Cory Godbey’s TICKET has been a regular topic on Cory’s blog, Light Night Rains for some time now. As an illustrator, it’s been pretty inspiring to see someone compose and complete their own illustrated magazine in a few months! And I really like his work too. I can relate to his sense of whimsy and love the line work in his drawings!

Well, I followed his process through to the end and finally raced to order his ‘zine’. I felt like I wanted to be the first one in line because, by now I think I should be considered a fan… I don’t think I’ll start dressing like him or anything but I live in the country craft triangle of the Midwest and I’ll take my inspiration where I can get it! Anyway, I was first! I just received my copy of TICKET this morning and tucked inside the first page was a drawing by Cory with a note. I imagine this is how Charlie Bucket must have felt .

Thanks Cory! The Zine is great. Can’t wait to see what you come up with next!

Click here to see Nicole’s blog entry with more pictures Nicole Ladonne Photography: Carrie and Dave are Engaged!

Carrie and I drove to Ann Arbor yesterday and had a great time with our wedding photographer, Nicole Ladonne, taking engagement pictures… Yes, I realize it’s been nearly 8 months since the engagement but we wanted to have them done and it was a great opportunity to get to know Nicole . Nicole was a lot of fun and had some great ideas for romantic and fun photos as we walked around downtown Ann Arbor. Thanks Nicole! Carrie and I can’t wait for the wedding photos… it’s only 2 months away!!!

House hunting again tonight. There is no rest for the weary . Signing off!

… the VW bug! Not the minivan… oh well . A few weeks ago I used this mug as a blog entry because we were debating the merits of a Love Bug and a Love Van. The bug won out and this is the result. Thanks for my friends who opined on the topic. Their thoughts seemed to be the consensus overall .

Previous Post- Share the love?

Well, I’m a week late on this Illustration Friday entry… too much to do! I had started this on Monday I think and never got back to it. Some day I’ll post a completed IF instead of sketches .

I’m a compulsive STUMBLEr. There I’ve said it. I like it because, occasionally I’ll find something I’d never have seen otherwise. Like this little guy for instance. I found him in a blog entry featuring a bunch of wonderful photographs taken of everyday, man-made objects. Each is framed in such a way that it shows their ‘human’ characteristics… some of them are really great! Why is it that we model things in our own image? Hmm… Like Father like children . The rest of the images are equally as animated so be sure to take a look!

The Face(s) of the Earth Blog entry

Whoa… it has been a crazy week. For the past few months I’ve been commenting on how little you realize the work involved in getting married until you are actually in the midst of it. Carrie and I have been working on merging our lives together so that we can be in the same place after the wedding this fall and this has been a pivotal week for us. My house sold! So now, barring acceptance of the home inspection, I will be moving all of my things out of here before the closing on August 22nd. What an answer to prayer and a little bit of a relief. Of course, now we are looking for houses which should be fun. We have an appointment with the Realtor this Wednesday so we’re excited.

***

Now that I’ve got a few minutes to myself I’ve decided to explore my yard and take a few photos. We’ve had a some much needed rain toay and my flowers are looking fantastic. I love watching things grow and flowers provide a lot of surprises. Up top is a photo of my Nasturtium. They were grown from seeds and smell amazing!! Next are some Balloon flower I had planted last year and didn’t realize it was a perennial. Much to my surprise they popped up again this year and I’ve had a bumper crop of these cool star-shaped flowers. And finally, I shot some Elephant Ear Carrie planted for me. They are getting really huge and have some great colors in the veins of the leaves.

That’s all for now. I’ll be working on the Illustration Friday drawing this week I hope. The theme is ‘Enough’… hmmm… when is enough enough?

“That’ll grow hair on your chest!”

Ha! I know I’ve heard someone say that about something sour… must’ve been my Dad!

Below is another idea I had for ‘Sour’. I will try to develop it later today or tomorrow but I thought the sketch was funny… Something super sour always makes me feel like my body wants to shrivel up and turn inside out .

While I was pretty interested in the whole Mantis raising experiment I had no idea how feeding would work. I’m finding that it takes a little creative problem solving . Baby mantids can only eat fruit flies or other insects of that size. They just aren’t large enough to wrangle anything else in the early phases of development. Anyway, I had to shell out about $20 for a few tubes of fruit flies and those only lasted about 5 weeks… Soon Slim grew larger so I was able to move up to pinhead crickets… those too cost about $20 per box of 250-500. By now you can see that this is a becoming more of an investment than a pet . So this weekend I was wondering how the kid in me used to catch flies and bugs and keep them for ’study’. Fireflies seemed like the easiest to catch so I put a few in Slim’s jar and he avoided them. My answer came during a trip to the grocery store in search of hotdogs. In one of the aisles was a display of bamboo handled bug nets! Now I’m able to reduce the house fly population and feed my pet at the same time! Two jobs in one .

The Miles’ and the Bray’s spent the day at the Lake House on the 4th. Carrie and Jim had visitors all day long! Holly Henderson and her family stopped by for a dip in the lake. We couldn’t resist asking her to shoot a family photo for us and she said ‘Sure!’. It turned out great .

July 4th was great this year. My sister, Carrie, had just given birth to Norah Laurice Bray and the whole family congregated at the Bray’s to catch a glimpse. Norah is so quiet and nearly always still and looking content (hope I’m not jinxing that . Carrie’s other daughter, Lucy, is about 17 months old, rambunctious, and full of life. For the past week it seemed as though Lucy was not interested in spending time with her new sister but Friday night she finally sat down and showed her new sister some love . I can’t wait to see the fun they have growing up together!

On the technical side of things, the pictures of Lucy and Norah were tough to take! It was a small room and a was pretty dark with all of the lights on. I had the ISO at around 1250 so they were a little grainy and some were blurry. My sister is so great with her family’s interest in cameras . She calls us the paparazzi and you can even hear me taking pictures in the videos posted to the Team Bray Blog.