A politically inspired design! Words I heard from a very wise man indeed… for in a democracy someone always has to give up their rights for the sake of another’s. Original graphics and design by me, Mad Matatu! You can also find this design in 2 tone black and white for an even more bold statement. Available on tote bags, t-shirts, hoodies,mugs,stickers,banners,bumper stickers, Sigg water bottles, childrens clothing, magnets and pins! Check out the super sexy womens hoodie black and white version with the design on the back… sleek eh???
Happy shopping!
Filed under: Adobe Creative Suite CS4, Art, Cafe Press, Democracy, Design, Illustrator, Politics, Sigg Water Bottles, Vector Graphics, alternative, shopping online | 2 Comments
Tags: america, army, Art, Democracy, democratic party, democrats, dems, Design, free speech, freedom, freedom of expression, military, Obama, peace, Politics, rights, star spangled banner, United States, US
The coolest and sleekest way to digitally capture High Definition (HD) videos and easily transfer them to your PC now comes with a Custom Mad Matatu Design!
The cutest cat couple around will shower you with love and affection every time you use your flip mino! Click on the image to go straight to my online store! Great gift too for a loved one.
Filed under: Art, Cafe Press, Camcorders, Design, Illustrator, Photoshop, electronic Gadgets, merchandise, shopping online | 3 Comments
Tags: camcorder, digital video, electronics, flip mino, gadgets, HD, high definition, technology, video capture, video recorder
I AM RAM! Because Aries Rules
My newest design for all you ariens out there! As the first sign of the zodiac they’re known to be hard-headed yet extremely sociable and extroverted. Ruled by the planet Mars, Aries is known to exclaim “I AM!” ’nuff said!
Available in all sizes on dark long or short sleeved Tees
Filed under: Art, Cafe Press, Design, alternative, merchandise, shopping online | 3 Comments
Tags: apparel, Aries, clothing, Devilish, extroverted, Fire, hard headed, horoscope, Hot, Mars, Ram, Rams, Red, Signs, simbolism, Simbols, star signs, t-shirts, Zodiac
Get Your Heart Strings Pulled!
“Tirer… S’il vous Plait” says it all and it’s my latest design addition to my cafe press store! A cute and fun design that features a multitude of hearts and strings to stir up the chemistry! Available exclusively to women as sexy thongs, tank or cute tee in white, soft pink, salmon and baby blue. Sizes available in small, medium, large and maternity wear. A perfect gift for your lady love this christmas too!
Filed under: Art, Cafe Press, Design, Illustrator, Paintings, california, merchandise | Leave a Comment
Tags: Adobe Illustrator, Art, blue, Cafe Press, clean, color, drawing, Elegant Design, gifts, girls, Graphic Art, graphic design, heart strings, light, love, pastels, pink, relationships, romance, t-shirts, thongs, whimsical, women
I LOVE these Swiss engineered water bottles! Safe for the environment, ecological, freeze proof and BPA Free! Throw away those plastic water bottles and save the planet with a reuseable one!
My new bottle design features a retro-modern fantasy fish with Chinese watercolor painting styles and motifs, bright ocean and water inspired colors and a trendy look all around! An original digital design which is signed and dated. You can purchase a 1.0L or 0.6L bottle for under $30! that is a real steal!
Filed under: Adobe Creative Suite CS4, Art, Cafe Press, Design, Illustrator, Photoshop, Sigg Water Bottles, Vector Graphics, alternative, merchandise | Leave a Comment
Tags: clean, drinking, environment, fantasy, fish, h2o, oceans, recycle, reuse, Sigg Water Bottle, sports, Swiss Made, tropics, vacations, water
Matatu’s Tee Stop Launched!!!!
Hi all! Am so excited to announce the launch of my new cafe press store! I have been busy designing T-shirts, posters, Sigg water bottles, mugs, framed art and wall clocks with original artwork and photographs from my trips around the world! You’ll find some of my old favorites as well as new humor tees for adults and kids alike! Be sure to have a look and sign up for my newsletter to recieve notices of new products available! Happy shopping to all and thanks again for reading my blog!
Filed under: Adobe Creative Suite CS4, Africa, Art, Design, Illustrator, Kenya, Paintings, Photography, Photoshop, Vector Graphics, alternative, branding, punk | Leave a Comment
Fruit of One’s Labor…
It’s harvest season in wine country and I had the honor of helping to collect and press grapes to create a tantalizing nectar fit for the Gods… the ultimate reward after working hard will be opening the very first bottle and sipping its contents. Wine making is an art, I have learned… that requires patience, technique and love… art therefore, need not be restricted to that which pleases the eye… but also the palate

Filed under: Photography | Leave a Comment
Tags: fruit, grapes, grapevine, harvest, Italy, tannins, vine, wine
I often prefer black and white photos to full color ones, depending on the scene… either way, its always better to convert to B & W in Photoshop rather than changing the settings of your digital camera which will often leave pictures too grey and washed out…. here’s two photos I took near Mt. Monviso, in the Italian Maritime Alps.
Filed under: Design | Leave a Comment
HDR faking it with Photoshop
I recently visited the beautiful city of Avignon, France and got snap happy with my trusty Canon point and shoot! While I have yet to discover how to change the settings to take photos at different exposures and create HDR images, I was able to recreate the effects in Photoshop using layers, filters and playing with the sliders to change the saturation, add that glow that seems to engulf all HDR images and while I was at it, I decided to dramatize the sky a wee bit
Here’s the photo before and after:


What is HDR?
In brief, an HDR image (High Dynamic Range) is a series of identical shots taken with a camera at different exposures and then placed one on top of the other to create beautiful photographs that expose every detail sharply. For a more thorough explanation you can refer to the wiki link below:
Filed under: Adobe Creative Suite CS4, Art, Design, Photography, Photoshop | 3 Comments
Tags: Avignon, Canon SD 700, Europe, Exposures, filters, France, HDR Photography, Layers, over saturated
Dreams inspired by Nature’s bounty, the unpretentiousness of homemade limoncello, oceans and the seas, the play of morning and late afternoon light on blue waters, an old farmhouse claw foot tub for a pool, french lavender from Provence, and wildflowers, California orange poppies… a broken fence.. tall green grass… a book to inspire… pastel colored clouds… Limited edition! Only 100 digital copies will be sold in this size!
Click on the Buy Now Button and Pay securely through Paypal! Please amke sure you provide a valid email address for me to send you your copy!
Software used:
Corel Sketch Pad, Adobe Photoshop CS4 extended, Wacom Intuos 4 Graphic pen Tablet.
Filed under: Adobe Creative Suite CS4, Art, Design, Paintings, Photoshop | Leave a Comment
Tags: begonias, broken fence, clawfoot tub, colors, colours, dawn, farmhouse, French Lavender, Light Warrior, Limoncello, pablo coehlo, pastels, Poppies, simple, sunlight, sunsets, unpretentious, wacom intuos 4, wood
Ahhhhhhh yesssss!!!… now this was a FUN!!!! Job!!! My lovely return client, Lanae, asked me to make a logo for her new social networking biz “Net Nanny” and she wanted a cute and sexy “nanny” inspired by our beloved “Francine” from TV’s “The Nanny”… what you see below is what I came up with! Lanae is happy, I’m thrilled and the nanny…? well, eat your heart out Francine….
Client comments : ” I LOVE IT!!!!! OMG…I can’t wait to show her off . Thank you SO much!“
Price: $300.00
Software used: Adobe Illustrator CS4,
Designed and lovingly created by Me, Francesca Cornell, aka: Mad Matatu
If you’d like a logo designed for your business, graphics for web and or print, feel free to contact me for a quote using the form on my website:
Filed under: Adobe Creative Suite CS4, Art, Design, Illustrator, Vector Graphics, branding, logo | Leave a Comment
Tags: Adobe Illustrator CS4, animation, Cartoon, Facebook, Logo Design, Net Nanny, RSS, Social Networking Services, Twitter, Vector Graphics
No more sneak peaks, It’s Finished!!
I loved doing this site! I enjoy doing more serious designs and I enjoy creating them with
just a few div tags and pure css… just as I did with this one! The logo set the tone as you can see for the design and it’s color scheme, which i had created previously for my clients, and what I came up with was what you see! I was given free rein as the designer to deside how i wanted it to look since my clients trusted me 100% to come up with something they would like and want.
The entire site was designed in Photoshop CS4, the tabs and graphics, such as the wavy lines, I created using Illustrator CS4. The stock images are the only thing that came from the web and I recolored those too… so as you can see, when i say you get a FULLY CUSTOM and ORIGINAL Design… I mean it
I Design it… you keep it and NO ONE ELSE has one like it… see? Now THAT is one heck of a deal! Like this site and my style? contact me now for a quote:
Filed under: Adobe Creative Suite CS4, CSS, Design, Finance, HTML, Illustrator, Photoshop, Vector Graphics, california, logo, web design | Leave a Comment
Tags: Adobe Illustrator, Art, california, color, CSS, Design, DIV Tags, Graphic Art, graphic design, Logo Design, San Jose, Vector Graphics, web 2.0, web design
Filed under: Design | Leave a Comment
Tags: 700 miles, Art, camino del norte, maktub, pable coehlo, pellegrinos, pilgrimage, san sebastian, santiago de compostela, spain, the light warrior, the pilgrim

am busily preparing the new website for A.T Financial Services who were so happy with their logo design they hired me on to give their website a make-over…. here’s a peak, but just a teeny tiny one! not gonna give it away before its finished which is now just a matter of days! ![]()
If you’re interested in my services as a web designer you can contact me using the email form provided on my website: http://madmatatus.com/contact.html
Filed under: Adobe Creative Suite CS4, CSS, Design, Finance, HTML, Illustrator, Photoshop, San Jose, branding, california, logo, web design | Leave a Comment
Tags: A.T. Financial Services LLC, CSS, Finances, graphic design, HTML, Independent Contractor, Marketing, Photoshop, web design
Purchase My Services on eBay!
I have a few auctions and fixed price listings up on ebay for your convenience! if you need a website, eBay, prostore, logo or branding package you can make your purchase with the click of a button!
Happy bidding and please do feel free to use the contact seller tab should you have more questions! Merci!
Filed under: Design | Leave a Comment
Pretty happy with this site and so is dan, Wonderful guy!!! Was awesome working with him and while we still have some minor tweaks here and there business is up and running! This is an E-Commerce site and i designed and created every single graphic! including Dan’s robot mascot! How? hand drawn sketches that I then converted to vector line art with Adobe’s Illustrator CS4… site is .asp based and comes with an awesome easy to use control panel! Now go buy some games!!!! Dan deserves it!!!!
Filed under: Adobe Creative Suite CS4, Art, CSS, Design, HTML, Illustrator, Photoshop, San Jose, Vector Graphics, branding, logo, web design | Leave a Comment
Tags: CA, canada, ecommerce, Logo Design, Lucas Arts, magisterrex.com, original artwork, PC games, retro, San Jose, Sierra History Games, sketches, Vector Graphics, Video Games, web design
Yay!!!! Am excited to have a new sponsor for my “Camino del Norte!” muchas gracias!!!
Please visit their website forall your sporting needs!
http://www.playitagain-soquel.com/
Location Info:
Play It Again Sports
4770 Soquel Dr.,
Soquel, CA 95073
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Filed under: Design | Leave a Comment
The Sea Will Take Small Pride…
“Like all oceans, the Indian Ocean seems never to end, and the ships that sail on it are small and slow. They have no speed, nor any sense of urgency; they do not cross the water, they live on it until the land comes home.”
Beryl Markham, West With The Night
Filed under: Africa, Kenya, Photography, authors, books | 3 Comments
Tags: Africa, arab sailing vessels, Beryl Markham, boat, dhow, dreams, Indian ocean, Kenya, Photography
New logo design client: A.T. Financial Services, San Jose, CA
Company info and live view of the design: http://www.atfin.net/about.html
I loved doing this logo… a cleaand professional design with web 2.0 gloss! Client’s request? To create a logo that would incorporate a mountain(symbolizing strength)… we tried a few different things and in the end this was the winning design! Letterhead and business card design were also purchased.
Total for this package: $550.00 (includes: vector print/web logo design, business card and letterhead mini identity package)
If you’d like to purchase something similar just email me by using the link below:
Logo and mini identity package deal!
You may also contact me through my website: http://madmatatus.com
Filed under: Adobe Creative Suite CS4, Art, Design, Illustrator, Photoshop, San Jose, Vector Graphics, branding, business cards, california, logo, web design | Leave a Comment
Tags: bay area, blue, business logo design, california, clean, consultant financial, glossy, gray, investment consultantcy, original design, professional, San Jose, silicone Valley, sleek, Vector Graphics
New Poems in the Corner!
Filed under: Design | Leave a Comment
Tags: childish dreams, funny bone, glee, happiness, life, poem














