 2010 at one of my favourite sex shops in the city. To help inspire me to create more pieces for the show, my husband looked for a life drawing class so I could practice my human figure drawing. That is how we stumbled upon The Keyhole Sessions, an erotic life drawing class that has become one of my biggest muses. Not only did these sessions give me sketchbooks upon sketchbooks of amazing ideas for finished pieces as well as the discipline to pump out a ton of drawings on a consistent basis, it also gave me the opportunity to give back to the community by becoming a life drawing model for the class. Having grown up a pretty timid girl with body image issues (as I’m sure 99% of girls have also experienced), it was nice to be able to put all of that negativity behind me and celebrate my own sexuality in front of a room full of creative people. Tuesdays will always be the day I look forward to most thanks to the Keyhole Family!

One of my biggest accomplishments… also, my biggest WTF?! moment this year was being part of the creation and evolution of Repo! shadow casting. While I’m a total geek at heart and do enjoy cosplay, I never thought I would ever find myself prancing around on-stage like I’m some drag version of a broadway star. I used to avoid being under the spotlight (I get stage fright… even public speaking made me queasy), and yet a year ago I helped found the first Repo! shadow cast in the world… and became the first chick to ever shadow Paris Hilton in a movie. Sound geeky? It is. I became absolutely addicted to shadow casting this year and seemed to have caught up to all the school play experiences I missed in school, which included me running around in a dinosaur costume. I met some awesome people through the shadow casting network and I was also able to explore a rather extroverted part of myself that I didn’t even know existed. Crazy!

Other wonderful moments in 2009:

- meeting and interviewing my favourite artist Junko Mizuno for spankystokes.com
-  seeing my graphic design projected on massive movie screens and printed on giant canvas posters
- having Ashley Wood compliment my blog briefly after I did a fun photo shoot for a thread on the 3A boards (I should really join this messageboard soon…)
- being the subject of a documentary about the zombie culture in Toronto
- learning how to make fascinators
- registering Pretty Poopie as a business

And of course… getting married to my partner in crime.

Happy New Year everyone! Here is to a brand new decade! Now where is my flying car?…

Have I ever mentioned that I still love playing with toys? I love playing with toys. It never gets old. In fact, I highly recommend that you spend at least a couple of hours a week to play with toys. It relieves stress and keeps you young.

While you’re at it, check out Ashley Wood’s art. It is orgasm. Robots? Zombies? Sex? Yes please!

I’m on a real burlesque kick these days. Between making the fascinators and planning an upcoming burlesque show in January, I find myself drawing more and more scantily clad women doing the art of the tease. I’m also finding myself falling more and more in love with Copic markers.

Wait… did I mention an upcoming burlesque show? Why, yes! Yes I did! This will be my official burlesque debut! Details are still to come, but here is a little teaser drawing of the kind of geeky show I’m currently trying to cook up with fellow performers. I’m giddy just thinking of the possibilities!

Sometime last year I developed a rather unhealthy obsession with tiny hats and fascinators. I loved browsing through one-of-a-kind hats on Etsy and trying them on in craft shows. Once in a while, I treated myself with a fascinator or two if I found something that really fit my style. It’s so hard to find the perfect tiny hat for me, though. I always want a good balance of feathers and fluff, and a lot of the ones I keep trying on were either too loud or too plain. I wanted fascinators that stood out, but were also subtle enough to wear every day.

So I finally bit the bullet and made my first lame attempt at tiny hat making.

The first hat I made turned out to be better than I anticipated. Usually it would take me multiple trial and errors to get a craft project right since I was usually terrible when it came to sewing and using hot glue (I always end up burning myself and getting the hot goo everywhere!). This time however, despite a few technical errors at the bottom of the fascinator (I used a clip instead of a comb which didn’t hold on as well… lesson learned) my skull fascinator turned out to be quite adorable. I wear it almost every day! I especially love it since the fabric came from my old favourite purse that had unfortunately met its demise (there was a huge gaping hole at the bottom that just couldn’t be mended). There is enough fabric to make about six hats, so when I perfect my technique I will be making more to sell… then you can have a pretty skull purse fascinator too!

I finished my second fascinator today. Unfortunately, this was the only picture I have of me wearing it and it doesn’t quite show the details (I give you kisses to make up for it? Yes?). I will have to take another photo of it another time. I found this beautiful red fabric with black embroidered flowers in the bargain bin of a fabric store. I’m going to be wearing this on my birthday this weekend. 24 already? Yikes!