Toad gig flyer: Amy Kucharik and Greg Klyma

Flyer for my upcoming gig at Toad with Greg Klyma. It's fun being a cartoon!

Amy Kucharik Ukulele Flyer

Flyer for my gig at the Burren on Mother's Day.

The illustration is based on some 1920s sheet music illustration and also a comic book page from 1930. Hand-rendered, scanned, colored in Photoshop, assembled using Adobe InDesign.

Ukulele Valentine for Boston Swing Central

My 2012 Boston Swing Central Valentine, based on a vintage sheet music illustration.

This is another example of work where I've done the drawing by hand, then colored it in Photoshop. The final design was created in Adobe InDesign.

Greg Klyma/Amy Kucharik Toad Dec. 22 flyer

I am so proud to share this flyer... Not so much because of the design or illustration, but because of the content! I will be playing my first official gig with my name on the bill along with Greg Klyma at Toad on Dec. 22.

The illustration is a reference to story of the Town Musicians of Bremen, which I love and I thought was somehow appropriate, not least of all because the animals sort of make the shape of a Christmas tree. We will not be playing any Christmas music, though!

Ukulele vuvuzela song

I wrote a song about World Cup and vuvuzelas, and was lucky enough to find a crew of talented people (while on vacation!) to star in and help produce this video.

Ukulele cake

So, I play the ukulele, as do many of my friends these days. It's one of my favorite things in the world. For my friend Jasmine's birthday, I decided to build a ukulele cake. This turned out to be a pretty easy (and fun!) project which I made with a little help from other uke-playing friends, Vichu and Lou. (You can see Vichu crumb coating the cake in the small photo. Lou iced the neck with chocolate fudge icing.) Overall, I'm pretty happy with the finished result even though it could have been neater if I'd had more time.

Basically, we baked a sheet cake and a few small loaf-sized cakes. I only ended up needing one of those, for the neck. The headstock is made using one of the leftover bits I carved off of the sheet cake when I cut the body of the uke. The pattern for the uke body was made by tracing my Mahalo ukulele, and then I transferred that to the cake by punching around it with a knife.

The tuning knobs are lollipops and the bridge is a section of a chocolate bar. The soundhole is made using cocoa powder sprinkled into a ring mold (Vichu's idea, which worked great, although cocoa powder went everywhere when Jasmine blew out the candles!). Everything else is pretty much frosting, dyed green or piped.

Also, I think the finished cake with burning candles has kind of a Jimi Hendrix thing going on!