December

Wow, thanks to all of you who came out to my 3 events last weekend! 3rd Ward was full of cool people ready to get their holiday shopping on and turned out to be a record selling day for me, even in this economy! Working a busy craft show while nearly 7 months pregnant really tuckered me out, but luckily Chris was there to help me man the table. Somehow, when we got home, I found the energy to forgo our usual post-craft show celebratory Thai takeout and COOK. Don't know how I managed that, but soon after I was glued to the couch with my now constant companion, the hot water bottle.
This weekend is the first since September that I don't have to do much of anything. It feels wonderful. Today we'll probably drive to Target and pick up a humidifier for my constantly stuffy nose (I never knew that was a pregnancy symptom!), then maybe check out some open houses (we're looking to move into a bigger place next year). I hope all of your weekends are restful and cozy.

Happy Thanksgiving and some upcoming events...

I hope everyone had a restful and calm Thanksgiving and a safe Black Friday.
We've just returned from Thanksgiving Round One and are headed off to Thanksgiving Round Two tomorrow! In the meantime, I wanted to let you New Yorkers know about three upcoming events next weekend where you'll find me hauling around my 6-months-pregnant belly while attempting to look dainty and elegant.
First, on Friday night, there's the third installment of Too Art for TV. I'll have three "animal family portrait" paintings for sale. A detail from the first, tentatively titled "The Bigelows", is pictured above.
On Saturday night, for all of you music lovers, Chris and I will be playing together at one of our favorite joints, Banjo Jim's. It'll be mostly Chris, but I'll hop in on two songs, I think.
Finally, on Sunday, I'll be peddling all sorts of goodies from the shop at 3rd Ward's Handmade Holiday Craft Fair. I did this fair last year and it was a lot of fun. Come on by and bring some canned food or old clothes to donate, they'll be bringing it all to local shelters.
So there you have it! I expect this is my last big social hurrah before I hunker down for a long, pregnant winter of resting up and preparing for our girl's arrival. So come on out, I'd love to see you!

New Tees!

Today was sunny and mild, perfect for taking pics of my new long sleeve Robo Tees, modeled by Chris. I was making him laugh by imitating one of the judges from Dancing with the Stars.

Pumpkins

Yesterday Chris and I drove over to a friend's house to carve pumpkins and have a drink (chocolate soy milk for me, sangria for everyone else). After that, we drove up to a little town north of the city and went to a drive-in movie. I need to do both of these much more often.

Family Portrait

I'm supposed to be exercising right now, but wanted to post this quick. Last weekend I made a preliminary sketch for the first in a series of three paintings for an upcoming gallery show. I was working on paper for awhile but was having a lot of trouble getting into "the zone", so I switched to my Wacom tablet and found it freed me up.

Crocs!

Thanks to Sarah for pointing out this cute treasury in which we're both featured. I'm amazed to even be in a treasury these days, when I have so little time to devote to the shop. Besides still working on Turtles, I've got three paintings to complete by December 1st for a cool gallery show, and a few accordion appearances with this guy scattered over the coming months.
Oh, and I'm 5 months pregnant! The blog is always the last to know.

Robo Tags!

I have an unexpected few precious days off from my main gig these days, and am enjoying them thoroughly. As you can see, I've already been up to a little product development for Holiday 2008! It's sooo nice to be able to draw my own stuff again. Making a living as an artist is such a delicate balance for me. I need freelance work for the camaraderie and drawing practice, but after a few months, I really miss this: my dad's old drafting table, watching the Circle Line gliding by on the East River, my paints, some snacks, This American Life playing, the cats snoozing nearby. Anyway, these will be up in the shop later today. Hope you like them as much as I do!

Road Trip

Oh, it's been a long time since I visited the MamaRobot blog. I'm always over at the other blog, listing yummy new shops for y'all to find. But I've popped in to share some neat pics from the road! Chris and I recently flew out to Colorado to pick up a car, then drove it back. I will choose a road trip any day over flying, and this trip was a blast as usual. I think all of these were taken in or very near Indiana.
My August was absolutely swallowed up by freelance work! And as soon as I turned in the last design, it was road trippin' time. And now that THAT's done, I'm looking forward to having a peaceful fall spent wrapping up my main freelance gig and opening up my schedule even more so I can get back to my poor neglected shop. Poor little thing's still trucking along, but is in dire need of new products!

Sunday Night

It's about bedtime on Sunday night after a busy weekend with family. My mom has a really great juicer and treated me to a carrot/spinach/ginger blend Saturday and Sunday mornings. The air out in the country smells soooo good. And it's sooo green and quiet and calm. I'm always happy to be back home, though. Especially when Cinder is so excited at our return she meows in between bites of her dinner. (Or is she scolding us for being away all weekend?) Above are pics of a store window I happened by. Is that a recycled pool ball bracelet?! Alas, they were closed.
Before I hop into bed I wanted to thank the wonderful Justine for featuring one of my Robot Toddler Tees in her cool Etsy Gems blog. I'm flattered to be in the company of such gorgeous products!

Giraffe Tags

One of my purchases from last weekend's craft store shopping spree was a tag cutter. And here's my first tag project! Making gift tags is a great way to make use of my growing pile of "dud" cards - greeting cards with a bent corner, an errant dot of ink, or some other flaw that makes the card un-sellable. For this tag, I made a quickie watercolor painting of a giraffe (my Audubon Guide to African Wildlife is great for inspiration, when all else fails!), scanned it, shrunk it down to tag-size, printed it out (on the blank back of the "dud"), and finished it off with some cute pepperminty baker's twine from one of my fave Etsy people, Karen from SchoolLocker. The first finished set of 8 is freshly listed in the shop now!
I also wanted to thank Emily from Subu for featuring my Robot Onesie in her cool blog. I love her other selections, too!

He Ram!

It's been woefully long since I drew anything for myself (as opposed to drawing for a certain show about turtles that happen to be ninjas, teenage, and also mutant). This is a wedding present for my brother and sister-in-law. Let's just say this goat became famous by the end of our time in Tortola, and I promised I'd immortalize him. (No, we didn't eat him).
It looks like it will be a rainy 4th of July weekend, and we kicked it off with a trip to Michael's. I picked up a few goodies (how can you go there and NOT buy something?) and then, as we stood in line, a nice couple behind us gave us a 50% coupon! How cool is that? That random act of kindness saved us $8.50!
Hope you all have a restful and fun weekend!

Sunday

Just got back from a trip to Home Depot and our local Japanese supermarket, where Chris bought miso paste for a walnut miso sauce he wants to make, and I snapped a pic of these angry (and satisfied?) sponges. I think they're sponges.
It's the start of week 3 of my plan to get 8 hours of sleep a night, and so far I feel much better. Some nights I don't quite get to bed on time, but I've had at least 7 hours of sleep every night, and most nights I get the full 8. I read something about how, when you don't get enough sleep, it really exacerbates that feeling of not having enough time to get things done. That seems true for me...I feel less "crushed". I hope it lasts. I'm going to keep trying.

Breakfast with the bun

"Do I have something in my teef?"

Stormy

Oh, how I love a big storm.


Stayed home sick today, but worked steadily. Went to the doctor to see if I had strep. I don't. He's doing some tests on my blood to see if there's some reason I've been getting sick so much. In the meantime, I've got to force 8 hours of sleep per night on myself. It's going to be hard to fight what I call the "midnight creepies". That's when, at midnight or later, I suddenly get a burst of energy. It's quite a productive couple of hours actually. Anyone have a cure for the midnight creepies?

Brrr!

Uh, it's going up to 94 degrees today here in NYC. I tried to explain that to these polar bears. But they just were itchin' to get listed. I just couldn't say no to that face.

Back in New York

We just got back in town after nearly a week on a tiny island called Tortola, where we watched my brother get married to a lovely person who I'm thrilled to now call my sister. Since every person there had a minimum of one camera and was determined to not let a moment of the big day go by undocumented, I focused on capturing some local color, like this woolly beach doggie. On our flight back we were upgraded to business class (yay!), while our suitcase stayed for an extra night in Miami (boo.) Now I'm busy tackling a small mountain of orders back at home. It's wonderful to see so many of you treating your husbands and dads to a card or gift for Father's Day. I hope they love them!

Been a little while...

It's late Monday night and I'm feeling quite tired after a weekend of selling at Artists and Fleas, then back to my freelance job this morning, then out to Long Island for dinner with my best friend before she heads off to boot camp. The dinner was lovely...is there anything better then gabbing with your best friend over pasta and wine? Now I'm off to bed, but I had to duck in here to let you all know there's a sale on in the shop. If you know any babies, stock up on onesies for 25% off!
Above is a peek in the window of some sort of historical house I walked past while visiting my mom for Mother's Day. That's right, I peek in windows and take pictures!

It's heeeeeere!

I'd finally outgrown the basic accordion Chris bought me to learn on, so this weekend, we picked out this beauty. Chris brought it home yesterday. Isn't it pretty? Look at all these buttons:
Off to practice!

New Painting!

Here's a detail from the painting I mentioned in my last post. You can see the whole thing here.
I've spent the last 4 days visiting every family member I have within a 100 mile radius. I didn't plan such an intense family visiting schedule, but somehow it worked out that way. Some of them really needed to be visited. Now I'm back at home and waiting for something very exciting. It arrives tonight, around 6:30.

Thursday

Things were so busy a couple of weeks ago. I was rehearsing a lot of accordion for an important show, preparing for a craft fair, and trying to make an unlikely deadline at work. Now that the dust has settled, I realize I never posted an interview I did with The Indie Path. If you ever wondered about the origin of the name "MamaRobot", go check it out.
Today I am going to ship out 3 orders from yesterday, make a new painting that I roughed out yesterday, and bake a key lime pie. I think I'd better do the pie first, so it has ample time to "gel". Or is it "jel"? Jellify. It needs to jellify.

This is cooool

This was so weird and cool. The Olafur Eliasson exhibit at MOMA included a whole area lit by yellow lights, making everything in the room monochromatic. The yellow lights disrupted our eyes' ability to see other colors. Isn't that wild, that an artist can do something that affects your ability to see? I had to snap a pic of my vibrant red and blue camera pouch just to show how, for a moment, everything lost all color. If you're a parent, I recommend this exhibit for your little ones ... we saw a lot of them having a pretty good time.

And another...

It's a lovely chilly gray day. Chris is strumming away on the ukulele, waiting till I'm ready for our Sunday afternoon museum date. Above, one more cutie robot card added to the shop. This one would be good for Father's Day, I think. And that concludes my weekend work. Hope your Sunday afternoons are all relaxing and calm.

A little Something New...

I got a wholesale order for some cards with the design from this onesie, so I decided to make a few extra and list them in the shop. I like how spare and simple the design looks on a card. They'd look even better with matching orange-red envelopes, which I plan to look for on my next trip to Jam Paper. Until then, I'm pairing them with simple white ones. Anyone else making stuff this weekend?

A Day Off

Finally, a tiny bit of time off! I spent the first day of my mini-break figuring out how to get to the pedestrian path on the 59th Street Bridge.
It took a lot longer than I thought. But the view was so nice.
I took the tram on the way home so I could ride right past where I'd been walking. See?

Earth Day

Thanks to everyone who came to visit the MamaRobot table at the Go Green Greenpoint event. It was wonderful to meet you all, and all of your cute babies and cute doggies! (I mean, twin bulldogs? Are you kidding me?)
I won't have much time for craft shows for awhile, so I was thrilled that the only one I signed up for went so well. The weather was perfect - the first really warm, summery weekend day. Chris and I decided to make our day infinitely easier by using a car service to get there and home. And one of my main goals was accomplished - to move some of the products that don't sell too well online for one reason or another. (like Froggy, for example.) Craft Fair Day ended with the obligatory take-out food and video rental (we saw Me and You and Everyone We Know. Thumbs up!)
I hope all of your weekend plans went off just as wonderfully!

Piggie!

I am so glad this week is over. It was not the best of weeks, that's for sure. But today it's warm, the cherry blossoms are out, and Chris just made the most delicious lemon soup. And look, a piglet on a onesie! So many people asked if my pink piglet onesie came in other colors, I finally created a more, uh, "gender-neutral" version. And I'm just so in love with the shade of American Apparel's organic cotton. Makes a lovely canvas for bright colors. Hope you like it, too!

New Shirts!

The new shirts arrived Friday night, and today Chris and walked around, taking pictures of each other wearing them. After testing out a few backgrounds, we ended up modeling in the parking garage across the street while a bunch of kids skateboarded around us.
Check out all of the pics in the shop!

Front Page!

Many thanks to Pogoshop for featuring me in a red hot treasury, and to Kimmchi for letting me know I was on Etsy's front page. It's the perfect time for me to put up some new listings, which I'll be doing throughout the weekend. Here's the first!

Sunday afternoon

Chris and I spent another Sunday afternoon at MOMA, this time viewing the Color Chart exhibit. I came away feeling like it's very important as an artist to brand yourself, to have a technique or idea that you invented, and to stick with it, in ever-evolving forms. And that's what people will remember you for.
Tonight I'm making tons of prints and cards in preparation for the first of many spring craft shows. Next weekend I'll be busy listing new apparel in the shop. In adult sizes! I can't wait to see what people think of the new designs. Stay tuned, and enjoy your Sunday evening wind-down.

New Print

I just finished this cutie this afternoon. People have told me in the past that they intend to hang my prints in their bathrooms. I'm not at all offended by this - after all, some people spend a lot of time in there...contemplating, relaxing, beautifying. It may be the best viewing place in the house! So I made an especially bathroom-appropriate print just for you.
Now I'm off to see my tax man/good friend for the painful news of how much I owe the government, buffered by the fun of seeing my friend. Happy Thursday!

New Painting!

It felt so good to finally do some painting after focusing on music for the last week. Above is a detail from my brand new painting for sale in the shop. I've made some prints as well. They're smaller, but they came out really nicely. My Fancy New Printer reproduces watercolors beautifully. I wish I could paint another one today, but I need to do my taxes. Well, not really DO them, just prepare my receipts and paperwork for my good friend Jon, whom I've known since the 3rd grade and is now an accountant/lawyer/financial planning superstar. The scary envelope bursting with receipts is staring me down right now...
*Edit: The painting was snatched up, but there are still prints of it to be had!

Happy Spring

This is where Chris and I spent the first day of Spring. Frasier, Colorado. Elevation, 9000. Population, around 2000. Here's where we stayed:
Watch out for those icicles!
Well, I'm back at sea level in New York, where it's a balmy 35 degrees today, and excited to paint up some new designs for the shop. I've let some of my less popular items expire, so the store is down to a scant 35 items. Not good! Hopefully by the end of the week it will be at least 40 or more! Happy Spring, everyone.

The List

The Etsy Mini Blog isn't really a blog in the traditional sense, rather it takes the blog code and tricks it out to become a very fun search tool for Etsy shops in every category you could imagine. (chainmaille, anyone?) And lookee what's on the front page right now...my Woodland Tea painting! Which reminds me of how I have a bunch of painting ideas that I'd really like to do. Which reminds me of my mammoth List. The List is in the next room, but I don't have to look at it to know what's next on it: filing my New York State quarterly taxes. And so of course I'm updating my blog first. Wouldn't you?

Monday morning update

For the first time in months, new MamaRobot products are on their way! Above is a brand new onesie design I busted out over the weekend. And, for the first time ever, I also drew a little something for ADULT sizes! So, if you've been wanting to look as cool as your little baby looks in this, check the shop in the coming weeks!
Before I zoom off to the post office, I wanted to thank the Trendy Tots Blog for featuring my Mama and Baby Elephant card. I thank you, and the elephants thank you.

Saturday night

The wind is making scary, thunderous noises outside, and has already blown a styrofoam cooler off our balcony and out of sight. Chris is camped out on the couch with a fever. I'm catching up on work in the next room. I couldn't find a bell, so I've placed the thumb piano next to him. When I hear a plinkity-plink-plink, I'll come running.
The picture above is from MOMA's current "Design and the Elastic Mind" exhibit. It was really fun and had some crazy concepts, but a bit too crowded for us to see everything, so we'll go back in a week or two.
Finally, thanks to Jason of JJMFinance for featuring me in his blog. Go and read all about the business side of running the 'bot shop!

Prints

I've been spending my Sunday morning getting to know my fancy-shmancy new printer, and feeling a bit like Bart Simpson in that episode where he trades in his racetrack-rescue dog for a fancy purebred superdog, only to find the purebred is very high maintenance. But I'm beginning to learn how to coax Fancy Printer to print, and the results are very, very nice.

Front Page!

It's been a super-busy and stressful week for Chris and I, so we decided to spend Saturday night at home. And look what I was home to see: my Robot Toddler Tee on Etsy's front page! Thanks to DirtGirlPottery for featuring me in her treasury.

Toy Fair!

My first opportunity to attend Toy Fair was this week, and I had one of those moments where you think, "Ah, this is where I belong." As my both my mom and Chris know, one of my favorite activities is to walk into a store with lots of little things, and proceed to pick each thing up, inspect it, and then put it back. I was doing a lot of that at Toy Fair, although it is sometimes frowned upon since I am not a retailer. Also, I accidentally derailed Thomas the Tank Engine. One of my friends tried to set him back on track, but Thomas had disconnected from the cars he was towing and only looped around to head-butt into them. Anyway, I managed to get a picture of the tiny town around the train tracks before we non-chalantly walked away.

Tuesday at the Parkside Lounge

During the last 2 months of juggling the store and my full-time freelance gig, you would think I have no free time left. But oddly enough, it's my music that feels like the center of my life right now. I'm playing more shows with Chris than ever and getting tons of good feedback. My stage fright is a little bit less intense with each show, and I'm really beginning to enjoy it more than I ever thought I would. I think fate linked me up with a musician husband so that I could be coaxed into discovering something that feels so new and wonderful.

Sunday Evening

Working full time for the past two months has definitely made our weekends a lot more weekend-y. Today Chris and I wandered around MOMA for a few hours with nothing on our minds except what we saw. I brought along my new tiny Canon Powershot to test out. So far, I love it. Pictured above is an installation consisting of a fabric igloo on a bed of twigs with neon numbers. I wonder what would have happened if I crawled in there and took a nap?