Just Being Audrey

 A few weeks ago I had a dentist appointment in London. It was at an annoying time (just before peak time started) which meant that I had to wait two hours before I could get a train home.

So with two free hours to spare what did I do on a random weeknight at rush hour? I went to Foyles of course and looked at the books!  If you've never visited the children's book section in Foyles then you really should.  it's so diverse and wonderful.  There are so many interesting children's books that you would never find in a big chain like Waterstones.

Anyway on this particular night my eye was caught by a very lovely book called 'Just Being Audrey.'

'Just Being Audrey,' is a beautiful book for kids, all about the life of Audrey Hepburn.  It is illustrated is soft pastel by the artist Julia Denos.  I think her drawings are perfect and she gets Audrey Hepburn just right!

Audrey Hepburn is always portrayed as such a glamorous and sophisticated woman (which she was!) so it is easy to think that her life was just about dressing up and wearing pearls and being photographed.  However 'Being Audrey' uncovers another part of her life which I'm not sure if a lot of people are aware of.  I certainly wasn't! Audrey Hepburn was in fact one of the first celebrities to use her fame in a good way.  She used it to 'shine a light on the impoverished children of the world through her work with UNICEF.'

'Being Audrey' is a beautiful book full of beautiful and glamorous drawings. It is a book about a person who is beautiful inside and out.  It also comes with a message: 'true kindness is the greatest measure of a person.'

I highly recommend this book to anyone!  It's wonderful and stylish and lovely.  Just like Audrey herself!

Inspirations

Here are a few pictures that are inspiring me at the moment over at Pinterest and Tumblr...

Galaxy nails...

Witchy

Corpse Bride- I love her!

*shivers*

Tinkerbell (the original one mind!)

pretty perfumes

I love this idea

A Woggle of Witches by Adrienne Adams

Snow White

Daphne Guniness, most stylish woman ever.

Starry...

Tinkerbell. My fave.

A sandcastle palace! Magical.

So clever and beautiful.

Love these!

Mary Blair

twinkly!

I have to say although I was reluctant to jump on the bandwagon of these two websites/time eaters, I have actually found them to be very inspiring.  It's so nice to be able to collect images that you like and group them into different categories.  It's also really interesting to be able to see what's inspiring my friends too.  I think you can get quite a good sense of a person by looking at what images they collect.


By the way i am sorry if i have not credited all the above images.  If they are yours please let me know and I will credit you/take them down!

Wishes and Wellies

This is a commission I did a little while back for a website/blog banner.  I was quite proud of it so thought I would post it on the blog...

This one is for the facebook banner version.

I especially liked the red haired girl I drew with the two dogs. Elegance was the idea.

Here's a link to Wishes and Wellies if you're interested.

Dubai!

Hello! It's been a while.  That's because  have been in DUBAI! And I didn't do a single spot of work (even though I brought loads of art materials with me and planned to do lots)

So I'm afraid don't have any new drawing to show you... but I do have some holiday snaps!

Stripy Rabbit also came to Dubai and was photographed in various locations.

The day we went to the fish market in Sharjah.

Riding the four wheeled bicycle at Creekside Park. We also had a picnic.

My mum and Henry on an Abra boat going across the creek.

View from the restaurant balcony where we watched the dancing fountains.

Underwater swimming in the pool. These were taken through a window.

Swimming as night begins to fall and the lights come on in the pool.

Henry pretending to meditate in the baby swimming pool.

 Me seemingly captivated by the snakes in the Dubai aquarium.

We had such a wonderful time!  Highlights included:

- arriving on my birthday and having a chocolate cake and presents :)

- playing 'Bananagrams,' such a fun game!

- eating yummy food such as squid rings and shark and falafels and the most amazing 'hunger busta burger' yum yum yum

- discovering a really delicious layered smoothie drink at a cafe, mango, avocado and strawberry you should try it!

- going to the Dubai aquarium and going in a glass bottomed boat over the sharks and stingrays

- going to 'Wild Wadi' waterpark, they have some amazingly fun and terrifying rides there

- doing lots of reading.  I think I sort of rediscovered my love of reading this holiday.  Among others I read 'Tintin' and 'Fire and Hemlock' by Diana Wynne Jones. Really good! I also read the last book in the 'Mennyms' series by Sylvia Waugh- a story about a family of life size rag dolls. 

- picking up some lovely sparkly netting in the material shops in Satwa, all shades of pink, purple, black and white.  I want to make more ballerina tutus with them. They have so many craft and fabric shops in Dubai if you know where to look.  They also have an incredible button shop, just rooms and rooms full to bursting with buttons. Also shops full of diamante's and beads in all the colours of the rainbow!

- going to the gold souk and looking at all the sparkling jewelery.  I found the most beautiful stunning jaw dropping diamond necklace there.  It was white gold and all the diamonds were shaped into stars of different sizes.  I wanted it so badly!... but it was around five thousand pounds.  

- cycling in the park on the four wheeled bicycle and having a picnic there by the creek under a palm tree

- watching 'Arrietty' which I got for my birthday.

 - stumbling across a performance at the Bastakyia one day. There was a girl there doing a solo show, reciting bits of Shakespeare and her own bits of writing.  You could sit on bean bags and watch. It was actually really good.

- eating steak and chips on the balcony of a french restaurant whilst watching the dancing fountains next to the tallest building in the world.

Overall a really really good holiday! And it was nice to come back to a sunny England yesterday. Now it's back to work again!

Hope you're having a sunny Sunday,

Birthday Times

There are a lot of birthday celebrations going on around here at the moment.  Henry and I both have our birthdays four days apart and we are currently between the two.  This is probably why I felt inspired to make this image today.  It's Victoria Stitch on her birthday!

Victoria Stitch loves having a birthday and because she's the Queen she gets to have two every year.  She demands that all her presents be wrapped in her favourite stripy and bat patterned paper. She insists that all her birthday cards must be suitably gothic and glittery. And she eats chocolate cake with buttons for breakfast.

I really enjoyed making this picture today.  Lately I feel like I havn't done a lot of Victoria Stitch stuff. I've been busy with commissions and the exhibition and birthdays.  I know I have a lot to do at the moment but I felt like I would go mad if I didn't just let myself have half a day to work on something 'fun.'

This is the card I got for Henry.

Here are some pictures from the weekend. Henry and I had a low key joint birthday party with some friends.  We ate Lebanese food (or Hebanese as we like to call it seeing as it's only really inspired by Lebaese food and a lot of it is our own creation)  We played articulate, drank Jack Daniels and had zelda themed chocolate cake.  My friend Nicola gave me a pincusion in the shape of a cupcake which has a tape measure that comes out of it which is pretty cool.

The Zelda themed birthday cake which I made. Harder than you think!

Rainbow fruit skewers. Yum

View of the table...

Pop up birthday card from my friend Bruno which I love.

Henry blowing out his 23 candles.

The great thing is, that my actual birthday day is still to come! It's on Thursday.  I'm so excited. I'm going to be doing a very exciting thing on Thursday but I can't tell you what it is right now.  You will have to wait and see.

I hope you are all having exciting weeks too!

Love and Glitter,

Snow White

 During the week of the exhibition I spent a lot of time in London.  And a looot of time in the bookshop Foyles (where the exhibition was)  Lucky for me I really love Foyles and could spend all day in there looking at books. The other great thing about it is that its just round the corner from my other favourite shop Forbidden Planet! Yes I am a geek. I love all that stuff.

So on Thursday (it was the day of the private view) I went into London early and popped into Forbidden Planet beforehand.

And what a surprise I had!  Oh I love it so much when this happens!  You walk into a shop just expecting to have a little mosey around when what do you see? A new book (that you didn't even know was coming out) by one of your favourite illustrators sitting on the shelf right in front of you!  In this case it was Camille Rose Garcia's Snow White.  I was so excited. I snapped it up right away!

This is such a beautiful book. I recommend it to anyone who likes a bit of goth. I just love the spiky characters, the stripes and the technicolours.  It's just fabulous fabulous fabulous!  I read the whole thing on the train going home from the private view.  It was one of those books that gave me a tight feeling in my throat because every page was just so wonderful! Camille Rose Garcia paints like no one else I have ever seen before!  I just love that wicked Queen's green and black striped hair.

Also as you can see, every page is so nicely designed even down to the font style and size and the borders and patterns round the pictures. Quite a lot of the writing and patterns are done in gold too. Very shiny!

The story by the way is the original Grimm's fairytale.  And it does have a rather Grim ending!  This isn't the sugarcoated disneyesque version of Snow White.

So yes, to cut a long story short I was as pleased as punch to find this little treasure!  I just had to share it with you.

Let me know what you think!