Featured Designer FWP – Clever Monkey Graphics
Happy Friday, friends! We’ve come to the end of another week. How’s everybody doing? Wherever you are in the world, I hope you and your loved ones are safe and healthy. I’m really grateful for our sweet community, especially right now when things are so strange. Keep hanging in there!!
Today, in addition to the anticipation for DSD, I’m excited to introduce Tracey Monette of Clever Monkey Graphics as our Featured Designer!
As you know, the current theme for our Featured Designer freebies this year is a Mix Tape. Each designer will create something inspired by one of their favorite songs, and at the end of the year, we will have an amazing mix tape compilation! Tracey has created a beautiful kit for us, Rocky Raccoon, inspired by a well-known Beatles song. Take a look . . .
Oh my goodness! This kit is just so fun and funny and fantastic! I absolutely love the cute, quirky sayings and illustrations!
I asked Tracey a few questions about this kit and the process she went through to create it. Here’s what she had to say:
What song did you choose as your inspiration? Why does it speak to or inspire in you?
Rocky Raccoon is a Beatles song about a love triangle done in a folk music sound. I grew up in the tale end of the Beatles fandom and thus have always loved their music. I love the folksy sound of this song. Surfacely, I found the idea of a raccoon in a love triangle quite funny and I knew it worked well with my own love/hate relationship with raccoons. They are so cute until they get into your bird feeder on a nightly basis! Yes, there have been timeframes when I have had to bring our birdfeeder in on a nightly basis and it literally took me throwing buckets of water at the raccoons to convince them to leave. Usually they would try to sneak back two or three times to eat more food! We always seem to name our local raccoons Rocky!
How did you decide what direction to take your kit after choosing the song for our mix-tape?
Being that I love drawing characters in my kits, choosing to go the realistic route of drawing raccoons was easy for me. So my version of Rocky Raccoon is about the many aspects of raccoons and will let someone scrap a wide range of photos and stories as can be seen in the layout samples.
I also asked Tracey a few more questions about herself, her love for this hobby of ours, and some of her favorite layouts or products:
Is there another designer on the team who you find particularly inspiring? What about a Babe?
While I know I am privieged to be working alongside so many great designers, at the moment I am a fangirl of Rubia from Studio Basic. She has a particular style of artsiness which I would love to do when I grow up, and I love when we collab on kits and mix our styles. Ru’s work makes me want to grow as an artist. As for a babe, it’s a tough call because they are all pretty spectacular, so I’m going to go with one whose worked has impressed me, making me drool for a great many years—SeattleSheri. But seriously, how does one really chose? Every designer and every SugarBabe is amazing in their own styles and I love them each for their personal creativity and skill in Photoshop.
What kit are you most proud of creating in the last year? Why?
That is a hard question as I very much love lots of my kits and wish I had more scrapping time for myself! But for this past year, I’m going to say A Dogs Life Too collecton. This combined a wee bit of a past kit revamp and a whole lot of new stuff. I believe I made a base kit that is super fun and usable all on its own, some very cute cards, and then I spent many hours trying to capture the essence of a wide variety of dog breeds to better help my customers customize this kit to their own sweet pups. In fact, I owe my wonderful customer group one more add-on of dogs but just haven’t had time to sit down and start drawing them yet . . . definitely putting that on my to-do list!
Are there any products, scrappers or companies that you find a constant source of creative admiration? Who are they, and why do you find them inspiring.
Honestly, that has to be my own creative team. I have a wide variety of styles of scrappers on my team. When I start designing a new collection, I ask them about what they want in it. The ideas start rolling in and this makes my kits far more well-rounded than if they were only my own ideas. My creative teams’ eyes let me examine a theme from many viewpoints. Then my post-creation fun begins as I get to see their layouts and those of the store CT.
Give us a sneak peek at a product that will be released in the next two weeks. An inspiration board maybe? Papers?
I’m working hard on a fabulous new Thanksgiving kit, as yet unnamed. Sometimes the name for a kit becomes obvious to me as I work on it. Here is your sneak peek at what is coming.
The Babes created some amazing layouts with Rocky Raccoon, and as always, we love seeing how each member of our talented team brings their own style to each and every page they create! All our Babes are brilliant at showing off the versatility of each product in the Shoppe, and we hope their layouts inspire you. . . .
With that, go fill up your shopping cart with $10, and Rocky Raccoon will be automatically added for FREE! This special offer will only be available through Friday, November 13 when our new releases go live, so don’t delay! And don’t forget to come back next week when we have a little sneak peek into our fun, bi-weekly sale involving our amazing featured designers! Have a great weekend!
