Give careful thoughts to your ways

Been thinking about this these past few days....

Doodle of the day: Kawaii Goth Chick

Hi! I've been working on this doodle for awhile and only managed to complete it sometime last week. Here's the original doodle, scanned using my old Dell scanner.

And here's the image taken using my digital camera.

Notice the obvious differences between the two? Yup, the one taken using camera has vivid colors except for the background whereas the scanned image is overall paler. I love both versions but decided to use the second image on my Zazzle merchandise. Here are some samples...

 Kawaii Goth Chick Throw Kawaii Goth Chick Compact Kawaii Goth Chick Notebook Kawaii Goth Chick Shirt Kawaii Goth Chick Messenger Kawaii Goth Chick Kid

Here's the link to my shop: Sorta Artsy @ Zazzle. Thank you for visiting!

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Bye-bye Squidoo

Recently Seth Godin (the owner of Squidoo.com) announced that Squidoo will be merged with Hubpages.com. Meaning they will close down Squidoo for good and all good and quality content (whatever that means) they have on the site will be transferred to Hubpages. The rest will be deleted. I don't know what to say. I have been on Squidoo for a couple of years and I liked that platform. I earned around $4K during Halloween-Christmas season by promoting stuff via that platform. But things had changed. And the changes weren't positive at least to many lensmasters, me included. I won't tell you here about all the issues we had there, you can google the info yourself. Enough for me to say that I quit using it since May 2013 but I still earned some passive income through some of my articles there. Now that Squidoo is closing down I've been busy transferring my articles to my own website - anaisfaves.com. I will be busy doing this for now and have less time to devote to this blog and art...sigh...it kinda sad this has to happen. I truly love that platform and so did many others, thousands of others. I guess it's an end of an era. Many lensmasters had moved on to greener pastures and so do I.

We officially homeschooling

We decided to stop enrolling our daughter at her school simply because she falls sick so often and the sickness spread to her baby brother. She was running a fever on Wednesday last week and was out from school for 2 days. My hubs and I had a talk over the weekend and we made the decision to pull her out from school. On Saturday the baby fell sick too. It was a hard decision because she has many friends in school and is quite popular in class. She is naturally friendly and bubbly even among strangers. We told her about the decision and she is ok about it but I am kinda a bit sad. The reason why we enrolled her was because I was having a baby and I was afraid she feel left out because I was busy attending to her brother's needs. So we thought sending her to school would ease the transition of having a new sibling. We didn't expect that she would fall sick so often...I know she is developing her immune system but I just couldn't cope with having to care for sick children all the time...and hardly have time to do my work...it's driving me crazy. So we pulled her out. She is yet to say good bye to her friends but we will bring her there when we go to collect some books the teacher had order. Perhaps we will bring some goodies for them. Just thinking about this makes me sad...

Anyway we have started homeschooling her this week. Nothing rigid. Just a couple of workbook activities, reading, coloring. I still need to gather some materials for her science projects. We gonna have fun just a little bit lonely without her peers. Sigh. I will talk more about our homeschooling progress but for now here are some pics of her doing her 'school work' this week.

Doodle of the day progress and coloring contest

Hi! I had awesome day coloring using a new medium - fluorescent pastels! Yay! This is my first time using this medium and I kind of enjoying it because it is great for background colors and blending. Here's my artwork for today - save the planet!

Still in progress. I enjoyed it!

Still not complete yet!

I mentioned about the latest Dover Coloring Contest in previous posts but I have not decide on my entry. I looked through some of my work and honestly they aren't satisfying. So I decided to start fresh using a brand new coloring book (yep, I mentioned about using my Tattoo Coloring Book, but decided to change to this one) - Paisley Designs Coloring Book! I haven't pick a design but probably will do it tomorrow, when the kids are napping, of course.

Front cover

Back cover

My submission for Dover Coloring Contest

I am thinking of submitting this piece (below) for the latest Dover coloring contest...and perhaps work on a page from my Tattoo Coloring Book. So far I have colored several pages on that book but not quite satisfied with the outcome. So we'll see if I have extra time to spare to work on it.

Here's the one I plan to submit, taken from Dover Steampunk Coloring Book.

Here are the pages from my Dover Tattoo Coloring Book:

Not so satisfying aren't they?

Dover Coloring Contest

Ever heard of Dover Coloring Contest? Well if you are a fan of Dover coloring books I am pretty sure you have heard of it but if you are not, well basically Dover Publication would run several coloring/crafts contests in a year and each contest has different theme. You must use a Dover coloring page if you want to participate and it is not just for kids but for adults as well...yay! Now, if you are not familiar with Dover Coloring Books, you might think they are boring and just for young children...you are wrong! Dover has so many cool coloring books suitable for adults or avid colorists. Here are some examples:

 Creative Haven Art Nouveau Animal Designs Paisley Designs Coloring Book (Dover Design Goddesses Coloring Book (Dover Coloring Books) A Walk in the Woods (Dover Coral Reef Coloring Book (Dover Nature Angels Coloring Book (Dover Coloring Books) Creative Haven Mehndi Designs Coloring Book: Pinwheel Designs (Dover Design Coloring Books) Old-Fashioned Farm Life Coloring Book: Nineteenth

There are so many other cool books for you to buy there including Manga coloring book! Now, back to the coloring contest. I will participate in the latest contest. The theme is Creative Boost. You can see it here and if you want to participate you can get a free sample here. Also you can submit your work as many as you like, there is no limitation I think. I will update you more on my participation, stay tune!

Doodle of the day: Kawaii Angry Boy

Hi, today I gonna share my latest doodle - kawaii angry boy. I have been working on this series of doodles since last year but I took a break due to a difficult pregnancy that made me unable to work for few months. And now that my baby is here (he's 6 months old already), I am looking forward to work on them, probably add more characters to the series. So here is the first character - kawaii angry boy. It is features on several merchandise at Zazzle. Here's a link to it: Kawaii Angry Boy @ Zazzle.

The original artwork:

Some products on Zazzle:

Persecuted Iraqi Christians

I have been following the news of massacre of Iraqi Christians in Mosul (Nineveh). I am a Christian and the horrific persecutions these Christians are facing is beyond words. Since ISIS took charge of Mosul they have been giving ultimatum to the Christians - recant your faith and convert to Islam or die. Many decided to die and they were slain like animals, beheaded. I haven't done a thorough reading on this but I wonder what did the Christians did to justify such holy killings? I am praying for the Christians in Mosul and I am praying for ISIS too. It's clear this is definitely the works of the devil and ISIS is just the tool it used to spread hatred and violence.

This character is an Arabic letter for ‘N’ short for Nasrani which is Arabic for Christian and it has been painted on properties belonged to Christians in Mosul. Quite a number of my Christians friends are putting up this picture as their profile pic as a mark of solidarity with the persecuted Christians.