I Heart Halloween Holiday Graphic Casual Costume Design

It's time to revisit my Design Calendar for the month of July and see that it's time to create for Halloween and Thanksgiving. And so I grabbed a paper and pencil to doodle all things Halloween that I can think of. See the design. 

Grab this design here:

TeePublic 

Redbubble

Zazzle Postcard 

Life's busy nowadays for us who's facing a major change in our lives. We will move-in to our Condo in Cavite by August 8, This means leaving our apartment since 2018 and then my youngest son and I will start transferring to a much low-paying apartment in Pateros by July 15. 

Every step has to be think of in consideration of finances and location to work and school. If everything work out well, then I will going to save Php 3500 pesos monthly in apartment.  

This would mean less time for designs weekly until everything is settled. This means starting all over again from scratch because we are now owning a property of our own. 

I know that the transition is hard but promising. This is my very first property I bought out of my hard work. 

I'll try though to design at least 1 design a week. 💕

On Living Gratefully

Today I want to talk about something that’s been on my heart lately: gratitude. Not the kind that’s just a polite “thank you” when someone passes the salt, but the deep, soul-filling kind. The kind that stops you mid-step on a doubtful day and makes you say, “God, I’m thankful just to be here.”

Life isn’t always easy. We have busy schedules, unexpected struggles, and seasons where we feel more empty than full. But here’s what I’ve learned—when we choose to focus on what we do have, even when it’s small, our perspective shifts. We become lighter. Brighter. And more open to joy.

Last week, my husband and I attended our orientation as new home owners of a Condominium. As the staff read the rules and regulations my heart sank in desperation. I never thought we would have so many “Do’s and Don'ts” in owning our first property. And the costs of living there? God, can I handle it?

But the discouragement I felt during the orientation became nothing when I saw the unit and was there for a while. I love it there, the ambience, the quiet, the feel of the house I can now call my own.

Though I knew we would not be able to live there as the way we envisioned it to be, not me and my youngest son who study and work in our current location which is two hours away from the condo.

If we insist, we would only get tired, burn out or worse, get sick. I can’t afford any of these because I need to sustain everything with my job.

But then again, I felt grateful for having that unit that I once thought I will never have. God gave us that condominium for a reason, I may not have that otherwise or be in another property. His grace led us there. He provided me and helped me all throughout the process of getting it.

I don’t know what His plan is but I trust it is for our own good.

I’ve found that when I take time to thank God—even for the small things—I stop focusing on what’s missing and start seeing the blessings I’ve already been given. It changes everything.

That’s why I’m so excited to share something close to my heart: the “Grateful” Rose and Butterfly Design T-Shirt. It’s a daily reminder to stay rooted in gratitude. The soft pale pink rosebud and delicate blue butterfly represent beauty, transformation, and grace—everything I pray to live out. And the golden typography of the word “grateful”? A shining statement of the life I want to lead.

Whether you wear it to church, give it as a gift, or pair it with jeans and a smile, this shirt is for anyone who wants to live with open hands and a grateful heart.

Ready to wear your gratitude?

Available in the following stores:

Teepublic:http://bit.ly/4nlJlWA

Redbubble: http://bit.ly/3ZMT4LA

Zazzle: http://bit.ly/4elBsfL

… and carry a little beauty, faith, and thankfulness with you wherever you go.



With love and a thankful heart,

Jen 💛

"Faith It Till You Make It" Puns Pattern Typography Design T-Shirt

"Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. - Hebrew 11:1.

 Without faith, it is impossible for me to get this far. There are three stories in my life that I can testify about this:

1. Losing the job of my husband just when we transferred in Makati City.

When we first moved in Makati from the province, it is the faith that keep me going especially when after a few months, my husband had been terminated in his job because of drug addiction. 

I remembered praying, "Lord give us until the end of the school year to survive so that we can go back to the province." That six remaining months that I'd been asking for turned out to be 8 years and counting. His provisions sustained us all these years. 

2. Losing the job that sustains us for the first two years. 

I had to leave before I got terminated because I can't reach my metrics. I thought I can rely on the job of my husband back then, trucking in Montalban, but I was wrong. He's still into drugs and he damaged the truck he was servicing. 

I was confused and wanted to accept every kind of menials job I can put my hand into - tindera, labandera, etc. just so I can finance my kids. I had no money to buy them uniforms and school supplies. I was sick also because of stress, I was high blood.  

But I did not lose hope. I trust the Lord and He provided me the job that I still have even now. 

3. Buying my first property.

I was able to buy my first condominium but my salary is not sufficient to get one within Metro Manila. I got one in Imus though at around 1.7 M through Pag-ibig financing. Now, it is once again a dilemma as to how we can live there when my kids are studying here in Pateros and I am working in Taguig City. 

When I look back, I've gone through a lot of dilemmas that I successfully been through. I know that this present one will be easier because I have faith. 

We, who are in different kinds of difficulties in life can "FAITH IT UNTILL WE MAKE IT" hence this t-shirt design I made just for us. Snag it HERE. 

Faith can move mountains. 

Faith can be an antidote for fear. 

Faith can keep us going.

Faith can make the impossible, possible. 

So wear your faith all the time. 

The Beauty of Wisdom: Honoring Age with Grace and Strength

Inspired by Job 12:12 “Is not wisdom found among the aged? Does not a long life bring understanding?” Working in an environment with lots of young people, some of them are very discriminating on the age of others, making a lot of demeaning remarks, becomes my inspiration in this design. Continue reading this blog post to gain inspiration in whatever age you have. 

Tee Public-Shirt

Redbubble Sticker Redbubble 

Zazzle Custom Prayer Journal 

In a world that often idolizes youth, speed, and the next viral trend, it's easy to forget the steady, enduring beauty of age. But Scripture reminds us that with long life comes something precious — wisdom.

4 Takeaways I learned from the Book "Thread's Not Dead: The Designer's Guide to the Apparel Industry" by Jeff Finley:

Back to basic in times when AI invaded our designs. In today's blog post, I would like to share to you the 4 takeaways I got for the book Thread's Not Dead: The Designer's Guide to the Apparel Industry by Jeff Finley. But before that, I would like you to check this design here with discount within 48 hours. This design is the result if the ideas I got from reading the book. Grab it here. 

Now without further ado here the things you can learn if you read the book:

1.  Strive for a hand drawn design or something that looks like a hand drawn illustration. This means that if you know how to draw then by all means draw but don't be discouraged if you can't. As long as you can make your design looks like a hand drawn you are doing it right. Fortunately, I know how to draw and paint. Even when I am not yet starting a print-on-demand t-shirt business, I was already drawing a lot of subjects (buildings, woman, anime, and flowers). I was also hand lettering a lot which means I am drawing letters. When I read this, I felt I was back with my first love which is drawing. When I was starting out I was relying on AI for my clip arts. Now, things will be different moving forward because I don't want a design that can easily be copied by others using the AI website. I want a personal touch in my every design even when it would take me a while to do it. 
2. It's the Brand that sells. Capitalize on developing a t-shirt brand. "The most important thing in branding," according to the boos, "is consistency (design, website, packaging, social media presence, the way you talk, email signature, verbiage on website. The number one thing to remember is you are setting and meeting customer expectations. Work hard to make the entire customer experience a great one that consistently please and exceeds their expectations. Make sure all your designs look like they belong together and aren’t a smorgasbord of various design styles and themes. Be human in your branding and marketing. Craft a story behind your brand and put a face and voice to the company that customers could relate to. Cultivate relationships by doing things like surveys, allowing customers to vote on designs, showing them the process of taking design from sketch to shirt, and even showing them how a shirt is printed.” I am planning to dig deeper in branding my t-shirt design soon. 
3. You design must have meaning to the one who will buy it -- your target audience. The book said, "Have a solid idea and purpose behind it. It should mean something to your client or customer. What moves them and makes them feel good?" The design you are seeing here as an example is intended for the gardeners. Why I come up with this? It's because based on my Pinterest Analytics, most of my audience are looking for gardeners design. So I give what the customer are looking for. However, I would like to create also for Book Lovers because I am both a gardener and a book worm. I believe that in order to create a great design, the designer also like what she's doing. She herself is also proud of wearing what she created. 
4. When you are just starting out, you must focus solely on perfecting your design and nothing else. I fall short here because instead of focusing in designs I busy myself finding another means of earning online because I want to quit my job. I think of affiliates, copywriting, opening more store in different designs etc. I overload myself with more side hustles that I forgot I should be creating and sketching more. I have no focus and I open am overwhelmed. 

Now, I want you to take a look of this design and let me walk you through in my new process that is aligned from what I learned from the book. 

This design is  hand drawn starting in this sketch here--a pencil sketch to plot all of the needed elements. Then, I trace it with a red ballpen so I can see the letters in photoshop. 

The next thing I've done is tracing each element using a brush tool in photoshop. 

After that is re-arranging of letters, it's spaces in between and kerning. Then I proceed to cleaning. I erased all the unnecessary lines made by mistake as well as some dirt around letters. As you can see here, I already colored the letters.

As someone who's not very well trained in color combinations, what I do here is to find a t-shrit onlne with my intention color already executed in the design. I don't want to think too much about the color combination. I just need to find one that's already working and selling then use it. In the above screenshots, you can see that the background is white while below, the background I used is black, This is because I want to make sure that my design works in both light and dark t-shirt.  

The below screenshots shows how I added lines and arrows pointing to a flower in the middle to avoid white spaces. The flower that I created here was also coppied and placed below near the dog drawing because there were awkward spaces there.

This is not necessary but I do it anyway, I placed a "stroke" around letters to make the design pop-up even better in dark background. I don't know but I like doing this because this final touch make my design look like I don't draw it myself 😅

I made some few more adjustment like adjusting the arrows, the plants and the flowers, erasing those extra-elements that looks more as distraction to the design.

Then, it's ready to be posted in Teepublic and gifted to the gardeners in our lives. The niche is the "Plant lovers" cross niche to a "Dog lovers" in typography style with doodles and kawaii. See in real life:

I hope you learn from this blog post. What do you think of the design?