Comic Con

Once again it's Comic Con International time and Dan and I couldn't be there.

These are the first day covers I made for the Marvel Comics Superhero stamps that came out in July of 2007 at a special event at the San Diego Comic Con. They made stamps for ten Marvel comic book heroes. I was only able to make four designs. They were created from sketches I made inspired from Champions character sheets and various comic advertisements. The sketches were imported into Adobe Photoshop were I added color.

Each hero had a "head shot" and comic book cover postage stamps. I had to make envelopes for Spider Man And the Hulk.

The Thing's comic book was the Fantastic Four so I included the whole team.

I included Walf with my favorite, The Thing. This is the fifth appearance of Walf on a first day cover.

The fourth appearance of Walf is on an envelope made by my friend Keith (along with envelopes for the other nine heroes!) Keith also chose to portray Walf with the Thing. His envelopes were all drawn by hand and colored with water colors. I received his envelopes before I had even sent mine out for the cancellations! Unfortunately the Post Office chose to use the plain cancellations on his envelopes.

Odd Toys From Europe

These are some toys that were sent to us by Dan's sister who is currently teaching in England.

This is a set of Barbabapa characters from France. They are from a children's book by
Annette Tison and Talus Taylor. There is also a series of short children's cartoons that can be seen on YouTube . They are a family of shape-shifting creatures.

Here they are out of the box. The ones in this set are:

Barbapapa - The father of the group. He's the big pink one.
Barbamama - The mother of the group. She is the black female holding a baby bottle.
Barbotine - One of the daughters. She is the small orange female holding a turtle.
Barbalala - Another daughter. She is the small green female holding panpipes.
Barbidur - One ofthe sons. He is the red one who has shape-shifted into a little devil.

There is another set that has Barbapapa shape-shifting into a heart and his other four children.


This is a MiroStars 3 Player Pack. It is a blind box assortment of plastic soccer figures. This box also contains instruction sheet on how to make squads with the figures (they have player stats on the bottom of their bases) and three tiny bags of jelly beans.


The ones we got were:

Bridge from Manchester City
Brown from Manchester United
Eduardo from Arsenal (he is one of the 8 players who are only available in the three player packs.)

These guys look like they are from a Jib Jab greeting card.

Photo Studio In-A-Box

Once again I've been a slacker and neglected my blog. I have been doing things -really! Dan and I took a quick trip to San Diego in early June. We bought new computers to replace our old ones (it was time to say goodbye to Windows XP.) We have been transferring the data from the old computers to the new ones while getting used to Windows 7. I've been working on the art room and recently got a "Photo Studio In-A-Box". It is a portable light box that folds into its own carrying case. It came with small tripod, two small lamps and a reversible background. Very useful for taking photos of small items for ebay.


In this photo, taken in my fabulous art room, I am preparing to take a photo of one of my collectible figures.

Here is my Ugly Doll Ice Bat Action Figure. They are bind boxed and come in 6 different glow in the dark colors. Mine is regular glow in the dark and is 3 inches tall. See how nice and even the lighting is!

This is something we found at Mitsuwa Marketplace in Torrance on our way to San Diego. I don't know Japanese but after poking around the Internet I found they are from a children's book called Dzukan Dwarfs. We decided to get two of them.

They come with a background card that has information about the character in Japanese. If you look closely there is another of these creatures in the window and some others between the refrigerator and the cabinets. This one is about 1 and 1/2 inches tall (including the stand.)

This one is flying high. I wish there was a translation for these, they are very mysterious.