Twenty Six

^  Celestine and I (click to enlarge if you want to see Celestine!) ^

Today it was (still is!) my birthday.  I didn't do much for it which was very unusual for me. I usually like to go all out for birthdays. It felt very weird actually to not organise something big or at least big-ish with friends- (or family- all my family are away atm.) But I am going to Dubai next week and we are saving money for the wedding so I sort of didn't feel the need to do anything.

Henry and I went for a nice walk in the morning in the sporadic sunshine. Celestine came too. She hasn't been out on many trips with us lately. I've missed her. I've just been so busy with other things recently. Luckily Celestine has lots of other friends (her own size!) to go and visit. 

Because it was my birthday Celestine made an effort with her outfit. I mean she usually makes an effort- she's very stylish- but you know, we were only going for a walk. I thought she looked quite like Kiki from Kiki's delivery service in her red bow and blue coat.

Here she is walking along... (again click to enlarge if you actually want to see Celestine! Problem of being so small!)

It's so nice that the flowers are starting to come out!

Celestine didn't walk the whole way round of course- we'd be walking for about a week if that was the case! She likes to sit on my shoulder.

Barney had a good time too. He loves to dig about in the leaves. I love my little dog.

After the walk we had lunch in a pub nearby. It was even just about warm enough to sit outside! It's been a nice but understated birthday so far. Tonight Henry is going to cook my favourite food- Hebanese. That's Harriet and Henry's version of Lebanese!

Hope you've had a lovely Saturday!

X

pink hair and glitter stars

 

Celestine managed to get hold of some pink hairdye the other day. This was the result. I thought it looked very pretty but she wasn't so sure. She says pink isn't really her colour. I don't agree!

I am also feeling a lean towards the pink at the moment. I've been wanting to do something with my hair for ages but haven't because of the wedding coming up in June. You know that whole don't do anything drastic with your hair just before you get married rule. I kind of want to ignore that rule at the moment.... but not sure if I dare. I don't mean fully pink hair, just a little bit of pink on the ends- or somewhere! It would match the flowers and the bridemsaids and the ushers- and my lipstick! I think it would look good.

I'm making the whole thing into a big deal- it wouldn't usually be. It's the wedding that makes it a big deal

I might do it...

And weddings weddings weddings. There's a lot of wedding stuff going on here right now as you might imagine. I've suddenly got into the vibe. Hence why I haven't posted any work up here lately.  I've been diamonding up my veil with crystals and making decorations. Glittery stars of all sizes- all shades of pink and purple and green. Everything has become saturated in glitter in this house. Even the dogs bed, my hair, the floor. It's just everywhere. I'm not complaining- I love it! Everything sparkles.

I have also been making fairies and goblins and witches to hang among the stars. They have been taking me a while. I'll post them here when they're finished. They are also in all shades of purple pink and green. I'm going to make them tutu skirts. And of course they are also all glittery too. It's been a good little project for me as I have been using them to practice drawing faces!

Today Henry went down to the jewellers to get his wedding ring made. I love going to the jewellers. Any excuse. So I accompanied him there. I asked the jeweller if he had any star shaped diamonds because I've never seen one before. He didn't have one (he says he sometimes does!) but he showed me a cubic zirconia one which was very sparkly. Diamonds shaped into star shapes are apparently quite rare. I've searched for one on the internet before just to look at it but nothing ever comes up. I feel like if I hadn't become an illustrator I may well have become a jewellery designer. I am actually extremely interested in jewellery and jewels.

Sidenote: Celestine is a jeweller you know- A miniature one.

Work wise I have been working on the front cover for my second Witch Cat book. It's been taking a while to get right. I find covers often do take ages.

I just finished reading The Lollipop Shoes by Joanne Harris. Such a good book. I read it once years ago and don't remember enjoying it so much as I did the second time around. It's a very magical, chocolatey book. This is probably because it's about witches who live and work in a chocolate shop in Paris.  I just love the way Joanne Harris writes and the way she uses words to describe things so richly. And the descriptions of the hot chocolate the characters are always drinking just makes your mouth water! Melted chocolate, milk, nutmeg, vanilla bean, cardamom... etc. You almost just want to eat the book! So yes I found that book very inspiring recently.

Hmm... that is all. Rambly post this one. (actually written a few days ago but never got round to posting)

tiny cards and a tiny cat

Celestine has been designing and sending lots of tiny cards these last few weeks. She's been getting rather addicted to it. Here are some of the ones she has made and sent recently.

I love to think of the teeny tiny miniature cards winging their way around the world. One went to America and another even got sent to India (not sure if that one actually arrived, I hope it did!)  I always put them in a normal size envelope of course- otherwise I think they would just get lost!

Celestine was inspired after she got sent a (not as tiny but still small) card in a gold envelope from her friend Carol in Belgium.

This is is the card Celestine sent back in return. A ballerina one. It was her favourite of all the cards she made. (But that might just have been because she was wearing her pink ballerina dress at the time!)

Along with the small card for Celestine in the gold envelope Carol also sent me some books. I especially liked this one called Bulle. It is about a little girl who is called Bubble and she is so light that she has to be careful not to float away!  One day she does float away by mistake and has a little adventure but then realises her father had attached a line to her foot so she was able to come back down from space again.  A nice sentiment I think. And I love the illustrations. 

So that is that.

And now here is a silhouette-y picture of Celestine wearing her new catsuit while up in Derby visiting Henry's mum. She has been being a Witch's Cat in anticipation of my book coming out in July. 

Not premature at all....

But more on that another time.

She did actually forget to bring her pillow when we went to Derby but it was alright becasue she used a sock instead. (it was a clean one!)

  

Whiskers and Glitter,

X

Tiny book no. 4!

Every year for Valentines day I make Henry a tiny book. He keeps them in his wallet.

Here's some pages from this years. I did it in colour this time- got slightly carried away with the glitter too!

This one documents all the things we've done together since last Valentines day.

You can see how tiny the book is from the photo above.

See last years here, the year before's here and the year before's here.

Hope you had a nice Valentines!

X

♥ Happy Valentines from Celestine ♥

Celestine's got a pink letter in the post but she won't say who it's from.

♥

edit:

Little Dinosaurs

I mentioned before that I had been doing lots of work for a story idea I had involving my little dino kid characters.  I have no idea whether this story idea is going to go down well with the editor or whether it will be the story I end up using for the dino characters but it has been good to practice my flat drawings anyway! I have been working in 3d for so long now that I really don't feel I have much of a flat drawing style anymore. It's something I REALLY need to work on this year.  It's very important to me (and my career!) that I am able to draw and paint flat pictures. 

With that said, here are my very very first attempts at drawing flat scenes in a long while. (I know there is lots of room for improvement!)

Also excuse the crinkly paper in some of them. I was only using my sketchbook to practice in. Sort of regretting that now but never mind.

I plan to do lots and lots more practicing of flat pictures! It's very important to me. I hate feeling so under confident with painting them.

the kitchen scene took me the longest. Seriously I was working on it for about 3 days. and a lot of that time was spent staring at it wondering how to do the lighting. You don't have to think about lighting and depth when you make things in 3d! 

These paintings are all based on my childhood holiday place. In fact all the backgrounds are painted from photos (apart from the kitchen)  

Can you guess which part of the world these paintings are based on?

January thoughts

Celestine has been wearing her new rainbow jumper a lot lately. She's making an effort to brighten up January. And it's been working. The day after she put it on the sun came out!  

Here she is frolicking about in the woods. She does love to frolic.

At the beginning of January Henry and I went up to Nottingham to visit his Dad and Gran. We took his Gran out for the day for her birthday. We thought she might like to visit the dolls house emporium in Derbyshire so we drove there. (wasn't even my idea honest!) I had never been there either and I really enjoyed going too as I've bought things from their catalogue for years. It was nice to see the actual shop and headquarters and look at all the displays. I bought this little snowman mug for Celestine. She can have it as a Christmas present this year haha. Always the forward planner. Well there's no point in giving her a snowman mug in January is there!   

Actually it was a good thing we went to The Dolls House Emporium shop when we did as we discovered it is closing down- would have never got to see it otherwise. My castle is from there!

After that we drove into Derby and went to a posh department store called Bennetts where we had lunch. We wanted to take her for afternoon tea really but it was the wrong time for afternoon tea. I had a smoked salmon sandwich anyway which was delightful. 

During this time Henry and I had another spate of house hunting. Occasionally we have a house hunting surge before we come up against an obstacle and realise we still can't actually get a mortgage yet for one reason or another. But anyway to cut a long story short, it helped us discover and realise where we DO want to live as soon as we can afford to buy. Which feels really nice. We both think it will be the perfect place. And in the countryside too!

I can not wait until we have our own house. Mainly because I want to put all my pictures up on the walls! And have a studio of my own instead of cramming everything into the bedroom. 

Work wise this month I have been working towards the front cover of my Witch Cat sequel and also doing a lot of work on my dino kids. I have had a new idea of a story for them and I feel very inspired! It's nice to have a bit of space and time to work on them properly and give them all my attention. I had so much work on last year that I think it gave me creative block a little bit. It's hard to be inspired and think up new ideas when you barely have enough time to get all the work you're supposed to get done done.

Also I am practicing drawing 2d pictures as I have been working in 3d for so long. It feels good to be able to just sit down and draw something on a flat piece of paper rather than have to make it all in 3d. I do need a lot of practice though. I feel very nervous about just drawing flat pictures as I haven't done it for so long.

I will upload some stuff I've been doing soon.

My friends Sian and Dave came round the other week. Sian brought her penguin who has been a promised friend for Celestine for quite a while! He took a long time to arrive in the post though. They had a pretend pink tea party together and then compared sledges. Dave brought his little lego man and we had a nice evening eating pizza and chocolate gateau and snapping photographs of our small people/creatures!

Celestine was very pleased to finally meet penguin. (She painted him a tiny mug with a penguin on it for Christmas) I think they will get on! (Below photo taken by Dave)

Now that it's January it suddenly feels like the wedding is much closer. It's now THIS year! Five months away! Before I wasn't thinking too much about it but now I am really excited. Some days I find it hard to concentrate on work becasue I get obsessed with doing wedding stuff. I have a compulsive mind where I can only focus on one thing at a time. I am aware how much stuff there is to be done. I need to gem up a lot of things too which will take ages. I did buy all the bridesmaid shoes this week though and thought of a way to sparkle them up with stars and glitter diy style! I also bought a HUGE armful of glittery roses (fake obviously!) in the post Christmas sale which are all the exact wedding colours. Very pleasing. They are quite literally dazzling. I will be keeping them to put in my future house after the wedding for sure!

This time last year Celestine was sledging! So were Henry and I. There hasn't been any snow this year actually. To make up for it I drew this little sketch of Celestine with her sledge. 

She wasn't very impressed. She said pale blue is not her colour and doesn't suit her at all. She said she wanted a tartan or leapord print coat instead. Much more stylish. So I did another version.

She was right. She does suit tartan much better!

And that's all I can think of! 

Hope you're having a great start to the year...

X

Goodbye 2013!

2013 has been a year of 'getting ready.' I knew it was going to be a year of getting ready and preparing when I went into it and it has been just that! 2014 is the big one you see- it's the year I get married, buy a house (hopefully!) and it's the year my first picture book comes out.  So a lot of this year has been spent working towards these things.  It's been a good one though. And here are the highlights:

I'll start with my castle as that was one of my new years resolutions. I really made good progress on it this year!  I didn't finish it as I hoped I would but I am still pleased with how far it has come along. At the beginning of the year it was still just a bare empty shell.

My other resolution for this year was 'career.'  I think I did alright on that one too.  I was a LOT busier the second half of the year than the first but I knew that was going to happen.  Overall this year I have completed two picture books and various other spreads/sets/covers too.

I spent an intense six weeks during the summer creating the sequel to Witch's Cat.

I also did a lot of work for the Glitterbelle (princess) books this year. Overall I really enjoyed working on these books even if at times it got a little stressful! I'm really proud of what I managed to create for these books. I learned a lot doing it too!

A big highlight of this year was going on holiday to Cornwall with friends. It was just such a wonderful holiday and I just adore the place we went to so much.  

Henry and I went on some nice walks this year... and so did Celestine.

We went to a ball in London with my whole family. I wore a black starry dress which I designed and my mum made for me. Also tried out black hair for the occasion (not such a good idea dying it the morning of the ball but never mind...) Henry had a matching starry bow tie.

I ran two different craft clubs in two different schools this year which was great experience even though the children in one of the clubs were very very naughty.

It was a really sunny summer. I did loads of cycling and we did loads of swimming. Celestine did lots of boating.

I discovered some new books (Catharine Susan) and rediscovered my love for some old ones (Tottie, Mrs Pepperpot) 

I made quite a few little animals out of fimo this year which I was pleased with. They are addictive to make!

Celestine had a birthday and had a little teaparty with her mouse friend Matilda.

I was very pleased with my Tinkerbell pumpkin for Halloween this year.

Henry and I bought a car!

I discovered this ring on ebay and didn't win it but then got it for Christmas! It got me thinking about being a jewellery designer for a while.

I tried to draw one picture of Celestine per week but um didn't manage it! I was pleased with some of the ones I did draw though.

I went to Kensington Dollshouse fair in London with my friend Sian and also up to Miniatura in Birmingham.  And to a couple of other local ones where I found the most amazing miniature books.

We went to Bruges this year and we also went skiing in France with my family.

We went sledging. And so did Celestine.

Also this year: I finally got to ride on my beloved carousel this winter! And we had a really nice Christmas- the first Christmas Henry and I have spent together. I made Henry a crazy massive birthday cake which took all day. We went on a lovely trip to Bekonscot model village with friends which was fun. We did some wedding planning and bought the wedding dress. New characters emerged for a book idea I have in my head- just a personal one for my own fun. I bought an underwater camera. I did a LOT of gemming up of things and collected a lot of swarovski stars and crystals. I discovered Celestines feet fit into playmobil sandals which pleased me. I went down to Bath to help direct the photography for the Glitterbelle picture book. We took a trip to St Albans in the rain. Ate quite a few pasties. Discovered a new way of making the most amazing chocolate icing ever. Decided on and booked our honeymoon. Celestine had a birthday. We visited Bakewell. I discovered Tulsi chai tea and sparkly hair extensions. Want some!

aaaaand that's all I can think of and I think that's enough!

My new years resolution for this year is to READ MORE. I have been awful at reading lately and I don't want to be. I want to read more books! 

I hope you have had a great 2013 and I wish you all the best for 2014!

X