I am a Witch's Cat (cover)

Hello! What's that above picture? I hear you ask. Well my friends, it is the cover of my first picture book published by HarperCollins!  It is now up on various sites but not yet available to buy.  From what I can tell (I'm not sure why I don't know this but hey ho) It should be out around June time next year.  That's what it says the release date is on these various websites anyway. So that is very exciting! I am very excited! It feels like I have been waiting so long for this.  And I know there's still quite a long wait but it's getting smaller by the day!  And seeing it online, on proper book websites like Amazon and Barnes and Noble etc makes it feel so much more real. 

So yes, EXCITED!

Currently I still working really hard on the sequel to this picture book at the moment but I am also really looking forward to going on holiday in two weeks. We are going to Cornwall with some friends and I can not WAIT! Just take me to the ocean now please! Celestine is looking forward to it too. 

Here she is wearing some of her holiday clothes in anticipation.  And also with a bar of tiny chocolate. It's almost small enough for her!  I've never seen an edible bar of chocolate so small before.

And here are a very few snap shots of work in progress for my Witch's Cat sequel that I am working on at the moment.  Only very much close ups of things as I assume I am not really allowed to share much of it.

As you can probably tell it is Halloween themed again. I think with a character like Witch's Cat it has to be really. 

So what else has been going on?  Not a lot apart from work at the moment.  Although Henry and I have decided on our Honeymoon next year which we are very exited about. We were thinking Croatia...Turkey...Greece... and then thought, no, let's not go somewhere where it's bound to be hot and sunny and we can eat ice cream and swim in the sea- let's go to Scotland! And stay in a remote little cottage... on an island...  But seriously, I can't wait! Scotland is so beautiful even if the weather is unpredictable.  I plan to wear a tartan raincoat but I am having trouble finding one. I type tartan raincoat into ebay and all I get are dog raincoats. Still, I've got a year to find one... It's important to stay stylish I have decided- especially when one is on their honeymoon. I am going to deck Celestine out in tartan too. She can have a tartan dress, coat, jacket, trousers and maybe boots too... And I've just this minute remembered that Henry has some tartan trousers that her barely ever wears. He can whip those out and we can all be a vision in tartan- wonderful!

On that note it's probably best I wrap up this post about now.  So yes, hope everyone had a lovely weekend. Mine was wild. We ate fish and chips and watched a snippet of Harry Potter.

Until next time! 

X

Catharine Susan's Little Holiday

This is the book (by Kathleen Ainslie) that was the inspiration for my Celestine drawings I did recently. I just love the fact that it is about the adventures of a miniature wooden doll. I find it to be utterly charming.  It makes me want to document more of Celestine's adventures but at the moment I don't have time. I also quite like the way it's written. Henry thinks it's a bit weird but I kind of like it. It is odd.

I haven't been blogging at all lately because I have a deadline coming up and have been working pretty much 24/7.  So I haven't been commenting much lately either- sorry!

What I have been doing is: watching a LOT of American TV series while I work (seriously the rate I get though them is ridiculous!) cycling and looking forward to going on holiday in September. That's basically my life right now.

tiny summer clothes and yellow flowers

Also, I made these pink giraffes:

Summer has finally arrived. We have been swimming lots and I have been cycling lots too. There's this really great hour long cycle route near my house and I have been doing it at least every other day.  It's such a pretty route as well which makes it good for the body and soul! In the winter I did swimming as my exercise but this is so much better. And free! Celestine came with me the other day and went adventuring among the yellow flowers.  I have made her lots of summery clothes. I am planning to make her more for our upcoming holiday to Cornwall. I was pleased to find that playmobil shoes (the rubbery ones) fit her perfectly. So she now has beach sandals. Our freezer is stuffed with ice cream. Yesterday my grandparents came over for lunch and my mum made peach and ginger ice cream.  Henry's friend came to visit at the weekend. We ate burgers and bought a beach ball and played with it in the pool.  We are still not bored of the underwater camera. My mum and I found THE wedding dress and bought it last week. It is two sizes too big so my mum is adjusting it for me but it was almost half price! I can not wait until it fits me!  I got loads of tiny swarovski stars in the post- I am going to sew them onto the wedding dress to dazzle it up even more. We have been thinking of where to go on honeymoon. I would love to go to the caribbean but we are not going to be able to afford that right now. I think being a turtle swimming around in crystal blue seas in the caribbean must be a nice life. Drawing has been stressing me out a bit lately- sometimes I feel like I can't draw Celestine's face as pretty as I want her to look. I am too obsessive over some things. 'All my good ideas are battles.' In work news I have been dummy booking and am currently set making for the sequel of Witch's Cat. 

Hope you've been having a sunny July wherever you are!

Celestine Summertime

This weekend was very hot. Celestine spent it lazing about in her own personal swimming pool made from one of those blue ice cream tubs. She drank lots of lemonade and read all her mermaid books. When the weather is like this she wishes she could just have a mermaid tail and live in the sea.

random sidenote- it just popped into my head that I dreamt about turtles last night. I dreamt I found them on the beach and took three home to live in my jewelley box.  How cruel of me!

Anyway, so Celestine did lots of swimming this weekend and so did we. I am lucky to have grandparents who have a swimming pool!  Henry and I have been swimming there every day for the past few days.  On Saturday when we went all my cousins were there too which was fun.  And splashy!

Before that on Saturday, Henry and I went to his work summer party. We wore our straw hats and drank champagne. That evening Henry made Lebanese bread and our friend came round for dinner. I had a sun headache. 

This past week I have been trying on wedding dresses!!! I love trying on wedding dresses. It's so fun!  It's funny, because I have had this exact idea of the dress I would like to wear for a long time now. My mum was going to make it for me. But then you try on the perfect dress in a shop and everything changes. It's a very strange (but nice) feeling to find the perfect dress.  I have to say though, wedding dress shopping is a huge distraction- I have found it reeeeeally hard to concentrate on my work this week. - I constantly have tulle and glitter floating in front of my eyes. Still it's got to be done sometime!

We also- after much thinking over the past few months, have decided on the flower colours for the wedding.  We went to the market and I picked out three bunches of flowers I liked. My sister arranged them in vases and voila! It was an excellent way of deciding. I spent months not being able to decide what the best colour combination would be. As soon as I actually went and looked at the flowers in the flesh it was easy.  Now we have a colour scheme.

Also- I love my new gold shes. They are so comfortable I bought four pairs! Now i won't have to buy slip on shoes for the next few years.  I find buying slip on summer shoes a bit of a chore because they never seem to fit me.  When I find a pair that does I have to take advantage of it!

Anyway, I will stop rabbiting on about weddings now. It's just that it is at the forefront of my mind at the moment for some reason. Probably all that wedding dress shopping!

Here's another sketch of Celestine sunning herself by the pool.  In fact I think this is exactly what she is planning to do today...

This Week...

Monday
I designed a necklace for the wedding and my mum cleverly started to make it. We all watched Wuthering Heights. I did an hour long cycle before starting work.

Tuesday
Celestine got a new bicycle which actually works!  It has a miniature chain and everything.  I did an hour long cycle again. Had one of my craft clubs.

Wednesday
We went up to London in the evening to have dinner with my Grandfather and his wife who were over from America. Popped into the Illustration Cupboard beforehand and saw lots of original artworks by famous book illustrators. We had a posh meal in a posh place- lobster pasta for me! Celestine came too.

Thursday
Henry and I started looking at houses online. We want to buy one. I had my other craft club. Am very impressed by the 'mosaic' one of the children has made (below) We had dinner at a family friend's house- ate crab croquettes.

 Friday
Work in progress (below) Henry and I had out first house viewing in the evening. Afterwards we went on a cycle round our town to look at houses in different areas.

Hope your week was good!

Celestine: Flower Princess

I meant to upload this (Celestine picture number 6- must mean I've kept this up for 6 weeks now!) on Friday- midsummer's day but ran out of time.  I was so busy preparing for the ball we were going to. Midsummer's day marked exactly one year until Henry and I get married!

The ball we went to was the Flank Company's Ball in London.  my Grandparents took my whole family to it because my Grandfather used to be a pikeman which is why they are able to get tickets for it.  I have always wanted to go since I was really little I heard there is a carousel there that you can just hop on and off all night for free. Unfortunately the carousel wasn't there when we went but there was a ferris wheel. Henry and I happened to be sitting on the top of the ferris wheel while they were loading people on and off it when the fireworks started going off!

This is all of us at my cousins house just before we left for the ball. We had to hire a coach to get us all there!

I put a lot of effort into my outfit for the ball. My mum made me my dress. It was black with silver stars dotted all over it. I decided I wanted black hair to match my dress too so Henry helped me dye it (just semi permanent) on Friday morning. That was a bit of a mistake!  We both ended up with blue stained all over us and it took a LOT of scrubbing to get it out. In fact I didn't manage to get it all off and still had blue ears for the ball.  Also the colour didn't quite come out as I thought it would. It was a bit greenish/grey with blue tips at the bottom.  I think it looked all right though. But for the stress of it all I am never dying my hair on the day of an event again!

I was sort of using this ball as a kind of test run for the wedding hair-wise. I chose the style I wanted it for when we got married and got it done that way.  I'm glad I did as I don't think it will work very well for the wedding. It fell flat and looked a bit messy after not very long. 

It took me a whole day to get ready. I think this was down to dying my hair, getting it put up in the hairdressers and applying individual false eyelashes to my eyes. I have always been interested in trying those individual false eyelashes as Henry's mum uses them and they look really good. Also I like the fact you can just leave them on until they fall off.  I was impressed with how they looked- I am going to use them when I get married but they did take me ages to put on!

So things I learnt from this ball for the wedding are:

1- Don't do anything major like dye my hair on the actual day of the wedding.

2- wear the individual false eyelashes but maybe get some one else to put them on for me.

3- Think of a different hairstyle.

ANYWAY apart from all that I was pretty happy with how my outfit came together.  Henry wore a matching bow tie made from the same fabric as my dress.

There were lots of different rooms with different things going on in them at the ball. There was a room where you could go and have your face painted by a make up artist. I had a star and glitter pattern painted round my eye. Then you could have a photo taken in the photobooth there.  We did that too.  It was really fun.  I really enjoyed just being there with all my family and getting to dress up loads and dance.  It was a great night! 

gold boots

This weekend was a very shoe-y weekend!  We went up to Nottingham to visit Henry's Dad and Gran. On Saturday Henry and his Dad went to the cinema to see Man of Steel and I went shopping in the city. It was ridiculously busy. I stood in so mnay queues!  Anyway I bought a couple of pairs of shoes- ones just to wear in summer (I didn't have any summer shoes really except for boots) and a pair to wear with my ball dress on Friday because we are going to a ball!!!  One pair is silver, the other is gold. :)

When Henry came out from his film he also bought  a pair of smart shoes for the ball on Friday.  

And then I made Celestine a pair of little yellow boots. So she also got new shoes! Wouldn't want her to feel left out.

So that's why it was a very shoe-y weekend. And you can see why that's the theme for my Celestine sketch number 5.  I tried a bit of colour in this one. I'm quite liking it! Oh how Celestine wishes she had a real pair of gold boots with black pom poms on the toes. Gold is her favourite colour. Maybe I should try and make her some...

Other things we did this weekend: Ate pizza and chocolate cake, visited Henry's Uncle and Aunt who I have never met before, went on a cycle ride, did lots of sewing (clothes for Celestine's holiday in August) and saw Henry's best friend Chloe- she came over and they played video games.  All in all it was a good weekend.  I hope yours was too!

The Sad Picnic

Sometimes Celestine feels sad. Maybe someone has disappointed her, or maybe she has lost something...  

Either way when she feel like this (which thankfully isn't often) she makes herself feel better by going for a picnic.

On her own. 

In the middle of the night. 

It might seem a little strange but it usually works for her. And that's the important thing.

...

So that is my Celestine sketch number four.

Also, a sidenote: A lot of my pictures are not showing on my blog at the moment. I have exceeded my photobucket bandwidth for the month apparently.  All the photos should reappear in a couple of days though.  I switched to photobucket a few months ago because I ran out of space on blogger (picasa web albums). I now seem to have more space again on blogger when I checked... it's all very confusing!  I don't really understand it.  Anyone else had similar problems? If so I'd be grateful for some advice! 

Tottie: The Story of a Dolls' House

Recently I remembered a book I used to own when I was younger called 'Tottie' by Rumer Godden. There was a particular illustration in it that I really loved. Immediately I went into the attic to try and find it again but to no avail. After some searching I ordered another copy off Amazon for 1 pence (well plus postage)  It arrived the other day and I am so glad I am able to look at the illustrations again! I don't think I appreciated them fully as a child.

To give a very brief synopsis, 'Tottie' is the story of a little wooden dutch doll who lives in a dolls house with her mismatched 'family' of other dolls- Mr Plantaganet, Birdie, Apple and Darner the dog. They all live happily together until a selfish china doll moves in and their existence begins to be threatened.  In fact one of the dolls meets a sad and shocking end. There are some quite dark undertones to the book.

However, as much as I loved the story (I think I read it several times as a child) I want to focus more on the illustrations. I think illustrations in chapter books can often get a bit overlooked. And these ones (by Joanna Jamieson) are just beautiful. They really capture the charm of the dolls and the story.

The illustration I particularly love by the way is the one of Tottie sitting in the hand wearing her cape and muff.

Did you ever read this book? I think it was one of my favourites.