A few weeks ago I held two children’s workshops based around the tale of the Owl and the Pussycat. The first was in Cambridge Central Library and the second at Linton Library. They were both great sessions and the children came up with an amazing array of lovely pussy-cats, elegant fowls and beautiful pea green boats. I don’t think anyone went for a runcible spoon but never mind. Here are the pictures from the Cambridge workshop – Linton photos will follow very soon!
I have been away from my computer for a little while so there is a lot to catch up on and where better to start than with Grubbies who have just brought out their new autumn/winter kerchiefs. I loved designing these scarves, they are definitely my kind of thing – autumn trees, fallen leaves, woodland creatures and their colours are bright red and yellow, good for cheering up dark winter days. Due to popular demand Grubbies have decided to sell the scarves in big sizes as well as little ones. An excellent idea if you ask me! And I’m not in the least biased…
On Saturday I had a Fimo demo in Jarrolds in Norwich – admittedly it’s a little early for Halloween but any excuse to start making ghosts and pumpkins is fine by me. I made the below steam-pumpkins to Staedtler’s secret recipe and this is my little ghost who glows in the dark….!
Today I visited Cambourne Library and helped children there create a rather excellent Creepy House collage for the Summer Reading Challenge. My book Ready, Steady, Ghost! is one of the selected titles this year which is very exciting indeed! It was great fun today and the children were brilliant – the best thing is that I get to do it again tomorrow at Comberton, then it’s Cambridge on Friday and Huntingdon on Saturday! Here is the result of all today’s drawing, snipping and sticking:
My new fishy children’s kerchiefs are now on sale! You can find them in various children’s clothing outlets across the country but probably most easily in the Grubbies shop. The scarves were designed for Grubbies’ spring/summer collection and sport many little critters such as seahorses, mackerel, flat fish and lugworms. Go on, love a lugworm!
Both the first book The Case of the Stolen Sixpence and the second The Case of the Vanishing Emerald were released in May and are proving to be popular with small would-be sleuths across the country! You can read some lovely reviews by children on Little Tiger Press’ website and below are some sneak-peeks inside the Stolen Sixpence…
How brilliant – Grubbies scarves are the Guardian’s Buy of the Day! Here’s what they had to say:
These are the two kerchiefs you can get your hands on at the moment but in just a few days Grubbies are launching their spring/summer 2013 range complete with two new scarves from yours truly, so watch this space!
On Saturday I went to Orchards school in Wisbech to join in with the Waterlees Words Festival. It was a fantastic day for children with lots of book-related activities including mine which was all about creating an animal alphabet. The children came up with suggestions of animals for me to draw, which I did – after a fashion… When we had filled a new page with a particular letter it was the children’s turn to help colour them in to create our alphabet display. Over the course of the day we made it all the way through to O so we did pretty well! I hope the children of Orchards will take up the gauntlet and finish the alphabet – I’m afraid they get left with the tricky letters such as X, Y and Z but I sure they are up to the challenge!
The one day festival was a great success and a very fun day out. It was wonderful for me to meet pop-up artist Robert Crowther (I still have a very beloved copy of his Animal A-Z from my childhood – obviously it made a big impact…) and to see again storyteller Andy Hawkins and children’s book illustrator Steve Smallman. Special thanks too to Richard, Sue and Nicola! Here are some highlights from Saturday’s drawing:
Here is my new elephant design for Cards from Africa. Cards from Africa are a charitable company employing young, orphaned Rwandans to produce their handmade cards. This is my third card for them so I think they are going down well! This is my little elephant all made up.
This is a new project I have been working on, it is a series about a little girl called Maisie Hitchins who lives in Victorian London. Maisie wants to be a detective when she grows up, but she is actually already pretty good at detecting! The stories are written by the marvellous Holly Webb and are lots of fun to illustrate – the Victorian settings give me excellent excuses to draw patterns all over the place…
marion lindsay 