Christmas in a biscuit tin

These are drawings for an idea I had recently about a tiny character who lives inside a biscuit tin on the kitchen dresser. The story follows her as she gets ready for Christmas.  This came before I started doing all the cut out stuff and in a way is the original story! 

dreaming of sugarplums...

Waking up.  Oh it's Christmas Eve!

yes definitely Christmas Eve, it says so on the calendar...

Better get dressed then...

And stick some candycanes and a teacup in my hair...

Porridge for breakfast?

Now what's on the to do list for today?

Then the story continues with the character leaving her biscuit tin house and exploring the dresser, finding things to help her with her preperation for Chistmas.  If you look carefully at this picture, you can spot her walking along...

Fairies

In December I'm going to be at a craft fair in Flitick selling, among other things, these fairies:

Here are a few of them.  Meet:

The Sugar Plum Fairy

Audrey

Araminta the garden fairy

Robin

Snowflake the Christmas tree fairy

The Snow Queen

Cinder the little gothling fairy

I'm very excited and addicted to making them! They stand at about 5 inches tall and are totally handmade by yours truly! I will also be selling copies of my book 'Victoria Stitch', original water colour paintings and (hopefully) Christmas cards by my friend Sian. 

I will post details about the event nearer the time just in case any one who reads this lives nearby and might like to come along...

Victoria Stitch packs for holiday

Victoria Stitch is packing for her holiday.

She does not travel light!

She has so many very necessary items to bring...

Her striped swimming costume with matching goggles, flippers, hat and swimasaurus rubber ring.

Her Royal travelling crown.  (After all, she is the Queen!)

Her complete art set, including crayons, colouring pencils and paint.

Sunhat and suncream- factor 100!...

Travel sweets and snacks...

A bucket and spade for all those sand Palaces she will order Pink Rabbit to build...

Make up and glitter (very important)...

 Mustn't forget her pink toothbrush!

And that's all before she even packs her clothes!

Illustrated Recipe

I finally got around to making an illustrated recipe for the recipelook blog!  I was meaning to do it for ages.  Here's what I sent in:

Meet Victoria Stitch

Victoria Stitch and the Rainy Day

It is a rainy day and Victoria Stitch is bored.  She is bored of tracing the raindrops down the window glass with her finger.

She has exhausted her dressing up box...

her games...

and her paint set...

She is tired of antagonizing Pink Rabbit...

Pink Rabbit is tired of it too.

Victoria Stitch puts on her shiny black coat and shiny black boots and steps out into the rain.

It is time for an adventure!

(all writing and images are copyright to me)

Victoria Stitch

And here it is! Finally! My finished book.  My baby.

Of course now that it is all finished there's loads of stuff I would re do and change if I could but I think after a year of doing this sometimes you just gotta let things be.

Obviously I would love to get this published properly at some point but here are some pages from it, as it is now!

(p.s. my tutor was HORRIFIED when I put all the glitter on it)

If you find yourself desiring a copy then I have made some A5 softcover copies available HERE. 

Happy Monday! x

Dear Mr Baker man,

There is only one thing that I want you to bake,

and that is a pink and black house made of cake,

with icing and frosting and round silver balls,

and edible wallpaper hung on the walls.

(another page of my book)

Which house would you live in?

Frogs and Flamingos

Another part of a page from my book.  The last page actually.  Can you spot the cakes with the hands and bunny ears poking out of them?

I was going to put a recipe at the end of my book too but I ran out of time.  I started to do it last week but then realised that I wouldn't be able to knock it out in half an hour like I was planning without it looking rubbish so I have scrapped the idea for now. There's this great site called http://www.recipelook.co.uk/  where you can send in your illustrated recipes so I might do one fot that at some point instead.

Anyhow whilst I was doing that I got some ideas for the endpapers for my book.  I thought that as there's a heavy baking theme I could use the tiny pictures I did for my recipe that never happened and multiply them to look like this:

I quite like it but then I'm also torn between using black and white stripes for a more gothic feel. There's a stripe theme running through the book too, along with a frog and flamingo theme. Maybe I could do frogs and flamingos instead! On stripes.  Or stripes of frogs and flamingos.... the possibilities are endless!

Happy Tuesday! x

Rainbow Kitchen

This is one of the double page spreads (click to enlarge) for my book that I wrote and am in the process of illustrating.  All the research and drawing of cakes I did last term has most certainly come in useful for this. Though after this project I don't want to look at or draw another cake for at least a year! I've already given up eating them. You can have too much of a good thing!

can you spot: the castle cake, the the flamingo cupcakes, the squares of chocolate, the gingerbread man cutter?

 It's so weird to be coming to the end of being at uni.  Three years has gone so fast!  It feels funny to think that there's nothing to go back to after summer.  I still don't really know what I'm going to do next year.  I want to run away and live on the beach and live off the money from my paintings. Haha.

The Cupcake Palace

Here's my character again, inside her Cupcake Palace.  This is one of the pages from my book and there's writing to go on it too.  

I got totally inspired over the summer by Scott Hoves Cake Land.  I especially like these shoes:

 

I think my character would have probably have worn shoes like these in her younger days.

Lipstick Monster

 This is Marselina the Make-up Monster.  She's very small, lives inside a lipstick tube, leaves pink footprints wherever she goes...