The idea was to illustrate note-worthy places around town (as well as one made-up living room with a lot of frames) that Kristin would be able to place behind the model. We started with a view of the Orpheum from State Street, then a view of the Wisconsin Capitol from the Monona Terrace, followed by the Lake Vista Cafe on the Monona Terrace rooftop, and, finally, a scene from Olbrich Botanical Gardens.

As is my custom when doing non-technical illustrations, I placed one of my three pets in the Olbrich Gardens illustration. My boy-kitty, Pixel, would have made his debut in Brava but unfortunately he was cut from the scene before the magazine went to print. Tim has suspicions that his weight played a role in the decision to cut him from the article, but I prefer to think that he was cut because he was drawing attention away from Kirsten Lobe. In either case, he is included in the original illustration blog post which you can view here.

I’ve always been a stress-baker. When I’m super frazzled I like to bake a cake or some cookies – my best theory on this is that it’s something I can cross off my list in only 1 hour – replacing some of my stress with a small sense of accomplishment. However, I’ve never really decorated my baked goods. Sure, I’ll do multi-colored frosting on cookies every once and awhile for special occasions, but I haven’t ever really decorated a cake. I decided it couldn’t be too difficult, afterall I have a degree in Industrial Design…

Gum paste turned out to be the gummiest material I’ve ever tried to work with. It didn’t behave at all like clay – which is what I was anticipating. So I adjusted my plan from handcut maple leaves to leaves cut out with a maple leaf cookie cutter (thanks Meaghan for the cookie cutter). That worked much better, so I did that for all of the leaves and then used a toothpick to make veins. I colored the leaves by painting on food coloring, and then I drapped the leaves over a muffin pan so they could harden overnight in interesting leaf-like shapes. At the end I still had some gum paste left so I cut out little circles and arranged them in measuring spoons, thinking that maybe I’d make them into flowers later if I felt like it.

We had a bunch of ripe bananas so I decided to make a banana cake. Cream cheese frosting was recommended in recipe and it’s obviously the best type of frosting there is, so that was a given, but I added some maple extract to tie the theme all together. Also, banana cake & maple cream cheese frosting sounded like a winning combination to me (and it was, the cake was crazy delicious). I LOVE the Cake Doctor and highly recommend all of her recipes, the banana cake recipe I used can be found here.

I originally thought I’d do white frosting since the leaves were already so colorful, but then I decided I’d have more fun decorating the more gaudy I went.

The final cake ended up being made up of five 9inch rounds, two cut down for snacking and tiering. I did decide to use the measuring cup flowers, I piped some frosting in the middle and added a brown Reeces Pieces and I think they turned out really cute. I also made a little “Happy Birthday” banner that listed ingredients on the back side in case anyone had allergies and needed to know what type of cake it was.

Competitions like this bring out my competive streak – I definitely entered to win. What’s the point of entering something like this if you’re not out to crush the competition in the 16 and up age bracket ? On that note, I am happy to report that I co-won the bracket and I now share the title of “Best Maple Bluff Baker” with the other winners. So don’t be suprised if you see me casually strolling down the street in my custom made “Best Maple Bluff Baker” apron, I plan on wearing it often.

The Wisconsin Capitol from the Monona Terrace:

The Orpheum from State Street:

As is my custom when doing non-technical illustrations, I placed one of my three pets in the Olbrich Botanical Gardens illustration. My boy-kitty, Pixel, would have made his debut in Brava but unfortunately he was cut from the scene before the magazine went to print. I think he must have been cut because he was drawing attention away from Kirsten Lobe, as you’ll notice he’s an extremely good looking boy-kitty. In either case, he’s included in the following original illustration:

A completely made-up living room with a lot of frames on the wall:

The Lake Vista Cafe on the Monona Terrace rooftop:

This will conclude my blog posts on the September Brava feature illustrations. However, I had an awesome time doing them as well as working with Kristin Joiner, and I hope there will be more collaborations in the future.

Also featured in this article is a photo highlighting the invitations done by yours-truly at Dilemma Studio.

Below is the cover art for the March 2011 Brava Magazine. Cover design by the lovely and talented Kristin Joiner and photography by my friend, Anda Marie. The magazine comes out in Madison on March 1st.

I’ve had real estate on the brain lately. Tim and I are very comfortable in our rental house but we’ve been talking more and more about buying. Tim, who is a full-steam-ahead type of guy, has already signed up for e-mail updates on houses in our target neighborhoods. While I don’t quite share his enthusiasm for getting tangled up in a mortgage right this minute, I have to admit that I catch myself thinking wistfully about some of the house listings he’s shared with me. The one thing that’s shocked me in all of this real estate business? The absolutely AWFUL sell sheets. They really are horrible – one small (and usually grainy) picture and tons of small, ugly type full of abbreviations I can’t understand.

Enter my friends at 614 Western Ave. I was plenty excited when they asked me to create a layout for their FSBO sell sheet. It was an information organizer’s dream job. I made the type and the pictures bigger, I sorted the information by category and relevance, and I cleaned house on all the ridiculous abbreviations. I also set up the tripod and took some decent pictures:

Happy Valentine’s Day from Dilemma Studio!

In honor of Valentine’s Day 2011 enjoy this (slightly) embellished contour line drawing of Cupid!

It really pains me to share this with you; the limited run of 100 screen prints of this poster didn’t turn out. As you can see above, the green that was printed is TREMENDOUSLY different than the green in my original illustration (Scroll down to see the original illustration). For that (and a few other reasons) these posters will not be up for sale now or ever. The prints are simply not up to my standards.

That being said, I will commission another run of this illustration. Right now I’m thinking I’ll just have them done using offset printing, which will increase the quantity and decrease the price-per-poster. I hate to do it because they will lose that “handmade” feel but I think it’s the only way to ensure the quality is up to my standards for this project.

So yeah, yuck, right? I’m really bummed about this outcome. I had really high hopes for this print. Also, I’m ready to get this illustration into people’s homes and offices! It’s about time this illustration sees the light of day!

Check back with the blog to keep tabs on my progress with this. Fingers crossed I’ll have quality prints ready for sale soon!