Giveaway! Botanical Art Note Cards and Matching Seals

It's giveaway time!

In honor of spring, I am excited to offer another give away, this time it's a set of 5 of my botanical note cards with matching botanical seals! The set includes the following illustrations:

• African Daisy
• Purple Cyclamen
• Daffodil
• Woodland Peony Seed Pod
• Tulip 

Along with each card, the winner will receive 4 matching botanical seals for a total of 20 seals! Three of the cards are "thank you" notes, and all of the cards are blank inside. These make terrific additions to your stash of note cards for thank yous, congratulations, birthdays or other greetings. The set also makes a lovely gift for the gardener, botanist or flower-lover in your life!

Each card is:

• 4" x 5.6"
  
• Printed on ultra-heavyweight (120 lb.) card stock with a gloss finish.
• Each card comes with a white envelope and is blank inside.

The seals are:

• 1.5" x 1.5"
• Gloss finish

To Enter

Leave a comment on this post with your name and contact information (email address or website/blog address is fine), by Thursday, May 26, at 12 noon (EDT), and I will use a random number generator to choose the winner. 

For extra chances to win, leave an additional comment here to tell me if:

• You already follow my blog OR you have become a follower
• You have posted about this giveaway on your blog (please include a link to the post)
• You have posted about this giveaway on Facebook or Twitter (please include a link to the post)
• You go to my Facebook page and "Like" it! Or, if you are already "liking" it.

All of these cards, seals and much more can be found at my Zazzle store. Please stop by for a visit!

Be sure to tell your friends about the giveaway!
And thanks for visiting!

Stickers and Preschool Presentation - How to tell 3-year-olds about drawing?

So today I did a presentation to my daughter's 3-year-old preschool class about drawing. 

How do you keep preschoolers interested in a short talk? Interactive and hands-on!

Ask Them Questions

I only had about 10 minutes, and so I did some back and forth questions and answers with the kids, asking about drawing, what they liked to draw with, etc. I told them what I like to draw, including houses, animals and flowers, and explained some of the materials I use. 

Give Them Something to Touch

While I was talking, I passed around different paper (rough drawing paper, smooth hot press watercolor paper) so that they could feel the difference, and I showed how a crayon mark looks different on each. I also passed around some printouts of drawings I have done.
 

I think the biggest hit, however, were the daffodils that I brought. I told them how I especially like to draw flowers and gave them each one to look at up close. We talked about what shapes they saw in the center or in the petals and how that is a good way to draw something - by looking at the shapes you see. They liked pulling them apart, of course. :)

Something to Take Home

I gave them each a small piece of the rough and smooth papers to take home along with some stickers (of my tulip, daffodil and camel drawings--yeah for Zazzle stickers!) and a coloring page of the one daffodil drawing so that they could color at home if they want. I figure that if they took nothing else out of the little talk, maybe they would have fun coloring later!

Overall, not a bad first attempt at presenting to young kids! I owe a big thank you to fellow Guild of Natural Science Illustrators (GNSI) members who gave me some great suggestions for making the presentation a success.
 

Have you ever presented your art or craft to young kids? How did it go?

New Stickers! Book plates for your personal library and more.

Do you ever lend your favorite books to family and friends and worry about getting them back? Consider adding personalized book plate labels!

I have created a whole line of library book plate stickers in several different shapes and designs. Zazzle recently added new sticker shapes including square, rectangle, oval, heart, star and triangle, and they are now 25% off through April 11, 2011.  Use code: STICKERSHAPE upon checkout. 

These would be great for special sets of books in your home or business such as cookbooks, art books, gardening books and more. Take a look!

Poinsettia in pen and ink

Happy Friday, all! 

This is a pen and ink drawing of a poinsettia that I did some years ago. It was done using a pointillism technique (applying many, small dots of ink to do the shading) and a thicker pen width. It's a little different from my usual style, but I like the overall effect.

UPDATE 2010: I have also created matching return address labels that can be customized with your information as well as a beautiful ceramic ornament, stickers, and stamps - all featuring my Poinsettia drawing. 

Have you entered my botanical note card giveaway yet? There are just a few more days to enter! 

The note cards would make a great little gift for yourself or someone else for the upcoming holidays.

Check out the details on how to enter and good luck!

Looking for a holiday card?

Are you looking for a unique holiday card? Consider a botanical art card that can be customized to include your holiday greetings. The American Holly above is available for ordering through my Zazzle page:
http://www.zazzle.com/ccreech21*

Cards are available in the traditional greeting card size or in a smaller note card size. Bulk order discounts (in as small a quantity as 2) are available, so the more cards you order the lower the cost per card. It's a great way to obtain distinctive cards this holiday season.

UPDATE 2010: I have also created matching return address labels that can be customized with your information as well as a beautiful ceramic ornament, stickers, and stamps - all featuring my American Holly painting.