"THEVERBFORI" Ambigram
This design was actually created for a poetry website (it is not up yet, so I have no link). I love the embellishments, but the text was changed last minute (from a circle design, which I had already put together, to a straight one), and I think it may have suffered a bit because of it.



"LUFC" Ambigram (initlas of a soccer team)



"Reece Matthew" Ambigram (click here to see larger size)



"Brit" & "Alex" Ambigram



"Five" Ambigram



"Raife" Ambigram
(a new font for this design)

First things first, a little update on the last post ~
I did some more searching at the grocery store last night and noticed that the Kasha that I bought was 'finely ground', and they also have a 'coursely ground' variety. I'm thinking a little bigger might be better. (I did also finally find a quinoa blend with rice & millet, vegetables & seasonings, but I'm really hoping to find it by itself first, so I can distinguish the look and taste)

Anywho...

This week has been another one of those crazy busy 'how will I get it all done' kind of weeks. I am flooded with ambigram orders and it looks like next week might be worse! I would take that as a prompt to raise the prices (and lower demand a little), but last time I had a few insane weeks, followed by a few nearly dead weeks, and now we are back to insane again, so I'm not rushing into anything!

The ambigram work by itself would not be bad, but more orders means many more emails to answer. The last few days I've probably had about three times more than normal. The first few hours of the day are spent slogging through all of those, and they keep coming throughout the day (ah, there's two more now).


And, in the midst of the hectic rush, yesterday I noticed that water was dripping from the ceiling in the back of the pantry/laundry room (back by the water heater). All along the ceiling and down one wall it is a giant water spot. Not a huge deal as a renter, but that did mean answering the door for repair men coming in & out all day.

They fixed a leaky cap & hoped that would take care of the problem because otherwise they are going to have to start cutting into the walls... and it is still dripping this morning so it looks like that is the next step. Hurrah! ;) I am going to have to call in a few minutes and start the parade of repair men once again.


Luckily, I did manage to finish up another painting before the week rush hit ~



I am feeling a little bummed that I don't have extra time right now to work on the next painting (which is currently just a bright yellow background), or time to prepare the paintings for other projects (I have a few plans in mind), but I'm trying to assure myself that I will have time for all of that soon, I just need to finish these orders first. Justin will be starting classes in a few weeks, which has made him very nervous about finances, so at least the abundance of payments is a good thing!

I while back I created this ambigram for a fireman who wanted to use the design to decorate his helmet. He asked if I could also make the stencil, and I told him I would happily do it for free, but he had to promise to send pictures ;) So now I finally have my first non-tattoo customer pic!



Unfortunately, it looks like he stencilled the design on in reverse, but I didn't want to break the news to him! (I flipped the top picture)


And in other ambigram news ~

I was quite thrilled to be asked to do an interview for a calligraphy & word art blog. Blog write-ups and interviews are not really a part of the patchwork clothing world, and while my link was posted and talked about in plenty of forums, I never quite felt part of the craft blog world (I guess I will have to publish a book or have a baby now?).

I was hoping she would email me when the interview went up, but it looks like she posted it right away and I am just a week behind on things!

Perhaps I should put together a page on Word Illusion with the links to the different blog features, though I'm not sure what I would call it. "Press" doesn't really feel right unless a newspaper or magazine is involved, though I know a lot of girls use that.

"Suppresser" Ambigram



"Marci" & "Cayla" Ambigram



"Lance" Ambigram



"Derek Bozick" Ambigram



"The Magic of Diamond Jim Tyler" Ambigram


This last ambigram was ordered for a magician's trick book. What a fun project! The book comes out in a few months, I can't wait to see the design in print. (He is also using the Curly Heart Border for his dedication page)

I've collected a few more customer shots of finished ambigram tattoos!

"Kennedy" Ambigram (his)


"Kennedy" Ambigram (hers)


"Elana" & "Hayley" Ambigram (this one was changed a bit from the original design)


"Ashton" & "Dillon" Ambigram

"Samone" & "Aubree" Ambigram



"Mikah" & "Prophet" Ambigram
(a re-working of this design)



"Gwen" & "Matt" Ambigram



"Strength" Ambigram



"Perfectly Natural" Ambigram

"Sweet Afton" Ambigram



"Noah" Ambigram
The name is supposed to be hidden in the decorations, in the style of this ambigram,
but I'm not sure how well the style transitioned to these round letters.




"Jayden Ruby Alyssa" Ambigram



"JAM" Ambigram (Script fonts - upper & lowercase)



"JAM" Ambigram (Sarada font)


That reminds me, Sarada, did you know that you are one of my font styles?
I've had so many people ask for designs based on your ambigram that they have their own category. One day, after I get my graphics tablet, I plan on putting together some actual downloadable fonts, and I'll have to include that one on my list.

Some of my recent ambigram orders have been 'big' ones, pretty complex designs.

Noson Family Ambigram


The names are ~ Noson (the dad), Thamires, Thaney, Lucas, Celia, Sammy, Thammy (and Noson again). With so many names I am suprised I got this to work out at all! His original idea, to get the shorter versions of the names, would have probably worked out better, but he wanted the longer names.

I was pleased to come up with this new diamond style design, a way to arrange short names together with long ones. Not that I'm expecting another 7 or 8 name diamond, but I get plenty of 3-4 name diamonds that read the same upside down.

Another solution was adding embellishments
in the corners of the usual squared diamond design ~





And there was also this fun design, which a lot of you will appreciate ~

"Knit" & "Purl" Ambigram


Later on I will make a new version of this design to make prints (or print on something). I am thinking and Old English font, no cables, but perhaps the addition of some knitting needles crossing through the ball of yarn.



This week has been another slow one, and it looks like next week will be as well! I'm not
sure where this sudden lull came from, I could barely keep up with the orders coming in the few weeks beforehand. I do need to really focus and use this time to start work on some of the side projects I've been planning. Then when orders pick-up, perhaps I will be able to fund them and get things rolling!


I was able to finish up one thing that desparately needed to be done. A while back I bought tiffanyharvey.com (the name, and new hosting space) so that I could move everything over from phunkymonkeythreads.com, (where everything was actually hosted). It was pretty confusing and tacky when someone would get ahold of an un-masked link of the Word Illusion site, and suddenly you see phunkymonkeythreads.com/ambigrams/custom_orders.... And with the closing of PM it was definitely time to move the files to a more sensible domain.

I was motivated in the beginning, the ambigrams and recipe book got moved over to the new space right away. Then I took my time plodding through the numerous files in the patchwork galleries. Last week I finally sat down and moved over all of those last lingering pages, and even slapped together a pretty bad front page for anyone visiting the main domain. This will be a great help for friends and family, who can now just go to tiffanyharvey.com (easy for them to remember!) and find all of my links in one spot.

Check one thing off the list.
A million more to go!

The last two weeks I have been burried under a pile of ambigram orders. While I was trying to claw my way through them, we also seemed to be entertaining more guests than normal, which eliminated the possibility of finishing the work in the evenings. It has been fun visiting with freinds, very busy, but I managed to get everything done in time.

This week is Justin's Spring Break, and I am happy to have a mere 2 orders due this week. It's as if the customers knew I needed the break! (Orders are already starting to come in for next week, it seems to be a random lull, but it has come with perfect timing.)

So, what have I have I been doing with my extra time this week?

Sunday & Monday we drove over to visit some friends in Tennessee. We brought along Guitar Hero, unsure if they had played before, and they loved it so much they ran out and bought their own copy the second day. (They are already extremely good, starting to play on the Hard level so soon, very impressive!)

Thursday is our 4 year anniversary, and we are heading over to Chattanooga (as usual). This time we are skipping the leisurely walk through downtown and the park that we usually take, and are going to visit some of the many sights. Hopefuly I will remember to bring my camera and will get some great pics for you.

And the rest of the week I am working, but at a more relaxed pace. Finally getting a chance to catch up on those things that have been falling behind, like posting my ambigrams for you!


"Clausen" & "Aspleaf" Ambigram



"Maya" & "Adam" Ambigram



"Emma" Ambigram
(Chinese brush calligraphy font)



"Success" & "Failure" Ambigram, tweaked
This customer sent me a design she had drawn out, wanting me to create a cleaner image of the design, as well as tweaking it a bit for her. I sent her a version of each. The second image shows her design, cleaned up on the computer, and the top is my variation of the design.




"Jesus Christ", "Lord & Savior" Ambigram



A question about the ambigrams ~
Would you rather that I post smaller thumbnails of the images, so that you can click & view only the designs you are interested in? I worry that I am overtaking people's friends pages, but I also do not want to hide the images behind LJ cuts (and rob my journal of eye candy).

It was a *very* long weekend, we're still recovering.
I just finished going through the party pics today,
so expect to see the fun themed crafts & food and all of the details soon.
But for tonight I will be playing Chibi Robo (Park Patrol).
And dropping off a few ambigrams for you ;)


"Koutek" Ambigram



"Pisces" & "Naive" Ambigram



"Kayleigh" Ambigram



"Ali", "Jack", "Megan", & "Matthew" Ambigram



"Riley" Ambigram

"Jailee" Ambigram



"Rylie" Ambigram



"Rylie" Ambigram



"Billy Z Duke" Ambigram



"Grace" & "Faith" Ambigram

"Remember" Ambigram



"Soloshy" Ambigram



"Eardrum" & "Murdrae" Ambigram
(notice that 'murdrae' is 'eardrum' backwards. Why? I'm not sure)



"Mikah" & "Prophet" Ambigram
(The names and the meaning of that name)



"Angelina" & "Messenger" Ambigram
(The names and the meaning of that name)



"Dillon" & "Ashton" Ambigram

Slowly my ambigram customers are adding to my collection of finished tattoo pics! :) I only have about 7 so far, but after running Phunky Monkey for 5 years I have just 4 patchwork customer shots. Now if I could only get some shots of my ambigrams that have been used on wedding invitations, t-shirts, etc., I would love to add those to the site. (There have been promises, but I'm not really expecting much)









(You can find a link to the original designs by clicking on the photos)

"Dyan" Ambigram



"Dyan Espiridion" Ambigram



"Zwicker" Ambigram



"Grace", "Connor", & "Alice" Ambigram



"Lorrye" & "Jonah" Ambigram

Wow, I didn't realize how many ambigrams I've created in the last week! I still have four more to post, but those will wait until another day.

"Trent" & "Derica" Ambigram




"Jung" Ambigram




"Howell" Ambigram


This ambigram was designed to be stencilled on a fireman's helmet. I told him I would make him the stencil if he promised to send me pictures ;)




"Kennedy" Ambigram




"Kennedy" Ambigram