Ninja November 11th, 2009
My inbox and I are grinning!
Anne and Callie are the mother and daughter quilting team from South Australia who made this amazing, amazing quilt inspired by my First Kiss print.
Just look at that intricate stitching!
Thank you, Anne and Callie, for sharing your beautiful work!
Related postsNinja April 6th, 2009
I just received a friendly email saying that my Daydream Believer and First Kiss prints are featured on the blog, postersandprints. What a pleasant surprise and a great way to start my Monday!
Thanks, postersandprints, for showing some NvP love! ^__^
Ninja April 6th, 2009
NvP reader, Pernille, was inspired by my First Kiss illustration process and painted her room to match! How cool is that?
Thank you so much for sharing your photos, Pernille! I can’t wait to see how it looks when you’re all finished.
Related postsNinja February 8th, 2009
NvP reader and friend, Tiffany Nelson, creates custom pendants using old coins. Here’s my First Kiss illustration on an Australian 50 cent coin.
Thank you, Tiffany! I adore it!! ^__^
Purchasing link
+ Share your thoughts with Tiffany & have her create a custom pendant for you
Ninja January 21st, 2009
In one week, I got emails from 3 brides-to-be, 2 bands, and 1 curious student all asking:
Q. How did you create the swirls in your First Kiss Illustration?
First Kiss
A. I drew all the paths using Adobe Illustrator’s pen tool—no fancy shortcuts. This was before I discovered the handy swirl tool. I would endlessly tweak and make many trips to my local Kinkos for large-format prints.
Now, I wouldn’t leave you hanging. Here’s my tutorial on making swirls and curls in Adobe Illustrator. It does require basic knowledge of the pen tool. If you’re not familiar with the pen tool, the University of Massachusetts Amherst has a great pdf guide and practice exercises here.
And for the truly pressed, I’ve included links to free vector swirls and curls at the end of this post. Now, on with the tutorial.
Click and hold down the mouse on the Line tool to reveal the other tools. Select the Spiral tool.
Click and drag outward. If you’re a bit of a control enthusiast, you can also click on your art board, and a Spiral Options window will appear. Here, you can enter the spiral radius, decay, spiral segments, and spiral direction. I’m using the default 80% of decay, 10 segments option.
Using the Direct Select tool (white arrow), you can choose points and drag them outward to alter the spiral’s decay. Or as mentioned above, you can change the decay in the Spiral Options window.
Set the stroke weight to 10 pts.
Object > Path > Outline Stroke
I like to work in outline mode, so I can see stray points more easily and then delete them. To access Illustrator’s outline mode, hit ⌘ + y. If you’re on a PC, substitute the ⌘ symbol for the Ctrl key. To exit outline mode, hit the same key combination again.
Once in outline mode, use the Direct Select tool to choose points and drag them to alter the line weight of your swirl.
Related postsNinja May 29th, 2008
I recently received an email from a lovely lady from Canada. She mentioned that she found us through a Google image search for the word, “kiss.” That got me wondering, so I too did a search and discovered that our image for First Kiss is number one and the First Kiss process sketch is number two on the Google image search. Wow… we even beat out the band, Kiss.
Penguin May 7th, 2008
Russell is the first to give First Kiss a home in Australia. Thanks to Russell for the order!
-Penguin
Related postsPenguin May 3rd, 2008
Went to the USPS to drop off First Kiss this morning and I’m glad to say that it’s on its way to a new home in Ireland. 
After a few hiccups yesterday about 24 inch tubes, everything went smoothly.
Thanks, Thomas and enjoy the print!
-Penguin
Related postsPenguin May 2nd, 2008
Man, what a frustrating day. I went to the USPS to ship off First Kiss to Ireland and was told that shipping would be $20 USD. Which really surprised me because Sweden was $9 USD. The clerk told me it was because my tube was longer than 24 inches. I left, trying to think of some solutions.
As a lark, I stopped by UPS to see how much it would be. They wanted to charge me $80 USD. My eyes almost fell out of my face! The $20 started sounding really reasonable.
I got home, called up Fedex Kinkos to see if they had any shipping tubes that were 24 inches. They said they had. But when I got there, they were the same size as our current tubes. They did have a smaller tube that measured 18 inches, but it had an internal length of 16 inches. Considering First Kiss is 18×24, there was no way it was going to fit. Ninja was kind enough to call two different Staples, but none of them carried tubes of the appropriate size.
As I was sitting around, I realized that I DID have 24 inch tubes. All I had to do was cut off 2 inches of the current tube. I pulled out my trusty Dremel and hacked off 2 and a half inches, just to be sure.
After an hour or so of running around and racking my brains, the print is packaged and ready to ship to its new home in Ireland.
-Penguin
Related postsPenguin May 1st, 2008
In honor of Mother’s Day, First Kiss is going on sale for all of May. Now you can have this limited edition, individually numbered and signed print for $25 with free shipping. That’s a savings of over 20%!
Shipping takes about 2-5 days (in the continental US) from New Jersey, so please place your order in time for Mother’s Day.
Related postsLimited edition lithograph prints. Signed + numbered.
