Perfection Custom Print Solutions

We are very happy to announce that we will be partnering up with Perfection Custom Printing Services in Portland Oregon. Check out their Facebook page and their website. Here is a brochure I designed for them and Robert's demonstration of their fantastic laser cutting machine!

Godzilla Artwork from Carlos Valdivia

Field Trip Day in Malibu

Today we went on a field trip for work. Carlos needed to get some inspiration for a new project at work. We had to go into Malibu. What a beautiful day for it! 

Below are some tags he designed for "All Saints" It's always cool to see work that you've only seen on your computer screen in real life, in the real world!

Cholada in Malibu on PCH. When we used to drive from Camarillo to Otis College of Art and Design (right next to LAX), we would always pass this up, on the way and coming home, and never stopped to try it. We are huge Thai food fans. Today we crossed this off our bucket list! It was awesome! Good food, beautiful view, very nice service. Rocky was even well behaved and ate his food. #WIN

Daddy and son. :)

Our view. Cool right?

All in all a beautiful day. Hope he gets to have another field trip day from work soon!

Carlos's EPIC ILLUSTRATION Page!

Carlos has a new Facebook Page up dedicated just to his Epic style of Illustration. Here are a couple of sneak peaks for a current project! Enjoy! And LIKE his page here: https://www.facebook.com/EpicIllustration

Fairy and mermaid sketches

I've started sketching fantasy again. I need fantasy in my life and my guess is I'm not the only one. My concepts came from watching the Marvelous Misadventures of Flapjack with the kids. There have got to be a lot of human bones at the bottom of the sea right? Remember that seen in Disney's The Little Mermaid in Ariel's grotto with all the human stuff? Where were the human bones? My mermaid concept is that mercreatures use human bones and skulls for all kinds of things in their world like building material, jewelry, furniture, you get the picture. 

That got me thinking about fairies. Fairies are really outdoor creatures so wouldn't they be more tough, even warrior like? They would use bits of bones, wood, rock and feathers for their needs. Not to mention clay and mud to help with the glare of the sun and sunscreen! 

Designing with a breast feeding toddler

As some of you know I breast feed. My son is almost 2 years old and is the clingiest of all 3 kids. I work from home. This can be very frustrating. It's hard to get work done and to focus sometimes! But I need to remember its a blessing to be able to do what I do. It's worth the difficulties. I've never been afraid of hard work. But I'd love it if I could just get some sleep sometimes! 

But just look at that face!

Experimenting

Happy Birthday Carlos!

Here's Carlos enjoying is birthday dinner of homemade Camarones a la diabla, by request, rice and beans. Oh hey! BEENZNRICE!

More of the dinner party:

 And of course a picture of the dinner plates. Everything was DELICIOUS!

Purple Pin-up: New graphical style from Naomi

Here is my pin-up illustration for a weekly artist contest! I didn't win, but I really love the direction I'm going here! Expect to see more in this style soon!

Deadline Tattoo Flyer Design

Created this for an amazing tattoo artist, Josh Simpson. If you're in the 805 and looking for someone good, I highly recommend!

Our Hearts Go Out.

We cannot even begin to imagine what the people in Newtown, Connecticut are going through. As parents to 3 kids of our own, our hearts hurt. I am fighting the urge to go pick my son up from school right now. In fact, I started cleaning his messy room that I'd been nagging him about all week to make me feel a little better. It's funny what we as parents feel guilty about when we hear something like this. Some things in life just are not as important as we feel they are.

Our hearts and our prayers go out to the kids, the parents, the teachers and school staff. Not that any time makes it any better, but we especially feel heartbroken in this holiday season. May your angels be looking down at you, in peace. :(

Love Pho 'N More in Camarillo

It's delicious. We are now regulars and actually went there twice this week. It's that good. CJ got a kids meal and I got the #96 pictured here. There's a ton of items on the menu!

CJ's Minecraft Birthday cake

Almost forgot to post this! I made this cake-the first time I've ever made one from scratch, and created the Enderman face for my boy CJ!

FLASH SALE! 40% off Phone Cases

Hi guys, just in case you were interested, there is a sale going on today and you can get 40% off any of our phone cases. Coupon code is MAGICALSALES

Go to our shop at http://www.zazzle.com/beenznrice/electronics

Nohea Arabica Berry Hawaiian Mask

Carlos is very excited this morning because another packaging project he designed goes out into the market today! The product is Nohea Arabica Berry Hawaiian Mask. Here's more about it:

"A unique and luxurious Nohea Arabica Berry Hawaiian Mask is now available at a special online launch price of just $49.25 (50% off retail). Just click www.noheanatural.com and type in the code LAUNCH when you checkout. For gifts just say so in Special Instructions and we will wrap!"

Here's to more and more packaging projects!

Quick Mini Vision Boards

Not only can I create awesome pics with my son, but I've found a way to create quick mini vision boards and inspiration boards! I think it's pretty obvious, but that second one is a vision board for a studio I'd like to have one day. :)

Here's a vision board I create before I had the iPhone:

Italian Sunday: Homemade Ravioli

So for a while now, we've done Italian Sundays where we start cooking a sauce from scratch early in the day. That coupled with our Walking Dead and Boardwalk Empire shows, quite a nice Sunday tradition indeed! Well, with the seasons over for the time being, we are continuing our food tradition and decided to up our game yesterday by making ravioli from scratch as well. Came out really tasty! It was a LOT of work though, and next time we'll be starting earlier. My hands and arms are nice and sore today! You can find the recipe HERE.

Carlos rolling out that dough!

Our cute uncooked raviolis! We used a mason jar for the shape.

The end result! AW YEAH!

And Carlos's parents brought some garlic bread. yum!!

Boardwalk Empire Season 3 Finale

So I have to say that the final episode was OFF THE FRIGGIN CHAIN! I stayed up late after watching it 5 times over and over again to create this portrait of Richard Harrow. I just had to. It's available as a print at our SHOP.

Night of the Living Dia de los Muertos Art Show!

I know this is late, but we've been busy! It was a blast and we really hope to be a part of the show next year and every year! Check out the photos from the show:

An interactive altar that allowed us to write our passed loved ones' names on butterflies as part of it. I wrote my Grandpa Frank and my Grandma Mieko.

Carlos's piece! Very cubist inspired!

My piece! It sold! 

Close up of the inside of my altar.

Date night!

Carlos having a Dali moment!

Me in front of one of the altars.

Very talented Ventura artist, Veronica Valadez. I had my first Dia de los Muertos show experience at her gallery back in 2008.

We made paper flowers. :)