2009 calendar. Naked. Almost.

Just finished posting my minimalist design calendar for 2009 as a printable PDF template. Once you purchase the listing, we email you the PDF file, and you can print out as many as you like. I set them up so that two months are on a single letter-sized page, so you just have to print on cardstock and cut them in half. Give them as gifts, or keep for yourself, or both. Print out on a nice textured cardstock, punch a hole in each one and tie with a ribbon and you've got sweet presents for like, wicked cheap.

Design-wise, each month has a corresponding color stripe that themes with that month's season, and each month the stripe moves one slot to the right. So January is far left, and December is far right.

I hope you like them, I certainly had fun designing them.

More pics on my Flickr .

DIY Totoro cards.

We've been on a Totoro kick lately, and the latest installment is this set of 4 printable Totoro holiday cards. They're up in our Etsy shop. Once you purchase the PDF, you can print as many as you like! Keep them for yourself, or give out to friends, or print up a set of 10 for a great gift. There are four different colors included, so you can mix and match. Each card template even has lots of helpful tips for the DIYer, like, "CUT HERE" and "FOLD HERE." And just a tip, folding works best if you either crease or score the fold line a bit. Makes for a much cleaner fold. 

They measure 5.5 x 4" and should fit most medium envelopes (not included).



I'm finishing up some linocut prints of the same illustration. Except these are limited edition, hand-carved and hand-printed cards. I only have the hats to print and then I'll post pics. I really like how they came out, the ink has a mind of its own. Pretty much the opposite of computer-drawn work. Except it started on the computer. Which makes me like it even more. I'm big on that whole computer/handmade/mush-em-all-together thing, if you haven't noticed.

AARGH. Stupid [fake] Leica!

Okay. So I thought I was all super clever when I purchased my first digital camera. 

I had used pro digital SLRs, but they were always owned by the company I was working for. Borrowing the camera for personal projects was never a problem, so I had no need to buy one myself. Now that I'm not working as a commercial photographer, last year I thought it about time to get myself a little something something. SLRs are great, but bulky, so I decided on a point-and-shoot which I could take with me on outings and trips and the like. But of course, I couldn't get just any P&S, I had to get a super-fancy one.

Here's the clever part. Leica create—in my opinion and many others—the greatest cameras. Period. I've wanted one for, ever. So when I was looking into Leica P&S cameras, I learned that Panasonic makes their digital cameras, using Leica components. So looking at the Leica D-LUX 3, you find the Lumix DMC-LX2. 

The Lumix DMC-LX2 to the left (the pic is silver, but my camera is black), the Leica D-LUX 3 to the right. They're the same camera. Except the Lumix is about $300 cheaper. And has a little grippy thing. Otherwise it has the exact same components. Same high-end Leica lens, same CCD, same image processing. Did I mention they're the same? And the Lumix is way cheaper? Not even like, similar. MADE BY THE SAME COMPANY(s).

So yeah. Love my LX2. Takes awesome photos. 

That's enough of that. For a P&S, it's amazing. Awesome lens. Optical image stabilization (meaning the lens floats a bit and corrects for camera shake to an extent). Manual focus. RAW files. Widescreen CCD (not just a cropped square CCD). 10MP. The list goes on and on.

Now, for the not so happy things. It doesn't do well in low light (the next model up, released after I bought mine, is supposed to fix this and everything else I have quips with). It tends to add noise and look "processed." So effectively I only use it at ISO100. This is mostly due to 10MP CCD on a P&S. More pixels is not necessarily better. In fact, smushing more pixels into a small CCD means less quality per pixel, overall. So, zooming in to 100% of an image can often reveal limitations. At typical viewing and printing size, none of this is an issue, because the image is resized down and you don't see the imperfections. BUT: when shooting product shots, like I do for Sunshine Cupcake, I get issues.

P&S macro is hit and miss. They tend to have a longer minimum focal distance. Meaning, the camera and lens need to be further away from the subject before it can focus clearly than an SLR with a larger lens needs to be. So getting up close and personal with little clay dudes or buttons 1" tall means I have to set up my tripod (no problem), zoom in to the maximum optical zoom of 4x, and then still be over a foot away from the product. So I end up getting a little bitty button in the middle of a huge frame. Case in point:

Which when cropped, becomes this:

This does not a happy Nathan make. It's okay, and shows the product, and is better than nothing. But I will enjoy the day when we sell enough to warrant the purchase of a good ol' SLR, and keep my LX2 on my hip, where it belongs.

Meet Gaspar, the Day of the Dead Glow-In-The-Dark Skull

Gaspar the Day of the Dead Glow-In-The-Dark Skull (cropped), originally uploaded by alienate.

In case you haven't noticed, we sunshine cupcakers love pretty much everything associated with Halloween including skulls. Initially, I made myself a cute little skull out of glow-in-the-dark sculpey but wanted to make something more colorful and "over the top." These days, you see skulls just about everywhere, even on your toast,
so, I did a little research about sugar skulls (calaveras de azúcar.) Sugar skulls are made in celebration of the Day of the Dead (Dia de los Muertos) which takes place the day after Halloween. Visually speaking, they're basically the drag queens or showgirls of the undead (in a word: gaudy or.. amazing).
Unfortunately, I lack both patience and supreme sculpey skills, so Nathan ended up doing most of the details (ok, all of them. I just made the skull itself.) The coolest part is the "bone" of the skull and the teeth glow in the dark! Grab Gaspar in our etsy store.

Our first sale(s)!

This is a big day for us sunshine cupcakers! We made our first and second etsy sales, four items sold in all!

It's a little sad for us as our babies leave the nest, but we know they're going to good homes.