Stephanie Buscema's Blog

Happy New Year! A little late, I know. The holidays went way too fast last month, but it was a nice break to eat lots of sweets and catch up on some sleep! :)

Pretty much started this year by hitting the ground running and trying to manage a sort of balancing act between covers+unannounced projects+new fabric patterns+personal projects. I can't talk about or share much of anything related to the work I've been doing other then the cover previews-but here's a very tiny peak of what's to come...

First up, I'm really excited to continue work with Pinup Girl clothing on some new prints for 2015! While I can't give much away, I can post this little teaser image of a design element I painted for one of the new patterns...
Working on patterns and novelty prints this past year has been not only an amazing learning experience for me personally, but it's really helped me develop a new way of approaching image making for use other then published work on paper. Coming up with pattern idea lists (compulsive list maker *cough*cough*) and image/color families in my sketchbooks, painting color swatches and doing research on fabrics has really opened up a new way of thinking for me. I can honestly say I'm pretty much in love with the process, zoning out with making patterns has helped me get to my happy place, that's for sure!

On a personal note, I've been working on something that I'll be self publishing later this year, a first for me. The idea of self publishing something has been kind of swimming around in my brain for awhile, but I just wasn't really hip on the idea of self publishing a sketch book or art book yet. Publishing something digitally is wonderful, and works for some folks-for me, I need something tangible to be happy. After some thought, I decided to move forward with painting and self publishing a deck of cards. Something very personal to me, tangible and interactive.

A few years ago, I started painting a Tarot deck for myself, a huge undertaking! I decided to put it on the back burner-it became very labor intensive and I felt it was something that needed way more of my attention then just a few nights a week. After considering diving back into my Tarot project this year and self publishing it-I decided to take another route for now and work on a different type of oracle card deck, the Lenormand. Tarot and Lenormand cards are very different-however, both decks can be used together with an understanding of both card systems (I personally don't advise anyone to do this without a knowledge of both first. Stick to one system before jumping around-it can become very overwhelming and confusing for beginners). The Lenormand consists of 36 cards, the Tarot, 78. Spreads for the Lenormand are different from Tarot, as is the way they're read (I'll post more about the Lenormand system, history of the deck, how I approach the deck and read as my deck gets finished). I feel the Lenormand is a wonderful deck for both beginners and experienced card readers-it's great fun and something everyone can enjoy! If the deck I create is well received, I'll be jumping into a Tarot deck next year. The goal is to have this deck out by the late summer/early fall of 2015, so I'll be posting little updates and snippets on here as I go. So far, I'm knee deep in sketches and can't wait to get started with the painting stage. Above is a peek at one of my favorite cards so far, number 33(8 of Diamonds), The Key.

Back to work for me, wishing everyone a happy and healthy 2015! xo