Uppercase

Last year I was contacted by Lisa from Uppercase Box about designing a product for her YA book themed monthly subscription box. I had lots of fun designing an exclusive colouring book inspired by six children's classics:

Peter Pan

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland

The Wizard of Oz

The Secret Garden

The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe

Charlie & the Chocolate Factory

Below is a small selection of the illustrations I created for it, and some Instagram snaps from the subscribers that received their boxes last week!

(Photos by @books_n_dragons @vi3tbabe @_myfictionalworld @dawnnikolpl)

Uppercase is a great monthly subscription service based around young adult readers. Each month subscribers get a brand new book, an author's signature (either a bookplate or in the book itself!), and several bookish items (some of which are exclusive!)

Unfortunately Lisa doesn't ship to the UK at the moment, but if you're based in the US or Canada then I definitely recommend signing up! 

Aladdin and the Wonderful Lamp

Happy Friday!

Today I'm back with the second instalment of my new illustration series (read the first one here)

This week's fairytale is Aladdin and the Wonderful Lamp.

I've created two illustrations for this story: 

-A book cover design

- An image based on the description of where the lamp is initially seen: "These halls lead into a garden of fine fruit trees. Walk on until you come to a niche in a terrace where stands a lighted lamp."

Next week's fairytale is Beauty and the Beast.

Pattern Play

I'm working on some new products at the moment, some of which have involved experimenting with new pattern ideas. Rather than leave them all in a sketchbook I thought I'd give a few of them a bit of colour!

These are some of my favourites so far...

Holiday Sketches

Over New Year I went on a five day cruise with my family to Belgium and Germany (which is where this happened!)

As always I took plenty of photos whilst we were away, and I've been working on some illustrations from them this week. I think I'll be keeping these as sketchbook illustrations this time rather than scanning them in and adding colour. Hopefully in the next few weeks I'll find the time to do a few more!

East of the Sun and West of the Moon

One of my favourite Christmas presents from Jamie this year was a beautiful book of Fairytales from around the World. As much as I want to start reading it right away I decided to put it aside until the New Year, and to read one at a time and create some illustrations based on each one.

So this is the first post a new series 'Fairytales from around the World'.

Sometimes I'll just be doing the one illustrations, other times I'll do several. I'm hoping to do a combination of full illustrations, patterns, book cover designs and mini comics, so I should have a big variety of things to share in the next few months!

First up was East of the Sun and West of the Moon.

As I read through the story I made notes of all the interesting descriptions , scenes and objects, and came with ideas for four illustrations:

The girl riding away on the Great White Bear

The door of the castle in the foot of the mountain

A pattern made up of the three golden objects she was given to help her

And finally, the North Wind blowing over the storm, East of the Sun and West of the Moon 

The next story is Aladdin and the Wonderful Lamp. I'll be back soon with some illustrations for that one!

A little announcement...

Happy New Year everyone!

I have some very exciting news to share...

For New Year I went away on a cruise with some family to Belgium and Germany.

Just before dinner on New Year's Eve, Dad called from their cabin to say they were running a little late, so Jamie suggested we go for a walk around the promenade deck. Little did I know this was all a set up, and when we got to the back of the ship, Jamie asked me a very special question! Of course I immediately said yes! Meanwhile the rest of our party were waiting in the bar with champagne and huge grins on their faces. The whole evening was wonderful, as was a quiet morning together at sea on New Year's Day.

The ring was my Nanny's eternity ring, which I absolutely love and am so proud to be wearing.

Obviously I am absolutely thrilled, very excited and eager to start buying wedding magazines and browsing Pinterest for ideas! First up is the guest list and venue :) Wish me luck! I'll be sharing a few updates along the way!

Huge thank you to Jamie for making such a special moment for us, and to the rest of the family for all their help in making the evening so amazing!

I'll also be back soon with some illustrations of things we saw on the rest of our holiday!