Friday’s Free Giveaway Blog Starts Today! What’s Up For Grabs?

Posted on August 31, 2012 by Cherie Roe Dirksen

Thank God It’s Friday!

I’ve decided to have a bonus blog on Fridays called my TGIF Free Giveaways! How exciting…

I’m going to be giving away free poster downloads, wallpapers, e-cards and anything else I can muster up. So click the ‘follow this blog’ button in the right-hand sidebar to never miss out again. You can also subscribe HERE and receive your free motivational gift bundle and keep updated through the monthly newsletter.

Right, let’s get on with it then. Today is a stormy and ball-freezingly cold day in Cape Town, so I needed a little ‘pick-me-up inspiration’ to get this day on the go. I decided to upload a new music-themed design to my SPIRAL store and wanted to share it with you.

But first…let’s start with your free e-card downloads (more free stuff at the end of this blog, so keep going!):

Instructions to download e-cards and wallpaper:

Click in the picture(s) below
You will be redirected to the page where the ecard is stored
Right click on the image and “save image as”

These are for your personal use only (ie. no selling them, please).

Take a 15% Discount Today Only!

Sticking with this theme — here are some of my harmonious products using this melodic design — please let me know what you think, any suggestions or feedback would be great!

And now, last but not least, your free wallpaper download for this Friday:

Have a Frumptous Friday and a Wicked Weekend! Over and out…

Does The Sun Shine Out Of Your Bottom?

Posted on August 28, 2012 by Cherie Roe Dirksen

An age-old question that has plagued mankind since the dawn of the ego…

Ego Or True-Nature?

The truth is that the sun does indeed beam out of your backside, but not in the form of any ego-based identity. No, it’s all about your creative flare — what are you doing to beautify your world and inadvertently affect the lives of others?

“There’s nothing more exciting in this life than embarking on a new creative adventure.”

Your ability to shine is linked to what you have to share in this world and that can take on many shapes and forms.

B-B-Boring!

I can’t bear not being creatively active in some form or another. Nothing bores me more than boredom itself!

It can sometimes be really cool to be a couch potato for a day, but come on, really? That can also get a bit tedious.

There’s nothing more exciting in this life than embarking on a new creative adventure. This can be anything from:

Decorating
Crafts
Writing
Composing
Gardening
Reshuffling the home or office
Playing with entrepreneurial ideas
Inventing
Painting/Drawing/Doodling
Designing
Woodwork
Styling to
Building lego castles!

Creativity brings out the best in human nature and affords us the opportunity to have fun and to share our innovativeness with others.

If you enjoyed this little motivational kick up the jacksy, then you will probably benefit from this article too:

Why Creativity Promotes Wellness

So, get that ass off the couch and let your inner light shine through every orifice (well, you know what I mean!).

Feel free to post in the comment section below some interesting and fun ideas you have for getting creative juices flowing. Post pictures or relevant links of what you’ve been getting up to lately (no spam please! It will be deleted).

Other articles you may enjoy:

3 Motivational Tips on Getting Back into the Artistic Arena

5 Tips on Getting Back In The Groove

New here? Why not…

Fun with Fruit and Vegetables!

Posted on December 7, 2011 by Cherie Roe Dirksen

As promised, I am continuing with the unveiling of my Vege-Tate Gallery in today’s Art Blog.

If you missed out on last weeks blog — here is a recap: How many carrots does it take to screw in a light bulb?

Here are the last of the designs (for now — I see this as an ever-growing project!):

For all the Steve Jobs Fans

Even lettuce can be corny!

Yeah, we’ve all heard this one before!

Another one for the well-endowed lady…

Juicy, very juicy…

No orchestra is complete without one!

Is your Grandmother sheepish?

Enough is enough…a special thanks to Templeton for coming up with this one!

The sorrows of love (and the pining that ensues)

If coconuts had udders, coconut milk wouldn’t be so readily available

To check out the store in its entirety, please CLICK HERE.

I have another store dedicated to these amorous fruit and vegetables, where you can find a host of products such as key-chains, aprons, mugs, iPhone skins, magnets, cards, mouse-pads, bags and a whole lot more…ENTER STORE HERE

How Many Carrots does it take to Screw in a Light Bulb?

Posted on November 30, 2011 by Cherie Roe Dirksen

I’m not too sure what the answer to the joke is…perhaps none as they were all rooted to the spot?

The Vege-Tate Gallery — Beginnings…

My idea for a Vege-Tate Gallery grew into full blossom when my husband and I decided to try and plant a vegetable garden around the back of our house.

This was no easy task as we have vegetable guzzling baboons to contend with on a regular basis — so strong fencing and locks were needed for this venture to succeed.

I am happy to report that my actual vegetable patch is doing very well and is starting to bear the fruit of our hard-earned labour. Well, except for the poor runner beans that never made it to the finishing line due to a critter biting them off at the base of the stem, which consequentially led me to create the ‘Has Bean‘ design. You have to work with this!

Whilst planting the seeds of the garden, my mind started pondering all these crazy ideas for a vegetable joke shop with lots of corny but fruity ‘green’ humour.

The designs started to take shape as I sketched out the ideas as they came to me, with a little help from the hubby.

The Next Step

When I had a good 20 designs to work with, I began the digital journey of drawing them onto the computer (yes, using my mouse! I am still using that old archaic rodent until I get my digital pen) and loading them as t-shirt designs.

I am officially launching my new gallery entitled ‘The Vege-Tate Gallery’ — I do hope you enjoy them as much as I enjoyed creating them.

The link to the store is here.

Below are my personal favourites. Next week I will showcase the rest of the store along with some other fun merchandise from this range.

Literally for the man who has everything!

This one is for the ladies — especially the ones that can make a grown man cry!

For The Beatles fan

For the humble…

For the melon appreciation club

For the overworked!

For the political activist

Keeping abreast of things

Please let me know what your favourite design is!

Christmas Gift Ideas…Part 3

Posted on November 2, 2011 by Cherie Roe Dirksen

A Recap

In the past 2 weeks I have discussed great sites such as RedBubble and Zazzle for creating your own gift designs, whether it is from photographs or your own personal artwork. See Part 1 here and Part 2 here.

Need inspiration?

Today we are going to go behind the scenes and discuss getting inspired. It’s not an easy thing to obtain if you are stuck for motivation or ideas. This is where perusing other artist, designers and photographers websites or works on sites such as RedBubble is such a great way of seeing what other creative beings are up to. Not that you want to copy their ideas but it does, more often than not, lead you to do something that is triggered by someones idea but made completely different by your creative style.

A lot of these gift ideas use captions along with images that can really have that added ‘wow’ factor touch. So, to get you going on some inspirational visuals, I have been introduced to a site called Pinterest and I want to share this wonderful site with you.

Pinteresting…

For those of you who are not acquainted with the site, it is a really great visual social network. Displaying not only art, design and photography but also captions, short quotations, illustration, fashion, home decor designs, food and a whole lot of other fantastic things to stir up your creative juices.

“Set aside some good quality time for this as I guarantee the candy feast your eyes will be lapping up is going to make time fly…”

It is a fairly easy site to navigate and it allows you to ‘pin’ any image you like, adding it to your pin board on the site where others can have a look too and repin if they desire. You also get to check out what other people have pinned on their boards, whether it be their personal creations or other images they have nabbed off the web.

Again, these pictures do fall under copyright laws — so obey! But have fun getting inspired and motivated to start your own creations.

Set aside some good quality time for this as I guarantee the candy feast your eyes will be lapping up is going to make time fly out the window…next thing you look at the clock and hours have passed as you have perused the many visual delights! Enjoy and, most of all, have fun.

Future projecting

Can you imagine how impressed your family and friends will be when you present them with a gift of your very own design?!

It is a great way to express yourself, feel a sense of achievement and to get that Christmas list looking good.

If you still feel like making your own gifts is just not for you, here are some more gift ideas from my store: