Art is about Fun

More is more, that's my motto. If you think it's done, throw some more at it!

It has been the story of my artistic life since childhood. Many 6 year olds would be painting a happy flower in a blue sky, a tidy boat on a calm sea and a pretty mother with nice hair and red lipstick....

But not ME.

I would be painting the towering inferno; the action hero rescuing the maiden from a flesh eating dragon or monster sea adventure, complete with motion lines and speech bubbles and all!

So, when our teacher made us put our paintings on the wall, you can imagine...

"Yes! Lovely, Jessica" then "Tom, that is very good!" then "AAAAAAUGH!!!!"

Let's put it this way. Control was never my strong point.

Over the years I have learned to reign it in a little - but only a little. So, I hope that you find my offbeat sensibilities worthy of small chuckle or two.

Art is about fun - here is the equation: (F)UN + (ART) = FART! It about sums it up.

BabyHedgehog USA

BABYHEDGEHOG LAUNCHES IN THE US

The popular online baby photo album, parenting resource and shopping site launches in US.

www.babyhedgehogusa.com is the new US version of the popular parenting shopping and resource website, BabyHedgehog.co.uk.

Babyhedgehog is a website for babies - not only an online baby photo album but also a resource for parenting information and great shopping links for cute baby gifts, baby clothes and maternity essentials.

Since June 2006 when the UK site was launched, BabyHedgehog grew steadily in popularity and has made it one of the leading Baby Websites in the UK.

Now www.babyhedgehogusa.com has the chance to get a foothold in the US baby market. Purely catering for the US parent, BabyHedgehog USA will feature many products and businesses that primarily service the US and Canada.

As a parent, it is important to find a website where you can easily shop for items in your own country, without incurring extra shipping and import charges. Although BabyHedgehog is a global entity, we cannot forget that our visitors want to access products and services within easy reach from where they live. That is why we set up BabyHedgehog US.

BabyHedgehog have also created a 'self managed' advertising control panel, where advertisers can log in and insert their own text and images to their advert. This allows them to change the ad's content at any time. Advertisers also get live performance stats via their control panel, to see how well their ad is doing.

Advertising with BabyHedgehog is a very cost-effective way to boost list positioning on major search engines and can increase the visitor-count to your website. Not to mention that advertisers will be attracting the precise target market they are aiming for.

Visit Babyhedgehog US here: http://www.babyhedgehogusa.com

Update!

A big hello and a grovelling apology to all my mates on the net. Sorry for the absence, I've been up to my neck in BabyHedgehog and other stuff.

I've re-vamped the website, hopefully you'll find it easier to navigate. Café Press server is a bit slow at the moment, please bear with it. I think they're working on it, but I can understand anyone's frustration.

Here's some of my featured designs:

Yo' Mama!

I have brought out a new range of Streetwise Sassy Maternity gear called "Yo' Mama!".

It's at it's infancy at the moment and it's gonna be a whole lot of funky t-shirts with Shoot-from-the-hip sass and cheeky sayings for the no-nonsense maternal chick!

Check out the recent stuff at my Cafe Press shop at: http://www.hedgehoggear.com or at Zazzle at: http://www.zazzle.com/macchick*

Here's a pic:

yo mama retrobymacchick
Get this custom t-shirt at Zazzle

BabyHedgehog - A new lease of life

Years ago, after the birth of my daughter, I created a website purely for her. It came to be because many of my friends and family wanted to know how she was doing, what she looked like etc.. It proved so popular that one of my friends asked me to create one for her too.

However, I was worried about posting our babies pictures on the internet. Searching around the internet for such a service was hard, because there wasn't anything like that out there. And if there was, it was very public or you had to pay a huge amount of money for it.

That's when I decided to design an online photo album that would also be a birth announcement service - it would be password protected and easy to use. That was in 2001.... there was not a lot of call for such services because not a lot of people were particularly internet-savvy in those days and our existing server did not allow for public uploads. This made our service a little complicated. In those days, Digital cameras were an enormous luxury, if not available at all. So, although it was a great idea, it was ahead of its time.

What did make the site tick would be the amount of traffic it generated. It was probably one of the most visited websites of it's genre and that would have a lot to do with the pains-taking effort put into providing good content and product information.

Recently, not wanting to give up altogether, I devised a re-launch of the website, making it a better visitor experience.

This time I would add more features to the website:
- FREE Photo Album: Upload up to 16 pictures, password protection, send Ecards using one of your photos.
- Paid 'Diamond' Photo Album: All of the above plus unlimited picture uploads, Baby Blog, Visitor Book and milestones chart based on your baby's age (from 0-36 months).
- Cool shopping links: Advertiser's can set up a Silver or Gold Advertising package. Gold Advertisers get their own password Control Panel which they can use to upload pictures, change text and also get live stats to see how well their ad is performing.
- All Gold Advertisers will be part of my unique RotaShow advertising display system. RotaShow works by simply rotating the advert every 10 minutes, giving every advert fair and frequent exposure at the upper-most part of the web page. It's better than rotating banners, because our ads don't disappear, they just shift over! It's also great value for money.

Well, after months of knuckling down, it is finally ready. Go and visit it at: WWW.BABYHEDGEHOG.CO.UK

A big 'Yo!' to a fabulous Artist

I want to take this opportunity to big up a cool artist who has been doing the circuit around Cafe Press, Zazzle and other internet artist's groups.

Gregory Gallo is a talented artist from Brooklyn, New York and is famed particularly for his Arteology work. My particular favourites are his "Redboy" graphic art. His use of typography, colour and texture is amazing. You don't often see a fine artist who can grasp the rudiments of graphic art as well as this person.

And then there is the fine art. You will see on his website: http://www.arteology.com that his work has taken him on a journey of styles, experience and media over the years. From Canvas to Glass to T-shirts... all the way through to digital art.

This painting is my favourite:


Also, check him out at Redboy Tees -Cafe Press and at Redboy Graphics - Zazzle

Creative Block... oh heck!

Well, that's not true exactly... it's more like I can't seem to find a moment to sit still and create something.

I've got a ton of ideas floating around in my tiny brain - all bursting to come out, but I can't get time to dedicate to it. Although, I do think I'm holding back due to the fact that there's so many design ideas, I don't know where to start.

A good way to start is to write it down... so here goes:

Think:

• Abstract shapes
  
• A mixture of textures
  
• 1960's architecture and interior design
  
• Creative typography
  

Phew! Now that I've got that off my chest I reckon I'll be rearing to go.
Thanks for sharing that moment with me! Look out for the new designs coming out soon.