Love Hamsters?

Then you'll love these new designs I've just released! They all feature the same art, but have been designed for several holidays. Take a look:

Adoration (Hamster)

Hamster Heart w/Green

Hamster Love

Hammy Valentines Day (Hamster)

Hammy Birthday! (Hamster)

Hamster Christmas

Hamster Christmas II

As you can see, I've been havin'a a Hammy Good Time this week! :)

I'm also expanding my product offerings - I've opened two MyTinyPet outlets at Printfection to offer even more of a variety of shirts, and two really cool other products which look fabulous: Glass cutting boards and Coasters! I hope you'll bookmark these two shops:

My Tiny Pet - main shop - inventory coming soon!

And the My Tiny Pet Christmas Shoppe - featuring just Christmas holiday designs.

Depth of Field Experiments Using Software

I've been learning new things all weekend! Not only have I learned how to make my colorful pop style imagery as featured on http://www.mytinypet.com in my main program (Paint Shop Pro) versus having to use 2 separate programs, I've also learned how to get that blurred depth of field effect in my software. This effect is usually only made possible by having an SLR camera (which we don't have). So it's cool I can still get the effect, without having the camera.

Yesterday I shared the completed photo of Abby. I thought you might like to see the original I worked from as compared to the finished photo. This is a great photo of the bird, but it's too dark and the background is too busy, taking the eye away from Abby.

Finished project - now the focus is on Abby, and the background has a wonderful blurred effect:

Here's another experiment I just completed. This is Rowdy and I love this shot of him, but once again, the busy background of leaves and grass is distracting.

So I played with it, and got that background a bit more blurry in order to put the focus more on the cat:

Nice to know I can do this without having another camera!

Our Parakeet, Abby

Just sharing a nice portrait Allyson made of our parakeet Abby. :)

Abby's fabulous photo is one a variety of gift items the parakeet lovers will certainly appreciate. Check out my absolute favorite:

Parakeet Portrait Wall Clock

View the entire gift selection featuring this photo here.

Cat Family Update (and dogs too!)

Got chewed out by Allyson for not having shown any photos on here of our zoo lately...so here we go! Anyone want a cat planter? These work great for holding at least 4 of these furballs - the two in the middle might have to overlap, but as you can see, they don't seem to mind!

Here's Oreo laughing again...giving us a good look at her tonsils, too!

Gee, I guess that belly laugh wore her out...right to sleep she goes.

Rowdy, on the other hand, has been making himself useful. He's become quite the little household helper...here he is shown making sure the dishes are in the right place in the dishwasher.
A week or so ago, we were visited by this little fella. The cats were quite intrigued by him.

Here's Nikko giving him a good sniff. Shooey!

And here's the newest addition to the family. This is Sassy. She's probably related to ours (yeah, another one of Mr. T's offspring, I'm sure). She and Nikko look so much alike and she has the same mannerisms. Sassy isn't tame yet - Allyson has managed to get her to allow limited photos and limited petting. By her - only - of course. The rest of us are still out in the cold with this cat! Rowdy loves her...when she visits, they play and sleep beside each other.

Here's Nikko having some fun over in "the dirtpile" (previously where the tree used to be). She's playing with a stick and showing us her belly like she always does.

Mr. T. is still around - he comes up daily and eats and spends some time. Here he was feeling particularly lazy.

Nikko has her very strong opinion about Mr. T's presence. :)

Bootsie watches the goings on around her very intently - always alert - always studying the situations.

Rowdy loves to mess with our destroyed gutter. (yes, it will be fixed soon - hooray!)

And Lady...well she just watches on, wondering if there will EVER be a day where she doesn't have to compete with all these cats for attention!

New designs! Cats, dogs, and a Squirrel Christmas design!

It's been another busy week here at Dixie Lane. Lots of HTML work - so much I'm surprised my head hasn't exploded or my eyes haven't fallen out! PHEW! First, I've been working on the site http://www.mytinypet.com - where the focus is my dog, cat, bird and wildlife digital pop art designs. Second, I've created lots of new designs this week as well! Check some of these out:

CAT: In Living Color

Rowdy is the star in this first design - I created several different color images of him and combined them all into one cool design. Click the photo to see all the neat products this imagery is available on!

Black Ragdoll Cat

Then I made Mr. T a star with some fun and funky coloring. I also created a cool heart with some greenery below featuring this cat with such gorgeous eyes! He is also a subject in my Christmas design series - click here to see Mr. T's Christmas designs!

Black Cat Heart

I created another Bichon design, this time with a heart shape and royal red ribbons:

Bichon Frise Royal Heart

German Shepherd Pop Art

Of course Max had to be in there somewhere! A cool pop art style design with some bright colors against a subdued blue background. Max is available in my Christmas series as well - click here to see his designs. - perfect for German Shepherd lovers!

Scottish Terrier Christmas II

I made this design from one of our photos of a Scottie dog from the local dog show. He looks so cute with his Santa hat on!

And then today I did a design I know my neighbor Bill will love! One of his favorite little buddies - ready for Christmas! Here's his two holiday designs:

Squirrel Christmas

Squirrel II Christmas

This little fella is also available in "non-Christmas" style here.

So my goal now is to get all the major dog, cat, and bird breeds complete in this Christmas series before August 1 for http://www.mytinypet.com. I know - it's a big goal. But I have to do it. I've been wanting for 8 years to do a Christmas series relating to animals. I've procrasinated long enough - it's time to just DO IT. :)

So stay tuned...as there's so many more coming! If you want me to move your favorite breed to the top of my list, drop me an email and I'll get right on it! :)

--Jai

Basset Hound Designs

Captured photos of this great fella at the dog show this weekend, a beautiful Basset Hound. I turned him into a pop art design (you can have your pet's image made into this cool art too!) and made several designs featuring him. The first two I've shown here are Christmas designs. View a variety of fun gifts with this design here.

Check out the neat products featuring this Basset Hound Christmas design here.

And here's a colorful "year round" design featuring this big guy here.

I'm looking forward to working all the fabulous breeds we photographed into great designs for the holiday season! My favorite products I've been able to create with one of my new Christmas designs are the mugs and steins. They look simply smashing, and I'm excite to develop a full line of dog, cat, bird and wildlife breeds in this fashion for the holiday season!

Dog Show Photos from Jackson, TN

We went to visit the dog show being held here in Jackson, TN yesterday and today. And we'll probably go back tomorrow (I *love* the dogs!). This little fella here - an adorable and awful sweet Pug - was the first to welcome us to the show. Who wouldn't feel welcome with this little happy face greeting you? I got several photos of him, and already made a pop art digital painting - in fact, he's the star of a Christmas design already, which you can see here.

The next to greet us was this massive dog, called a Dogue de Bordeaux - or a "French Mastiff". What a friendly boy he was! I LOVED this dog! I'll be doing a painting of him soon, for sure.

Here's a lady having fun with her Bull Terrier. Looks like a big ole baby. :)

This black Standard Poodle posed so nicely for us. He knew he was hot stuff. :)

This little girl here just looks so sad about having to be brushed again. And FLAT IRONED! Yes, they flat iron the dog's hair. Honey, I don't blame you for being sad about it...I hate it when I do my hair too.

Here's a group lined up in the ring. Lots of beautiful dogs in this group.

This little Pomeranian was SO READY to come out of that crate. Lemme out, please please please!

I love this photo of this Harlequin Great Dane meeting up with a Rat Terrier. About 150 pounds verses 8 here. What a cool comparison! I originally thought of using this photo to do a large, 16x20 oil pastel - I'm not sure if I will...I have to play with some things and see if I can get happy with it first, but I think it would make a great larger painting.

And here's my favorite group - the German Shepherds. I kept trying to get a decent photo of them all lined up. The handler's face is blurred (2nd dog), but hey, after all, I was trying to get the dogs. :) I'd love to do a painting of a line of these beauties. Every photo has something amiss...the GSD's *never* are still - except for maybe that one second I wasn't taking a photo. Glad to know mine is not the only GSD that's like this...I was beginning to think Max has a bit of ADD, but now that I've seen these, I believe it's normal for the breed. Anyway...if I piece together enough of the photos, I think I'll be able to come up with a good reference/composition for a 16x20 of the GSD's which I *really really* want to do!

Thank you for coming! We enjoyed having you! This cute-as-can-be Bulldog sends me off for the day. Like I said, I may go back tommorrow. The problem is I have VERY SORE THIGHS. Obviously, I haven't done as many "squats" as I did at this show in a long, long time. I got to see so many beautiful dogs, and learned how out of shape I am at the same time. But I may hobble back down there tomorrow. Think I'll give Allyson the camera and let her do the squats, though. :)

BTW, I picked up a great gift for myself while I was there (yeah, I know, that's freaky...haven't bought myself a "gift" in years!). It's a gorgeous hand-painted German Shepherd miniature portrait on Agate from an artist out of Ohio. Her website is http://www.animalimagesart.com which shows some examples of her work. You can contact her through her site to order. Of course there were vendors there selling mass-market stuff...but you know me - being an artist AND a jewelry designer as this lady is, I knew where to put my hard-earned money! I have a lovely pin (which I can wear as a pendant too) that I'll treasure forever!

It's Dog Show Day!

It's been a BUSY BUSY BUSY week here. I've completed several cool pop art designs this week. take a look at these!

Bulldog II

Bichon Frise

Bichon Frise II

One of the coolest are these colorful wall clock designs:

Bichon Frise II Modern Wall Clock
On top of that, I'm getting ready for Christmas. That's right, I'm working on a slew of Christmas designs in my Love Beat Shop. My favorites are the ornaments. Slowly but surely, I'll have all the dog breeds up. In fact, my daughter and I are on our way out the door to attend a dog show, where I plan to get tons of spectacular photos. :)

And...I've taken on one more BIG challenge...something I've wanted to do for many years. My new website, CafeFur.Com, is a website I've set up to gather the best of the best Cafepress and Zazzle artists of animals and birds. Slowly but surely, I'm setting up all of the categories with links to some fabulous art.

If you're an animal/pet/wildlife artist who has your work on products at either location, and you want to be included in this new massive website I'm developing, drop me an email with a link to your shop so I can add your store to my list. In looking at the links which are already "live" on the site, you'll be able to see the type of art I'm featuring on this site. I'm being very particular, with a focus on fine art more so than sayings and graphic designs.

Off to play photographer to the gorgeous paws we have in town this weekend. Have a great one!