Caricature for Newsletter - Doug Lucas

As we send out monthly newsletters, we include a note from the president of Team Expansion, Doug Lucas.  He shares from a big picture perspective about missions as a whole within our organization.  Since I had just reformated our entire newsletter design, I thought it only fitting that I "reformat" the image that I used for Doug's note.  See the original pic and the new stylized caricature to fit in with the rest of our newsletter design.

You can see the whole newsletter design and read it too if you want at http://bit.ly/crossersnews201007.  We hope you enjoy it!

Girl Sock Monkey

So, here's another attempt at a sock monkey.  This time I went more modern with bright girly colors.  I made this one for my niece Taylor.

Toy Story 3 Inspiration!

Here is what provides me artistic inspiration!!!! Can you see the little green army men in the houseplant?

Sock Monkeys

So, growing up my brothers and I loved stuffed animals.  Most of our stuffed animals were monkeys, either sock monkeys or the chimpanzee looking ones, based after Zippy the monkey on the Howdy Doody Show.  Since we played rough with our toys, they would rip them or their seams would burst, so Mom taught us how to repair them.  I remember early in my childhood, doing "surgery" to repair the gaping wounds that my animals came to recieve.  Later as I got older, I made puppets for use in Children's ministry and would just create projects by hand, alongside all the other mediums I would use.  Along the way, I even made a few sock monkeys, getting better each time I made one.  We were at Hobby Lobby last month, and I saw the package of Red Heel socks that you use to make sock monkeys, and I thought I would give it a go.  I was going for the vintage look, these toys have been around since the early 1900's.  I was real happy with how it turned out and a few people have asked me to make them one.  So, meet my latest creation.  Ollie the sock monkey:

Here's what he started as! A pair of socks!