Holiday sales at Zazzle!

Just a quick note to let everyone know about the “12 Deals of Christmas” sale at Zazzle.com! Today’s sale is on packs of cards but there will be different things on sale every day for the next 12 days! Just click the sale link at the Zazzle site to get the discount.

CafePress is also offering different daily specials,  so check out the Critterwings CafePress shop for special deals there too!

To start you off, here’s a shortcut to all of the cards in the Critterwings Zazzle Shop.


create & buy custom products at Zazzle

Sale on stamps at the Critterwings Zazzle shop!

Yes, I know I promised new art, but Thanksgiving preparations have to come first I’m afraid. In the meantime, I wanted to let everyone know about a sale in my Critterwings shop on Zazzle: $5 off sheets of custom stamps! In addition, I’ve lowered my base price on stamps, so if you like my art it’s a great time to stock up on some genuine US postage. Enter the coupon code ZAZZLESTAMPS at checkout. The sale only lasts for 2 more days! Here are some of the stamps I have for sale right now, but there are more designs, sizes and variations available at Zazzle:


“The Holiday Courier” medium size postage by critterwings

Flying Dove Postage stamp
Flying Dove Postage by critterwings

2010: The Year of the Tiger stamp
2010: The Year of the Tiger by critterwings


“The Dragon of Autumn” Small Size Postage by critterwings

If you want to make your own custom stamps with your own design on them, you can do that too, so check out Zazzle.com today. (And new art tonight, I promise!)

New Store offerings

Swallowtail Butterfly

 This is just a quick note to let folks know about the shiny new offerings over at Critterwings.com, including items featuring the swallowtail butterfly seen above.

My CafePress store has just been upgraded and loaded up with all kinds of new goodies, just in the nick of time for holiday shopping!  In addition to mugs, cards, and tote bags, items unique to Cafepress include:

'Jingle Bells' Reindeer Ornament Ceramic ornaments
(comes with red ribbon for hanging)

''The Holiday Courier' Reindeer Water Bottle Aluminum Sigg water bottles

Swallowtail Butterfly Small Pet Food Dish Ceramic pet food dishes

Flying Dove Keepsake Box Wooden keepsake boxes
(with a ceramic tile on the lid)

Dragon of Autumn Throw Pillow Throw pillows

There’s more of everything; the store is organized according to the image you want so take a look around. Of course, other items with these images and more can be found at my Zazzle Store and in my RedBubble Gallery. I’ll be adding new art and new items to all of my stores through mid-December, so be sure to stop by.

Next update: more new art!

New Store: Critterwings.com

Critterwings Studio

Just in time for the holiday season, the new store at Critterwings.com is open for business! It has links to products with my illustrations at several different print-on-demand venders, focusing on special items for Christmas:

Critterwings at Zazzle.com has a wide variety including mugs, shirts, tote bags, magnets, cards, and real US postage.

Critterwings at Cafepress.com has ceramic ornaments, clocks, and other gift items.

Stephsmith at Redbubble.com has calendars, T-shirts, cards, and prints, and the largest assortment of fine art images for sale.

New products will be arriving soon in all the stores. Needless to say, putting this together has slowed down production of new art, hence the lack of blog updates lately, but I’ll be posting more new art here later this week… stay tuned!

Calendar sale!

2010 Calendar: Legendary Tales

Buy art

Great news for those who like to plan ahead: RedBubble is having a sale on 2010 calendars for the next few days! In honor of the occasion, I’ve made a calendar, including some images that are available for sale on RedBubble for the first time. As befitting the title — Legendary Tales: Fables and Myths — all of the images come from either Greek mythology or Aesop’s Fables. Check it out!

New artwork is coming soon; I have a few different pieces in different stages of completion, but with luck there will be some new art up in the next few days…

Year-end wrap-up

Looking back on this year, it’s been a very busy one. Unlike some people out there, most of the chaos has been good. Crazy-making sometimes, but usually for good reasons. I have lots to be grateful for and despite the current state of things in the world I have a good deal of optimism for 2009.

As far as this blog goes, the thing I’m happiest about is that for the most part I’ve been able to keep a steady schedule, in part thanks to Illustration Friday. At the beginning of this year I committed to posting something every week based on the IF topic. I didn’t quite make that, but given my horrid track record for diary-keeping I’m amazed I did as well as I did.

Out of 52 weeks in the year:

  • I posted IF illustrations for 43 of them (only missed 9, although technically a couple didn’t make it to the blog in time to post on IF)
  • 39 of those were new, original drawings, three of which never got further than a rough sketch.
  • 14 were existing work I’d done for another purpose but were appropriate for that week’s topic (and one of those was significantly edited for IF)

I’m pretty happy with that. The hardest part was getting back into the habit when I missed a whole month over the summer due to my insane schedule.

I don’t know if I can make the same vow this year, since I may have more illustration projects coming in. However, I do promise to post something to this blog every week, and participate in IF when I can. I’m also going to start merchandising my existing art more, making better use of my redbubble account and my CafePress store, and making more art that is directly in line with that. Toward that end I’d like to redo my website (including this blog!) but that’s a secondary priority to making more art.

Is anyone else making an “art resolution” this year?

Open for Business (sort of)

The Holiday Courier

Well, I’ve finally dipped my toe into the water and signed up with a couple of different online merchants to sell products with some of the images posted here. At the moment the offerings are rather limited… if anyone has any requests from the images they’ve see on this blog or at my full porfolio, let me know!

Right now my CafePress store is featuring a wide variety of items with “The Holiday Courier” (seen above) just for the holidays: http://www.cafepress.com/Critterwings

My RedBubble Gallery has a few more options, but I’ll be adding more to both stores as I have time to prep the images: http://www.redbubble.com/people/stephsmith I’ve purchased a few items from this site already and they are all gorgeous! If you’re a member of that site, look me up!

If anyone has any suggestions or comments, please leave me a comment. I love hearing from everyone!