The Night Before Christmas

At the end of last year/beginning of this year I had the opportunity to illustrate a version of The Night Before Christmas - a poem by Clement C Moore. I was very pleased to be asked because it is in fact a book I have always wanted to illustrate! In fact I wrote about it on my blog back in 2012.

I illustrated the whole book in 3d - using the same techniques I used for my Witch's Cat books and the Glitterbelle books. I thought I would show you some of the work that went into this book behind the scenes and a few of the final images. 

This image was used for the endpapers and is actually one of my favourites. 

The houses are actually all flat card cutouts standing in front of one another. They are not 3d houses. I just painted them to look 3d! I used fairylights behind the windows. I used yellow cellophane on the windows to really give them that warm glow. Here's a behind the scenes snap of the houses, before I lit the sky up. You can see the fairy lights and the wire in front.

I light the sky up by shining lamps from the back, though all the tiny pinprick holes and stars. It makes them very sparkly. You can tell I used a few different lamps to light up the whole sky as some of the light is a different colour. I quite like that though. Some of the stars are more of an ice white and some of them are a warmer white.

I think the scenes I enjoyed creating the most were the bedroom scenes. I always find bedroom scenes fun to make. I sewed some miniature christmassy patchwork quilts for the beds.

This was the parents room - before I put the characters in. I was quite pleased with how I made the little bedside lights. I bought some electric tealights from the pound shop and stuck the plastic flame bit through a hole in the top of the bedside table. Then I put a tracing paper tree in front of it. I like all the little details you can put in a bedroom, the snowman mugs by the bedside, the tiny little paper chains (fiddly to make!) the miniature paintings on the walls. I also designed the wallpaper.

This was the children's room. not quite the final image as the final image also has sweets and sugarplums floating in the air along with the fairies. Secretly I actually prefer this version though...

I made the Christmas tree out of pipe cleaners and stuck sequins on it for baubles. Then I used a string of dollshouse fairylights to light it up. I sewed the teddy and the rabbit on the top right.

These ones are 'in progress' shots...

The first image I created for the whole book was the one with Santa on the rooftop. I had to create a sleigh for this scene which was fun. I remember watching Mob Wives as I covered all the tiny presents in glitter. It's funny, I always remember what I was watching or listening to at the time of creating a piece of artwork when I look at that artwork again in the future.

Here's Santa in the chimney! This was before I changed his sack to one made from fabric. It didn't look very good like this...

Here's a test shot just to try and get the placement of everything right.

And another one. I used cotton wool for the snow. If you buy it in a roll then when you lay it out it looks like a sheet of soft pristine snow. 

This was the final image. You can see what a difference lighting makes! I think it looks much more cosy and Christmassy here with everything being darker. The stars glow more and I think it had more atmosphere. I sprinkled glitter on the cotton wool to make it look like the snow sparkling in the starlight.

I like how the reindeers had glitter and sequins on them. This one has various different moon and star sequins on him.

I had to make the reindeers in a smaller scale for another scene. Otherwise the set would have been HUGE! These reindeers are pretty small, about 2.5 cm.

I had to make the sleigh in a smaller scale too.

This was part of the final image. It wasn't possible to find fairy lights small enough for this scene so I had to add them in Photoshop. I MIGHT have been able to think of a way to create the illusion of very tiny fairy lights somehow if I had had more time. But I just didn't. 

Here are the reindeers flying in the sky!

To create something like this I put the reindeers on long stalks in front of the starry sky. Here's a test shot.

The houses also had to be made in two sizes. There was the scale I have shown above and then another even smaller scale.

I used electric tealights again to light up the insides of the houses.  They were... interesting to photograph. Basically it took me billions of shots to get this one right. I tried all sorts of different lighting effects...

The trees were all made from paper rolled into cones with V shapes cut out for the leaves/branches. And then glittered of course!

There are quite a few scenes in the book which are set in the living room. I quite liked making the living room. The tree was fun to do.

So sparkly!

Here's a test shot of the whole scene. I think a few things changed in it for the final version.

And here's the last scene in the book. Santa and his reindeer flying away!

I hope you enjoyed seeing some of the behind the scenes for this book. I enjoyed creating it.

There's a little video for it here too:

Hope you're having a festive December!

X

Celestine's Birthday and Catch Up!

It's been a while and I have a lot to catch up on. If you follow me on instagram then you'll probably have seen most of these photos already but I like to have them on my blog as well.

Firstly, Celestine's birthday. This was ages ago now - back in September! But I have had no time to edit/upload so that's why they're going up now.

Here she is at her birthday table. Her friend Matilda who has been featured before came to the party.

Besties!

They had a lot of nice food (though there weren't a lot of savoury options...)

To Celestine and Matilda, sprinkles are like sweets!

Celestine wore her new necklace. It was made by Nalladris. It is so sparkly! I'm not going to lie, I did theme the whole party round the pink necklace...

And french fancies did have to be bought...

Matilda and Celestine started out quite demurely, sipping their tea (ahem whiskey for Matilda) from their cups. Henrietta made a crown for Matilda with the 3doodler.

But things soon went downhill...

Matilda had a little too much whiskey as usual...

And ended up in the cakes...

Then she partook in a bit of drunk driving on Celestine's scooter. Tut tut. Luckily there were no other miniature drivers on the patio that day. 

Overall though, it was a good party and Celestine and Matilda enjoyed themselves which in the important thing.

So that was that.

Speaking of Nalladris I also bought this absolutely exquisite little star tiara from there recently-ish. It's got 170 sparkling crystals in it. It is sooo beautiful! I will have to do a seperate post one day on all the jewellery Celestine owns....

 I dyed my hair pink again (quite a while ago now.)

We went on lots of walks, especially in Autumn.

And then there was Halloween!

We went to a wedding on actual Halloween. Celestine wrote a Halloween letter to her friends Dixie and Percy in her red witch's hat and cape. She enjoyed getting her pumpkin tea set out. (Made by Sally Meekins ceramics.)

And then there was fireworks night! Celestine came too of course and wore her bobble hat. There was a massive bonfire.

And let's just take a moment to admire this tiny little rainbow cardigan. Made by suedehead on etsy. It is so small!! I asked for the arms to be made a little bit longer because Celestine has longer arms than the dolls it is supposed to be made for.

It fits her perfectly. 

We also bought a new chest of drawers a few months ago and when we opened one of the drawers it had this tiny magic wand in it! I enjoyed that.

I just realised this whole post is basically just about Celestine! Whoops!

Well, that's probably because I have just been working mainly lately. Working working working. Which is fine because I enjoy it. But it seems Celestine has been living my life for me lately while I work! haha.

Celestine goes camping!

Over the summer we went on a camping trip with some friends down in Cornwall. I hadn't been camping for years and years so was a little nervous about how I was going to cope (haha, I don't pack light) but I really reeeeally wanted to go to Cornwall and it was the only way we could afford to go. 

...and I am so glad we went! Firstly because I now know I can still do camping and secondly because it was worth putting up with the discomforts of camping to be in my favourite place in the whole world. Also I think I captured one of my best Celestine photo sets ever.

Celestine was very excited that we were going camping. The first thing she did was order a new wardrobe of clothes to be made that would colour coordinate with her tent. Isn't she vain!

I have to admit, she did have a much better set up than us. She even brought a washing line - now that's forward planning! I'll let you into a secret though, those clothes aren't actually wet. Celestine is just very proud of her dresses and likes to display them so that people can walk by and admire her impeccable fashion taste. Sneaky I know.

Here's the whole campsite from up on the hill. You can see the sea in the background! It's just a short walk away from the campsite. It's a pretty basic campsite (as in very basic facilities) but it you like that back-to-nature kind of thing then it's perfect. 

This was our tent. It was the most basic tent on the campsite! We borrowed it from a friend - thank you Adam, and it worked fine for what we needed it for.  But everyone else on the campsite, well, they had all sorts of fancy things. Fairylights, fire pits, flags, proper little kitchen set ups... one person even had a fake brick wall set up outside their tent! We don't usually go camping so we didn't have any of the gear. 

The first evening was so nice and sunny. We went and ate our dinner on the beach.

Then we snuggled down in our tent to go to sleep. Not very comfortably because Henry's air bed had a puncture and deflated as soon as he lay on it! We bought another one the next day.

Celestine was comfortable though at least...

One evening we had a campfire on the beach and had a bbq down there.

Celestine had her own fire of course. She made tiny s'mores.

We had s'mores too. Sort of. I know they are not the proper American ones but we did our best!

I love love love this place! 

Celestine adores the beach. One of her favourite things to do is to row her little boat around the rockpools and lagoons. She had a new boat to use this summer. I painted it red for her.

Other things we did in Cornwall were: eat cream teas and pasties. Surfing! Well, bodyboarding... I wish I could have done more bodyboarding while I was there. We went to Newquay and Padstow and Truro as well. 

Celestine had her own mini pasty:

 

Cream tea:

Unfortunately the holiday was cut short by one day because we got absolutely rained out of the tent. We woke up in puddles of water and the tent was soaked through. There was no way we could stay the last night because everything was so wet. We just had to pack up and leave straight away in the morning. And then it rained and rained all the way home. I guess that's the downside of camping!

Still, it was worth it for all the other nice days we had there. 

I can't wait to go back again! (not camping next time though haha)

p.s. Here is Celestine's new boat before I painted it. I bought it back in April at a miniatures fair in Newark. It's made by Homestead Dollshouse Miniatures. I varnished it and painted it so that it could go in the water. Also next to it is a miniature dragon which Celestine bought in Padstow because there's a bear shop there which sells miniature animals. It's made by Deb Canham.

and one more of Celestine boating in the lagoon. I loved that lagoon so so much! I love how smooth and glassy the water looks.

So that was our camping trip!