It's a perfectly acceptable food item. It's just not a cupcake.

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This weekend I spent time hanging out with darling friends and family. Some of whom were kind enough to navigate the tricksy FODMAPs land (the land in which I currently live) and bring me some gluten-free, soy-free, dairy-free cupcakes so I could partake in a fine friend's birthday activities. It was such a sweet gesture, and I so appreciated it. But unfortunately there comes a time . . . when you're on a diet like mine . . . that you realize that what you're eating is not, in fact, a cupcake. It's good, and it's something that was baked and has icing on top and resides in a paper cup . . . But it's not a cupcake. It might be a muffin, or a paperweight. You're not exactly sure. It's even quite good, even though the icing is a little too hard to wash off your fingers. I learned this mistake my last birthday when I attempted to get a gluten-free, soy-free, dairy-free birthday cake for my birthday. I was so excited I couldn't believe I could still have birthday cake and eat it too! Half of that sentence ended up being true. I think the problem was that the bakery gave me the option of ordering different types of cake, so I picked yellow cake with chocolate icing. Going in and getting a dark brown cake with toffee icing wouldn't have been so weird if I hadn't been expecting a certain something. The fact that my party guests could stick a fork in said cake and it would take a good 45 minutes to fall out of it ... I'm just saying, much like the vegetarian fake meat manufacturers of the world (I'm looking at you, pepperphony!), the GF/SF/DF baking community might need a bit of rebranding. Let the gluteneers have their stupid cupcakes. I'm sure we could whip up something with almond flour that tastes way better anyway.

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Mantras

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I've developed a recent love of mantras. I used to think they were just stupid, silly sayings people stitched onto pillows or reprinted in greeting cards, applying no real meaning to the words more than "here, I've heard this before, so I'm passing it along". But since lately I've been listening to a LOT of Game of Thrones (re: this post), I noticed how several of the main characters have their own mantras. Whenever they're in trouble or have to endure some latest horrible hardship (which happens, like, every 10 minutes in Game of Thrones World), they always turn back to their mantra and repeat as necessary, and somehow it helps them get through.

Ned - "Winter is coming." Daenerys - "I am the blood of the dragon. If I look back, I am lost." Arya - "Quick as a shadow. Still as cool water." Cersei - "I am a lion." Theon - "I am iron born." Jon - "I am a man of the Night's Watch."

I find the idea of having a simple phrase, that means something that I want to remind myself of or inspire myself to do, oddly soothing. My friend Jessie always says "I can control the effort, but not the outcome". I haven't come up with anything yet, but these below are a good start.

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Happy New Yaaaar's!

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Happy end of 2012, everyone! I'd like to celebrate by sharing a few of the Christmas commissions I've been working on lately ...

Hairdresser_Pinup_MGallagher

Becky_OneDirection

Sailboat_Monkey_2

Now, a SPOILER WARNING for the images below ... as I've blathered on about before, I'm currently obsessed with Game of Thrones (on book 5 now, yippers!). My brother is too, and for Christmas wanted to do some drawings featuring the characters. BUT these may be a spoiler for anyone who is reading the books and isn't past Book 3 yet, so tread further at your own risk!

I decided I wanted to do a series of Game of Thrones SUPERTEAMS, so for now I've just drawn these two:

GOT_Hound_Arya

GOT_Jaime_Brianne

I have a bunch of ideas for other ones I want to do in the future. Why? Because -- OBSESSED!!

Anyway, I hope you all have a shiny glittery New Year's Eve tonight (I believe this is a night for as many sparkles and as much make-up as you want to wear, as is my custom). Catch y'all on the flipside!

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Gods & Undergrads Is Back!

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Hooray! Gods & Undergrads (my weekly webcomic about a girl at college and her Greek God relatives) resumes again today! I'll be posting a page a week, every Wednesday. Today there's a special block of pages to get the engines rolling!

Click here for the latest and here for an archive of everything so far!

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Gods & Undergrads Is Back!

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Hooray! Gods & Undergrads (my weekly webcomic about a girl at college and her Greek God relatives) resumes again today! I'll be posting a page a week, every Wednesday. Today there's a special block of pages to get the engines rolling!

Click here for the latest and here for an archive of everything so far!

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Selling Comics, Big Easy Style

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I'm currently reporting from a blank room full of piles of my belongings, hunkered down on two boxes of comics inventory. That's right, I'm all moved into my new home! Woo! Now, my next challenge is locating all of my stuff. And/or finding places to put them that make sense. At least my cats have come out of their litterbox, where they spent moving day smooshed together in mutual horror at the new enviornment and all the crashing around of the movers. It was the cutest truce I've ever seen in Kitty Land before.

Anyway, I wanted to take a minute to recap about my super great weekend trip to Wizard World New Orleans last week and share all the fun commissions I got to draw (if you follow me on Tumblr or Instagram, you were already inundated with these during the con!) Since I seldom do big shows I wasn't sure what to expect. Plus, being in New Orleans my table helpers/manservants were sure to be scarce at the very best (the lure of bloody mary's and the French Quarter is not something I would begrudge them succumbing to). WWNOLA was a nice, spacious con. It wasn't so choked with people that you had trouble getting around, yet there was a constant stream of attendees. Everyone I spoke to was incredibly enthusiastic and supportive about comics. Once again, as with other big shows like Baltimore Comic Con, I was pleased to see so many families there. Especially families who dressed up as teams of superheroes. I love the potential embarrassment of family superhero costumes, but honestly a lot of them were really pulling it off. Normally I don't get too jazzed about celebrity appearances either, but I have to say that walking in behind Kevin Sorbo and having Michael Madsen in my line of sight for most of the convention was pretty sweet. I wandered by the Walking Dead actors too, but sadly didn't get to glimpse any of the Star Trek folks. But hey - Patrick Stewart will be at Emerald Comic Con, so maybe I'll get another chance!

On to the drawings!

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Mad Guns, Right?

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Sorry everyone, but there won't be any Bonnie updates this week, since I'm trudging through my MOVING NIGHTMARE. Rookie House-Buying Tip: Don't schedule your move into your new house the weekend you get back from a wonderful comic convention in New Orleans. Just saying. But I'm pretending that my arm muscles have grown exponentially from all the graphic novels I've been hauling. MAD GUNS on these arms. Wait, are arm guns the biceps or the forearms?

Hopefully I'll be all hooked back up by the end of the weekend, but if not I might have some delirious blog posts from my phone. Thanks for bearing with me!

P.S. I finally saw The Dark Knight Rises, and Bane's voice was as deliciously theatrical and Sean Connery-esque as I'd been promised. Loved it! I mean, you have to figure he better EMOTE with that voice since there's shit all over his face. Am I right? Also, I did like Catwoman, but I'll post more later on that. In the meantime ... at Wizard World New Orleans I did this pencil sketch of Pepper Potts for a lovely woman in an Iron Man dress who didn't get to pick it up - please email me and let me know if this is yours!

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Mad Guns, Right?

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Sorry everyone, but there won't be any Bonnie updates this week, since I'm trudging through my MOVING NIGHTMARE. Rookie House-Buying Tip: Don't schedule your move into your new house the weekend you get back from a wonderful comic convention in New Orleans. Just saying. But I'm pretending that my arm muscles have grown exponentially from all the graphic novels I've been hauling. MAD GUNS on these arms. Wait, are arm guns the biceps or the forearms?

Hopefully I'll be all hooked back up by the end of the weekend, but if not I might have some delirious blog posts from my phone. Thanks for bearing with me!

P.S. I finally saw The Dark Knight Rises, and Bane's voice was as deliciously theatrical and Sean Connery-esque as I'd been promised. Loved it! I mean, you have to figure he better EMOTE with that voice since there's shit all over his face. Am I right? Also, I did like Catwoman, but I'll post more later on that. In the meantime ... at Wizard World New Orleans I did this pencil sketch of Pepper Potts for a lovely woman in an Iron Man dress who didn't get to pick it up - please email me and let me know if this is yours!

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Mad Guns, Right?

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Sorry everyone, but there won't be any Bonnie updates this week, since I'm trudging through my MOVING NIGHTMARE. Rookie House-Buying Tip: Don't schedule your move into your new house the weekend you get back from a wonderful comic convention in New Orleans. Just saying. But I'm pretending that my arm muscles have grown exponentially from all the graphic novels I've been hauling. MAD GUNS on these arms. Wait, are arm guns the biceps or the forearms?

Hopefully I'll be all hooked back up by the end of the weekend, but if not I might have some delirious blog posts from my phone. Thanks for bearing with me!

P.S. I finally saw The Dark Knight Rises, and Bane's voice was as deliciously theatrical and Sean Connery-esque as I'd been promised. Loved it! I mean, you have to figure he better EMOTE with that voice since there's shit all over his face. Am I right? Also, I did like Catwoman, but I'll post more later on that. In the meantime ... at Wizard World New Orleans I did this pencil sketch of Pepper Potts for a lovely woman in an Iron Man dress who didn't get to pick it up - please email me and let me know if this is yours!

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Happy Day!

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Yesterday was jam-packed with traveling back from New Orleans (more on the Wizard World New Orleans show later, I had a great time!), packing/moving more miscellaneous boxes of junk over to my new house (junk that for whatever reason I can't part with), and opening the pile of mail to find ...

Why, it's a copy of my book Glitter Kiss, written by the fabulous Adrianne Ambrose and published by the amazing Oni Press!! Hot off the presses!

I'm so excited to finally see it in print. It's a great size, and the designer did a beautiful job at putting all the pieces together. It's available for pre-order from Amazon, or it'll be out in a few weeks from your local comic store. Eeeeeee! I'm so thrilled to be part of this super cute book!

I'll stop grinning and go haul more stuff now. :)

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Happy Day!

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Yesterday was jam-packed with traveling back from New Orleans (more on the Wizard World New Orleans show later, I had a great time!), packing/moving more miscellaneous boxes of junk over to my new house (junk that for whatever reason I can't part with), and opening the pile of mail to find ...

Why, it's a copy of my book Glitter Kiss, written by the fabulous Adrianne Ambrose and published by the amazing Oni Press!! Hot off the presses!

I'm so excited to finally see it in print. It's a great size, and the designer did a beautiful job at putting all the pieces together. It's available for pre-order from Amazon, or it'll be out in a few weeks from your local comic store. Eeeeeee! I'm so thrilled to be part of this super cute book!

I'll stop grinning and go haul more stuff now. :)

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A Little George R.R. Martin Goes a Long Way

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Since I've been spending all my time cleaning, packing, trashing/recycling, and preparing for Wizard World New Orleans this weekend, it hasn't been the funnest time. Naturally when your life is in disarray and you know there's more stuff to do before you can rest, it's hard to enjoy the process. So I'd like to take a moment to thank George R. R. Martin and his A Storm of Swords (#3 in the Game of Thrones series) for being my constant companion during this time. Painfully going through old stuff and figuring out what stays and what goes is no longer a problem once I've plugged in my earphones (are we still saying "headphones" these days, or is that like saying "tape deck"?), loaded up my Audible app, and put my iPhone in my back pocket. It perfectly drowns out the vacuum, the sink, the sounds of my boyfriend's frustrated cursing as he dismantles IKEA furniture.

Oh yeah, and thanks also to Roy Dotrice, who does the amazing job of voicing the multitude of characters (even though I don't particularly like his Tyrion voice after seeing Peter Dinklage nailing the part on HBO.)

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Cyber Sale

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Okay guys, get excited for Monday ... becuase it's CRAY CRAY CYBER SALES MONDAY, what! So in the spirit of discounting, if you head to my Etsy Shop, you'll find 10% off (with the code "CYBERDEAL") and free shipping (with the code "CYBERSTUFF") on anything I've got over there. This INCLUDES ...

So head on over and see if there's anything you might fancy! :)

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Should It Stay or Should It Go Now

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I have to apologize in advance for the fact that most of my posts are probably going to be about moving for the next few weeks as I slog through transitioning all my piles of stuff (crap) to a new abode. It's brought up some questions, and I'd love to hear how other people treat packing/saving/donating/trashing when combing through the years of memories in their home. Here are some items that have me stumped on what to do with them:

  • Old dayplanners
    • Sure, they're out of date, but I would have to argue that they're still relevant. When I was in college, I used to keep monthly planners not for keeping track of my schedule, but for recording the minutiae of what I was up to day in and day out. And as pointless as it seems to look back and see "Tuesday, September 18th, 2003 - Pizza for dinner", I've found that it jogs my memory of who I was at that moment in time. Now, how to store them in a non-hoarders way? TBD.
  • Old sketchbooks
    • These are trickier for me, because I have trouble looking at past sketches I've made and seeing anything beyond DEAR GOD THAT'S HORRIBLE. Some old sketches/ideas are good depictions of an evolution of my style, I suppose, but I'm afraid a lot of it is just crap scribbled in a corner. Away with ye!
  • Comicsssss
    • So, so many comics. This applies to books in general, I suppose. How do you decide what stays and what goes? I guess you know if you truly love a book if you've already hauled eight boxes of the stuff and are still willing to lift the five more you just filled. Trades are much easier to transport than the floppies, though, which I'm embarrassed to say I have just floating around loosey-goosey, free of any board/bag system. Proper comics collectors, feel free to shame me.

How about you guys - what do you struggle particularly with getting rid of or figuring out where to store? I'd love to hear your thoughts! (and by that, I mean steal your expertise)

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Crazeballs

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I may not have mentioned this, but in the month of October, on my birthday in fact, my boyfriend and I casually went house hunting. We've been thinking of buying a house for a while now, but enough stuff had come up that we were at an impasse. i.e. The house we were in was perfectly fine to buy, we both had issues with the house we were in, I wanted to move to Portland, we both have jobs here, we both have friends here, etc. etc. But I guess after a few months of listening to the trials and tribulations two of my friends were going through in THEIR house hunting process, something crazy started to seep in, and ... we just up and bought a house too.

I'm not very good with big life decisions (or any decisions). Buying a house seems like one of those major life decisions that I'm not qualified to think about for a loooong long time. Or at least until I start acting like more of an adult. I usually don't have much patience for methodical research or hunting for the best deal. I want things to happen if they will, and if they don't, well then . . . I'm not meant to buy a house. Perhaps that's why most of my major life decisions happened very quickly and bulldozed all those walls I normally put up as roadblocks in the way of actually making a decision.

I'll go into the ridiculously fast process we went through to buy a house a little later, but for now I'm going to freak out about packing and moving and simultaneously getting ready for Wizard World New Orleans next weekend. WHICH is a roundabout way of saying that your 2nd weekly Bonnie comic will be up in a little bit! As well as some info on upcoming sales and projects!

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Granola Yums

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Sometimes it's hard for me to find good FODMAPs free snacks, so usually I'm stuck downing a handful of almonds when I get hungry. Which isn't the best thing all the time. So behold my amazement when I found a granola that wasn't only delicious and locally made BUT included ingredients I could actually eat!

Check it - the ingredients:

  • Organic rolled oats
  • Organic unsweetened coconut
  • Sunflower seeds
  • Organic pumpkin seeds
  • Pecans
  • Sliced almonds
  • Organic brown sugar
  • Organic flax seeds
  • Expeller-pressed non-GMO canola oil
  • Filtered water
  • Pure vanilla extract
  • Spices

It has been so hard for me to find something like this without honey (which I love, but is a FODMAPs no-no). Hooray for Michele's!

(and yes, I'm going to keep consuming pumpkin spiced things until someone physically forces me to stop)

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To Get a Giant Banner or Not To Get a Giant Banner?

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I've got a comic convention coming up reaaallllly soon (*ahem* in 2 1/2 weeks) and it's a big one. By big, I mean in a convention center, with "Wizard World" as part of the title of the show. As an indie creator, these shows can go one of two ways:

  1. No one notices you because you're not a name they recognize, so you sit and stare at your hands for the entire duration of the show
  2. Brave souls are willing to approach your table, ask you for sketches of their favorite superhero characters, and might actually purchase a book or two

Let's hope #2 is what happens. One of my main problems with big shows is the massive amount of visual stimulation EVERYWHERE. Not just people wandering around in wigs and bikinis (or, as I witnessed at my last show, a 60-year-old man in a loin cloth - WHERE DOES HE PUT HIS KEYS) but the huge banners, stands, and massive shelves of artwork screaming at you from every angle.

How is one creator (or anyone, really) supposed to compete with that?

From my years of exhibiting at shows, I've come up with a few different tricks to try to make my work both stand out, be well represented, but also give the customer a bit of room since they're already oversaturated with visual imagery (I covered some of my history with table displays a bit in this post). For the most part, I tend to lay my books out flat and try to space them out a little to give the customer some room.

It helps, though, if you don't have quite such a busy tablecloth. Soon after this, I switched to a simpler pattern, and added some zoned areas for my work. Boxes for comics, box for prints, display box for cuffs, jewelry tree for hanging prints.

I still wasn't too thrilled with the color of the tablecloth, but I liked where this was headed. My next big show, however, was Baltimore Comic Con, so in order to step up my game in order to compete with the height of booths around me, I added a wee bit of height.

The one thing I'm still really lacking in is one of those fancy-shmancy banners that people incorporate into their show tables. You know, the ones that look like this:

I've never gotten one, but lately I'm more and more tempted. At the very least, to give my table some large imagery that can be seen from far away and (hopefully) attract people to come over and say hi. It's too late to figure one out for Wizard World New Orleans in a couple of weeks, but I'm curious to hear from other comickers and crafters and tradeshowers out there - have you gotten one of these stand up display things? Worthwhile or not worthwhile? I've seen some SUPER crazy contraptions for propping giant banners up behind the table too, but they scare me a bit with their rickity-ness and the amount of time/skill it takes to put all the PVC's together.

Also, I'd love to hear opinions from any convention goers - do you like seeing banners or would you rather encounter a giant image-free zone every now and again at shows?

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