Welcome to Cheshire Cat Designs!

Hello! I'm Alicia. Some of you may know me around the blogosphere as Alicia the Awesome, or Firefox9799. I primarily blog on my book review blog, Awesome Book Assessment. I also have a couple more blogs out there, but that's not what I'm here to introduce. (:

I've recently started designing- well, illustrating. Drawing? I don't know. I didn't used to draw- not freehand. I'm pretty good at copying. But I got inspired- as usual!- by Marzipan (I found her on YouTube) to get into hand lettering and illustration. So thus I became an actual artist! (if you don't count my sculpting and other various crafts) (because I never really got into selling them) (yes I realize I shouldn't base my artistry off of whether I can sell it)

The We're All Mad Here sketch is the first one I did. I drew it in pencil, outlined it in pen (my favorite Micron 05) and Sharpie, and scanned it to my computer so I could digitally color it using Photoshop. It was actually my first time using Photoshop too, and I LOVE it. I used to be so intimidated by it because it's like the Holy Grail of photo editing (and there are so many buttons!) but it's actually pretty straightforward (once you play around a little and find all the buttons you need and learn how they work). I'm still learning, but I've got the basics down. (brush tool, paint bucket tool, eraser, zoom, eyedropper)

Next I did my logo, the Cheshire Cat Designs sketch you see at the top left. That took a bit of time. When deciding on my name, I originally wanted to be Mad Hatter Designs or Queen of Hearts Designs (something like that) but MHD was already taken and I think QOHD was too long of a name. So I went with my THIRD favorite Alice in Wonderland character, the Cheshire Cat. (I'm obsessed with Alice in Wonderland BTW) I'm kinda disappointed I wasn't able to make my URL cheshirecatdesigns.blogspot.com, but it's already taken (by some completely useless website that doesn't have ANY connection to the Cheshire Cat or designs). Oh well. Maybe someday I'll buy cheshirecatdesigns.com.
EDIT: Wow, I guess it's impossible to be original...on Facebook alone there are at least two other businesses called Cheshire Cat Designs, one of which looks like they use polymer clay, which I also use when sculpting. What a coincidence! Anyway, it's disappointing but it's too late to change now, plus I spent like an hour designing my logo.

So why did I decide to move my designs to a completely different blog when I already have like 4 (no joke) floating out there? (probably at least 5 now that I think about it, although not all are still active) Well, I have a secret obsession with the clean sort of design- nice pastel colors on a white background and a girly-type handwriting font. Now, I could have gone with this for my main blog, Awesome Book Assessment, but I loved the design I already had and it just felt so cozy. (plus I had paid a bunch for custom designs) That design is a bit more cluttered and structured and busy, and the colors are darker, but it just suits the content so perfectly, I feel. So I wanted a fresh start with this design blog, and since most of what I'll be sketching is pastels and clean cut designs, it was the perfect opportunity to design a blog around that. I'm excited to keep improving it (even if it means going back to Blogger again, which is somewhat a pain in the neck compared to self-hosted WordPress, which is where ABA is).

Oh man, look at me rambling! That's definitely a carryover from my book blog. Wordiness is so my thing. Words and books and now...illustrations!! Yay!

Final notes:

• I intend to do 1-2 illustrations a week if I have inspiration
• I'll soon have a FB page up (but I'll also advertise on Twitter, which I use mostly for ABA advertising: @Firefox9799)
• I will take custom requests, as long as it's not too elaborate and along the same lines as my current sketches/design style (more words than pictures; I'm bad at pictures). These will be uploaded to the shop (see below) where you can buy it. There will be no extra fees (but the price may be higher or lower than other prints). I reserve the right to decline any requests I feel are outside of my abilities or unreasonable.
• I have a shop on Redbubble where you can get different forms of my sketches- all kinds of prints, T-shirts, mugs, stickers, phone cases, laptop skins, cards, tote bags, etc.

We're All Mad Here (full color)

We're All Mad Here (partial color)

Ciao ciao!