FREE Holiday Gift Tags by Shirley

 

Hi Everyone, it's Shirley...I hope everyone's having a good holiday season so far! It gets pretty hectic and busy at this time, but I am trying my best to enjoy each day we have of the rest of this year. We've had some sadness recently, and our hearts go out to those who are going through this difficult time. As I write this, I am mindful of taking the time to reflect upon all of the blessings I get to enjoy each day. I'm hopeful we all have time to stop and lend a hand, be patient and compassionate with our fellow human beings and animals, too.
Here's to a peaceful and healthy rest of the year, and New Year to come to you and yours! Thanks to my dear fellow blogmates, Julissa, Jennifer, Cally, Nina, and Bee...you all are fantastic and I am so privileged to be a part of this wonderful place. Happy holidays to you all! xo Shirley

Download gift tags here

FREE Holiday Crafty Download

As a continuation of our Holiday posts, I've created these Christmas designs for you to use as you wish, just print, cut and either use them as gift labels or for your holiday scrapbook.... or for whatever other crafty idea you can come up with. Enjoy! Wishing you a Happy Holiday Season!

xo,
Julissa

Download here!

Happy Winter!

Jennifer here. I thought I’d stop by and share an illustration I did earlier this year for Highlights Hidden Pictures (shown without the hidden objects, so don’t even try!).

I hope everyone is having a wonderful holiday season!

*FREE* Holiday Gift Tags from Nina

download here

 

It's that time of year again - for all things Merry and Bright! We are celebrating December with some free printables from all of us at We Love to Illustrate. This week's post features some fun gifts tags to dress up your holiday packages, from studio member, Nina Seven.
She used a traditional red, white and green color palette, but added in kraft paper for a fresh, modern element. These would look great tied with red and white baker's twine! Are you getting in the holiday spirit yet? We are!

"Gettin' ready for Thanksgiving!" - by Shirley

Wow, the weather is getting cooler and cooler, the leaves have turned and are continuing to swiftly fall..we're nearing Thanksgiving! Do you remember making these as a little one? I remember having a great time tracing my hand, or a friend tracing my hand, to create those paper turkeys. I love that this activity is so easy to do, and so fun for everyone, and it spans the generations! Here's to a wonderful rest of the week enjoying warm cups of cocoa, tea, or coffee, and maybe you'll get some time in the kitchen to bake a loaf of banana or pumpkin bread. Sounds pretty yummy to me! ~ Shirley

Halloween Finger Puppets!

Here's one last Halloween download from our archives to get you ready for tomorrow! 

Download Jennifer's puppets here.

If you're looking for more spooky activities check out our Halloween downloads 

from the past few years. 2013, 2012, 2011   Happy Haunting!!!!

Quack or treat! HA! Here's a FREE downloadable Halloween Treat Box from Shirley!

I quacked up making this for you! (errr, sorry for the pun!)

Hope you're all having a great week and are busy ramping up for the big Halloween festivities! Whether you're throwing a SPOOKTACULAR bash at your place, or enjoying a night handing out goodies–and enjoying some too–here's a silly Halloween Treat Box that you fill up with candy corn, popcorn, or gold doubloons if you're feeling really generous! I had a great time creating this for you.

Happy Halloween everyone, and please, if you've not seen the wonderful treats from all of the ladies this week, you must click to the previous posts and enjoy!

Download here

Have a great weekend everyone! ~ Quazy Shirley

*FREE* Printable Halloween Card

Hello friends! We continue our Halloween FREE downloads this week, with a fun greeting card, designed by Nina. The download is available by clicking on the link below the image shown here. It will open up with a new image that just shows the card, in a printable format. Just save it and print it out on some nice white cardstock or heavy bright white printer paper. Trim it, then fold. So easy! We hope you are all enjoying our Halloween freebies! All of us at We Love to Illustrate, really love designing for Halloween! Trick or treat? We choose TREAT!

 

download here



Batty Booooookmarks!

Hi everyone, we have more Halloween downloads for you!

This time Cally has made Batty Bookmarks.  You'll need card, scissors, a hole punch, a ribbon and of course a good selection of books!

You can download Cally's bookmarks here.

Free Haunted House treat box printable

Hello there! Happy October! I'm continuing the free Halloween download with a different kind of treat box. This was inspired by the Gingerbread houses that we made two x-mas' ago with sort of a silly haunted house twist. Enjoy!

You can download Julissa's treat box HERE

Free Halloween treat box printable!

Hi everyone! Hope you're all great! I'm going to kick off a series of FREE Halloween printables from all of us here at WLTI with a little treat box for you to make. A sweet little black kitty who will keep your treats safe :)
Thanks for stopping by!
Bee xx

You can download Bee's treat box HERE

Hello there from Nina

Just popping in to say Hello and wish everyone a Happy September! September is one of my favorite months. I love that the weather is still pretty nice, with lots of sunny days, but there's a crispness to the air. I love the beautiful changing colors of the leaves in the trees and the Fall decorations of pumpkins and Indian corn. And, it's my birthday month, so it's also been a special time for me! Yay for September!

FREE printable lunchbox notes from Bee

Hello everyone!! It's Bee here - I hope you're all doing great! It's my turn to get creative this week, so I've made some printable lunchbox notes for you. Some have a message, and some have a space for you to write your own. I hope you enjoy popping them into lunchboxes to surprise your little ones (and not-so-little ones!) at lunch time. 

Thanks for stopping by!

xoxo

Bee

Download Bee's lunchbox notes here

FREE Back to School Stickers download from Shirley

Wow, school is already in full swing in my neck o' the woods, and I can feel the crispness in the air coming back. I hope you're all enjoying the end of August and wish you and all the kids out there a happy and productive school year ahead!

 

Download here

FREE Back to School Printable from Julissa

Hello there, Julissa here! It's our third week of FREE back to school printables. These encouraging sayings are inspired by my fiancé. Occasionally he'll hide sweet little notes around my workspace. I love finding them! They always brighten up my day. Have fun slipping them into your kid's lunch bag, placing them on your co-worker's desk, or hiding them somewhere for your sweetheart to find. You can download them here!

FREE Back to School Printable from Jennifer

Hello, Jennifer here! It's our 2nd week of FREE back to school printables and since it's my turn I thought I'd make some big silly labels. You can download the full sheet here. 

Have a great week!

FREE Back to School Printable from Nina Seven

This week's post is the first in a 6 week series of FREE printables that we are creating for all the kiddos that are heading Back to School soon. It's hard to believe it's that time of year again! This printable was created by studio member Nina Seven. Why not put a little surprise in your child's lunchbox with some of these fun little notes and icons? It's easy, just download the hi res file from the link below the images, print it out and then cut out the designs. They will love it!

 

 download here

 

Nursery Rhymes Galore!

Hi everyone, Cally here!  I thought I'd tell you about my new book.  It was published on Friday and is packed full of nursery rhymes!  These rhymes are not only classics but help develop language skills as children learn to recite them.  Here is a sneaky peek, see if you can guess which rhyme she is from.

Have a lovely week x

Buy it here and visit the publisher's page here.

A little show-and-tell...

Hi everyone, it's Bee here, I hope you're all well! It's my turn to post this week, so I'm just popping by with a quick little show-and-tell for you... The past few months I have been lucky enough to have been super-duper busy with a swag of projects including a couple of new books, and some fun products for Tiger Tribe, Snugglebum and Peaceable Kingdom. But alas I can't show you these babies yet, I'll have to wait until they hit the shelves (very soon)! In the meantime, here is a peek at fun a little card I did for Design Design. Hope you're all having a fabulous July! xo Bee

So excited to share a first of a few projects for Highlights!, and my wish for you in July...

Hi Everyone,
It is a joy for me to share this piece for Highlights with all of you..thank you to Bernadette Szost, my agent at the time, and to the wonderful folks at Highlights, who are a pleasure to work with! This one's titled "Wrap it Up".

July also marks the last assignment for the Lilla Rogers Bootcamp online course that I joined in May. I wanted to share these two pieces I created for Nautical Themed Wall Art that we just wrapped up in June.

In January, I started Lilla's Make Art That Sells course, and for each assignment I've discovered that I tend to have lots of ideas and concepts swimming around in my noggin', and sometimes I just "go for it" and start making. That has been very liberating for me, as I've always been kind of a control-freak about my design and illustration work. This past year, along with my personal sketch-challenge, I've tried to really loosen up. I've really enjoyed using many different mediums to create the pieces..and being able to just really pool from the tools from which we've been given to create our own artwork. The courses have been incredible..it's like riding a roller coaster of emotions, reaching the depths of no confidence in one's work "what am I even doing?", to the highs of wonderful comments from your peers, and the feeling that you've managed to create a piece that makes you feel good.

This has so far been a year of exploration and discovery for me and I am enjoying every minute of it. I'm wishing all of you a fresh new month of exploration and freedom to create art that makes you happy! Have a super July everyone!
~ Shirley

Welcome to We Love To Illustrate Studio!!!

Hello friends! We are really excited to announce that we have a new name, We Love To Illustrate Studio! This new direction is to promote the group’s love of illustration to the world. We’ll do this by sharing each of the six member’s work as well as group projects such as free downloads and printed group projects, via the internet through social media and/or from our Etsy shop. Our goal is to share our love of illustration more often, so we’ll be creating and posting once a week..more news and illustration from all of us!

A little history about our group, we are all full-time illustrators and designers from across the globe, who came together in 2010 for support, critiques, questions, and a shoulder to lean on. However, unbeknownst to us, so much more has come out of this group. The past four years have been nothing but magical as we shared our work and connected with our readers. We posted our free downloads, had a magazine feature, and received huge support from the blogging community, as well as what’s been going on behind the scenes with each of us. Since we began this group many of us have acquired representation, published books, had work shown in prestigious magazines, created toy and game designs and acquired licensing contracts for designs on various products. That brings us to the reason for our new direction, we would like to give our readers more of a behind the scenes look and share all of our exciting news and projects with you. We’ll still be creating our free downloads, as mentioned above, but it will be limited to the holidays, as well as creating collaborative products that will be sold at our Etsy shop.

We really hope you embrace this new direction with us and continue to be a part of our creative journey, and we wish to ask all of you to help us with the following:
1) update your links to: www.welovetoillustratestudio.com, 2) follow us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/welovetoillustratestudio, and Twitter: https://twitter.com/welovetoillo.

We look forward to communicating with all of you as we continue this fantastic journey together, celebrating our love of illustration!

All our best to you, 

The We Love to Illustrate Studio team,

Bee, Cally, Jennifer, Julissa, Nina, & Shirley

Bee

Tiger Tribe

To see more of Bee's work, please visit her website.

Cally

Elephantantrum

To see more of Cally's work, please visit her website.

Jennifer

My Pen Pal, Santa by Melissa Stanton

To see more of Jennifer's work, please visit her website.

Julissa 

American Girl Magazine

To see more of Julissa's work, please visit her website.

Nina

The Pirate Captain

To see more of Nina's work, please visit her website.

Shirley

Highlights Let's Play Hidden Pictures Book 30 Jack-a-Dandy spread
To see more of Shirley's work, please visit her website.

Happy Dad's Month!

Hi everyone! This month we created some DAD inspired art in honor of Father's Day. We also have last years free printable Father's Day cards still available. Click here to go to that post.

Enjoy and Happy Father's Day!

Shirley

 

Nina

 

Julissa

*FREE* Printable Mothers Day Cards

Hello May! So happy to see you! Since it's now May, you know that Mother's Day is coming up on the 11th, so we have some FREE printable cards to share with you. If your Mom likes animals or flowers (and who doesn't!) you have come to the right place. Just print these out on nice 8.5" x 11" paper, then cut out the card and fold it. 

Thanks for visiting our blog and Happy Mother's Day!

xoxo Nina, Cally, Julissa, Jennifer, Shirley and Bee

 download Julissa's card here

 download Cally's card here

 download Jennifer's card here

 download Shirley's card here

download Nina's card here

Springtime Fun!

Happy April everyone, this is the month of Easter fun and crafts.  
We've been making Easter images, hope you enjoy them!

Cally, Bee, Shirley, Julissa, Nina and Jennifer x

Shirley

Visit Shirley

Nina

Visit Nina

Cally

Visit Cally

Julissa

Visit Julissa

Mid-March News

Hello everyone! It's time for some mid-month news. We have a bunch of really cool things happing right now that we'd like to share.  Thank you and Enjoy!

xo
-Bee, Cally, Nina, Shirley, Jennifer and Julissa

Bee has designed two new mug ranges for Ashdene - the 'Hippety Hop' collection and the 'Over The Hedgerow' collection. They are available for purchase now in stores around the world and online. Australian online store 'HouzeThat' has both ranges in stock: http://www.houzethat.com.au/

Julissa has a GIVEAWAY going on over at her blog of a really cute toy that she desighned the packaging for. Giveaway ends on Tuesday, March 18th 11:59 EST. To enter, please go here!

Nina designed these scrapbooking products for Hampton Art, a little while ago. They are available at Walmart and sold under the brand name Ki Memories.

She also entered this recipe for the Glad's 1X3 Illustration Recipe Party going on right now over at They Draw and Cook. For party details, please go here! Submissions must be submitted by 11:59 p.m. Eastern Standard Time on Thursday, March 20th, 2014. 

Cally has a new book out later this month, called Rabbits Don't Lay Eggs! You can order the book here!

Jennifer's book Toe Shoe Mouse came out earlier this year. Learn more about it here!

Chinese Zodiac - The Year of the Horse, 2014

Welcome March! This month we were inspired to illustrate horses in celebration of the Chinese Year of the Horse. The year of the horse is said to bring health, prosperity and good luck. Feel free to grab your favorite horse (or all) and hang them in your workspace or home for a little extra luck. To learn more about the year of the horse, please go here.

Thank you for visiting and for your lovely comments. We appreciate each and everyone of you. Wishing you and your family a prosperous and healthy year!

xo
-Bee, Cally, Nina, Shirley, Jennifer and Julissa

Bee

Cally

Nina

Shirley

Jennifer

Julissa