Fun design for Pickle and Salsa Jars

Georg Gardens

A couple of years ago I started a small backyard garden that I have been building up using a worm composter. The composter is a source of great amusement for my kids because there are about 10,000 worms that need feeding from table scraps.

Last year I started canning using a pickle recipe from my Aunt Zepha (who died in 1978) and a salsa recipe from my friend Mayor (who is still very much alive). I gave the salsa and pickles away at Christmas and had an unexpected, highly enthusiastic response from the friends and family that received them.

I labelled the jars "Aunt Zepha's Bread and Butter Pickles" or "Mayor's Special Recipe Salsa" with the tag line: "Mile High Produce, Worms Working Wonders", the Mile High tag makes sense because we live in Denver, the mile high city. The reference to the worms really struck everyone as funny and I want to build on that for this year by creating special labels.

The project is to create two illustrated characters who depict Aunt Zepha and the Mayor as worms. I will use these on the labels for the salsa and pickles, shipping labels, etc. The worms need to be mostly vertical so I can print the label information to the side of them. They need to be an image that can be separated (no overlapping characters since on the shipping labels I will use one each per side, but I will only use one or the other on the pickle and salsa jars).

These characters should be cheerful and fun (we're talking about a jar of pickles here) so use your imagination - the more personality you can draw into these worms the better.

Here are a few pointers for Aunt Zepha - she is the older, cool aunt from the 60's - gray hair (maybe a beehive sytle) with cat's eye glasses. In real life, she was slender. Although she was cool in the 60's, don't think hippy, more like Leave it to Beaver - I was the hippy then, not her.

Pointers for the Mayor - the Mayor got his name because his father was the mayor of our town when we were growing up - you can build on that persona - top hat, sash, whatever. He is about 50 now, has light red hair and wears glasses. He is built sturdy but not rotund.

For style recommendations, perhaps look at the style of Chris Van Dusen http://www.chrisvandusen.com.

The figures should appeal to my 8 and 9 year old kids as well as the adults. Please do not have the characters use any alcohol or tobacco products in the drawings