♥ Free Easter Printables ♥

Happy April everyone!  This is the month of Easter fun and crafts!  We've been making lovely printables which are free to download for personal use.  We hope you enjoy them and we hope you enjoy your chocolate eggs too!
Cally, Bee, Shirley, Julissa, Jennifer and Nina x

Bee

Download Bee's design here

Shirley

Download Shirley's design here

Julissa

Download Julissa's design here

Jennifer

Download Jennifer's design here

Cally

Download Cally's design here

Nina

Download Nina's design here

illustrated recipes

It's the middle of March (already!) so it's time to post about any recent project news that our group has to share.

Have you heard about They Draw and Cook? It's an incredibly awesome site run by the brother and sister design team, Nate Padavick and Salli Swindell, where artists and designers illustrate recipes and post them for downloading or you can just browse through all the fantastic recipes. There's so much more to it, but we won't go into it all here, you'll just have to go check it out for yourself!! theydrawandcook.com

They have contests every once in awhile and the current contest is put on by Kraft Foods. The challenge was to include an illustrated version of the Kraft logo and an illustrated version of one of their products, that was used in the recipe. The recipes were chosen from a list of approved Kraft recipes. Shirley and Nina both entered the contest, so we thought we would share what they did. So much fun!

Nina

nina's recipe on TDAC

Shirley

shirley's recipe on TDAC

March....of the Chinese Zodiac Animals!

Welcome March! We're celebrating the Year of the Dragon, 2012 by illustrating our favorite zodiac animals. The year of the dragon is said to be a very lucky year. We hope that 2012 has been good to you so far..and in celebrating the Chinese thoughts for this year, we hope that it continues to bring peace, health and prosperity to you and yours.

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

Nina

Visit Nina's shop for available prints

 

Bee  

Visit Bee's shop for available prints

   

Shirley

Visit Shirley's shop for available prints

Julissa

Visit Julissa's shop for available prints

Jennifer

Cally

The animal names in Mandarin:

1. Shu (rat)
2. Niu (ox)
3. Hu (tiger)
4. Tu (rabbit)
5. Long (dragon)
6. She (snake)
7. Ma (horse)
8. Yang (sheep)
9. Hou (monkey)
10. Ji (rooster)
11. Gou (dog)
12. Zhu (boar/pig)

For more information about the special Year of the Dragon, here is a good link

and here is a good link for all of the zodiac animals as well. 

Thank you for stopping by and celebrating illustration with us...

your comments and visits make our day!

............................................................................................

And now for some news! 

We hope you're all enjoying February so far and and we thank you for sharing this journey of loving illustration with us here at www.WeLovetoIllustrate.com.

We've all been busy these past few months with our own personal projects and thought it might be nice to let you all know of some of our news...so without further ado:

Bee presents:
 Coming soon:
Two board books for Hinkler publishers titled 
 Bedtime and Snuggles due for release in May - stay tuned!
*
A range of ceramic mugs for Australian ceramics company Ashdene.
Here is a little tiny teaser:
 

Cally presents: A new book!

The Elephantantrum, Illustrated by Cally Johnson-Isaacs
and written by Gillian Shields is now available to pre-order here.

Nina presents: A new book!  

The current website is in Spanish, but the books are also available in English.
The owner could be contacted directly, as she speaks english. These books come in boy and girl versions and are personalized with a head shot photo of the child included on each page in the story.
 

El Globo Rojo de Niña or Niño (The Red Balloon (girl or boy)), illustrated by Nina Seven, text by Georgina Jijena Sánchez, is now available here.

Jennifer presents: Three new books!   

Here are a few books of Jennifer's that have been published this year.

Stella Batts Needs a New Name written by Courtney Shienmel
See more at www.StellaBatts.com available here

Far Flutterby written by Karen Kingsbury available here

The Little Bully written by Beth Bracken available here

 

Julissa presents:  

 Coming soon: 

An interactive storybook of
The Itsy Bitsy Spider

A storybook for an educational publishing company in Australia titled,  

My Pop's Garden
Here is a teaser:
 

Shirley presents:

  Coming soon: 

An educational e-book titled:
I See My Colors!  

Also available, previously released e-books: 

Launch! is available here

The Gingerbread Man is available here

Thanks for reading and visiting..
we really appreciate your visits and comments a lot!

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

FREE Printable Valentine's Day Cards For Kids!

Hello friends and happy February! This month we've got some adorable, FREE Valentine's Day Cards for kids. They are perfect for handing out at school and also fun to share with friends, family & loved ones. Print, cut and enjoy!

A very special thanks to Lucy Boden who is our guest illustrator this month. She created our cute banner. Thank you, Lucy! To see more of her work, please visit her website.

Thanks for stopping by and happy February! Julissa, Shirley, Jennifer, Nina, Cally and Bee

Cally - download here

Nina - download here

Julissa - download here

Shirley - download here

Jennifer - download here

Bee - download here

Lucy - download here

2011 Round Up!

Happy New Year to you all! We hope you are having a fabulous Festive Season. May 2012 bring lots of love, laughter and good times your way! We thought we would do a little round-up of some of our favourite posts from 2011, so see below for links to some of our 2011 highlights.

Thank you all for being so supportive throughout 2011, we LOVE having you come visit and we hope you have enjoyed reading our blog and downloading our freebies. We hope to bring you lots more goodies in 2012. Have a fantastic January!

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

1. Free January Desktop Wallpaper Download by Shirley Ng-Benitez

2. Our heartfelt February wishes to all ofyou! by Cally Johnson-Issacs

3. First We Love To Illustrate GIVEAWAY! by Shirley Ng-Benitez

4. Happy Easter Treats! by Cally Johnson-Issacs

5. Happy Birthday! by Belinda Strong

6. FREE Summer desktop calendar downloads! by Nina Seven

7. Circus Fun! by Nina Seven

8. August FREE Downloadable Coloring Pages! by Belinda Strong

9. Tasty treats for September by Jennifer A. Bell

10. Happy Halloween Cupcake Toppers by Julissa Mora

11. Pillow Covers by Jennifer A. Bell

12. FREE Printable Holiday Scrapbooking elements by Julissa Mora

*FREE* Printable Holiday Scrapbooking elements

Hello and Happy December! We are continuing with our guest artist series and are joined this month by the super talented Brad Renner. Brad designed our oh-so-fun December banner and also did the challenge with us. We're so lucky - his illustrations are brilliant!

The challenge this month was actually given to us by the lovely ladies from Scraptus, a blog group of crafty scrapbookers, based in Montreal. They challenged us to create pages of Holiday themed scrapbook elements and we thought this would be a fun thing to do and a fun thing to share with our readers during this Season of Giving.

You can see what the Scraptus girls created with our elements on their blog, starting on Friday, Dec. 2. Their blog is written totally in French, but even if you can't read what they wrote, you can still see all the fab designs they created. All the pages are free for you to download here and use for your personal projects. And, you don't have to be a scrapbooker to use them. Cut them out and adhere them to solid covered gift bags, use them as gift tags or even use them to make holiday cards or ornaments. The possibilities are endless!

Happy Holidays!  Nina, Cally, Bee, Julissa, Shirley and Jennifer

Bee - download here (English)        (French)

Cally - download here

Nina - download here (English)        (French)

Julissa - download here (English)        (French)

Shirley - download here

Jennifer - download here

Brad - download here