Today has been so blah. It's gray and rainy outside, which can sometimes make me feel cozy and productive, but not today. It's been a really hard month, and while for the most part I'm able to feel optimistic and hopeful, sometimes waves of sadness come that just wipe out everything else. It's really hard to draw when I'm feeling sad and even harder when I'm crying. So I've learned that sometimes I just have to go with it and make myself a nice cup of tea and sit down for a minute. 

I think this is the most cups of tea I've ever had in one day!

Hooray for candy!

As I was watching Project Runway yesterday I had to make a sudden Walgreens run. Whatever for, you ask? Nina Garcia's editorial skills seemed so amazing I had to snatch up the latest issue of Elle? The winning designer's model was blonde so I had to immediately bleach my hair? 

Nope... 

The designers had to make dresses out of candy. Candy wrappers, candy paraphernalia, and of course candy itself. 

How could I possibly watch the rest of the episode empty-handed?

I was doing pretty well until Christian started describing his dress, which was crafted entirely of Reeses Peanut Butter Cup wrappers. I've been on a bit of a peanut butter kick since Valentine's Day so at that point I just had to give in. To round it out nicely I added cherry-flavored Twizzlers, Jillian's dress material. Except when I got to the store they had Rainbow Twizzlers. Ooh la la! Even better!

...but they weren't better. Not even very good, actually. I ended up mostly feeling sick and regretting my decision. 

At least Mabel got her very own candy dress out of it!

Mabel Candy Couture, pen & ink, pencil, Reese's PB Cup wrapper, and blueberry Twizzler

Hope everyone has a happy weekend!

lots of love, Tabitha

family pictures...

Two new characters showed up in Little Storyland yesterday! They are linocut on rice paper with cut paper accents. They wanted to be presented as portraits, so I added little black frames courtesy of picnik.com:

Cousin Dudley + The Balloon

Baby Ivy

I've been trying to stay really busy around here, drawing, dreaming, basically staying in practice. I don't have a lot of babysitting jobs this week so I really want to take advantage of all this free time. In a few minutes I'll go eat lunch with Elizabeth and then this afternoon I shall be a busy bee.

 

Happy Wednesday, everyone!

signs of Spring

Even though Greenville, SC winters aren't that harsh, I'm completely ready for warmer weather. To just throw on a sundress in the morning... read books on the porch... not shiver when I wake up... it would be glorious. Here are some Spring-y things that are keeping me going in these last few days of cold:

the little onion who yearns to be a beautiful plant

the vagabond daffodils who showed up in my yard out of nowhere

the latest issue of Small magazine full of clothes I wish I could wear

I've been meaning to start a blog for a while. Most of my favorite blogs are on Typepad (The Black Apple, Angry Chicken, Posie gets Cozy) but since I can't afford a monthly fee I figured I'd at least start here!

So, hello. Please look forward to updates from Little Storyland!

with lots of love from Tabitha