St Ives Bookjam

Last Saturday I helped out at the St Ives Bookjam which is a fantastic children’s event held every year to celebrate the love of books and reading. Together with an awful lot of small but enthusiastic artists I helped terrifically talented illustrator Pam Smy in her mission to create two huge murals. The Bookjam was attended by many wonderful illustrators and authors and I was especially delighted to meet Ruth Symes for the first time ever – Ruth is the author of the Bella Donna books which are illustrated by yours truly! Below are the Bella Donna covers as well as some highlights from the murals which featured pirates, aliens, mermaids, a recycling war and many more fantastical goings on…

May 14, 2015 0

Portfolio covers

I recently wanted to create some new work for my portfolio and since I love book covers so much, I thought I’d do some of my own. The books don’t actually exist yet but that may change!

May 5, 2015 2

Queens of Hearts

I was looking through some old work the other day and came across these two loveheart ladies. They are made with collaged tissue paper, ink and coloured pencil. I can’t really remember what prompted me to come up with these but I always rather liked them!

September 4, 2014 0

A storm of Dragons!

Over the past week I have been helping children from Cherry Hinton, Chatteris, Bar Hill and Cambridge to make colourful, crazily collaged, crafty dragons. We had a lot of fun at the library workshops, there were wings, claws and teeth and flames everywhere and the children created a spectacular array of fire-breathers! I’d like to say a very big thank you to Cambridgeshire libraries and to the lovely librarians who helped me with my dragon workshops. Another big thank you goes out to all the children who left their dragons behind so that the libraries could make Mythical Maze displays with them! Here is my dragon together with some of its new friends…

...a storm of dragons... — …a storm of dragons…

August 18, 2014 0

summer workshops

Next week is going to be a busy one for me with workshops in Cherry Hinton, Chatteris, Bar Hill and Cambridge Central libraries. I haven’t 100% worked out what I’m doing yet but it is very likely to involve cutting, sticking and generally having quite a lot of fun making monsters! The theme of this year’s Summer Reading Challenge is Mythical Maze so I’m going to be creating some monsters that haven’t been seen in a long, long time….Sort of like these guys:

August 7, 2014 0

Dragons at the Feast

Despite worryingly wild weather that threatened to frighten away our tent, Saturday’s pop-up dragon workshop was a great success! It was a super day at the Histon and Impington Feast and we had lots of children and parents coming by to see what we were doing. Pop-up-genius Nicola Killen and myself spent the afternoon helping the children to cut, fold and stick their various wonderful creations. Here are just a few examples of the brilliant pop-ups they made:

July 10, 2014 1

Dragons!

Saturday is fast approaching which means I’ll soon be off to St Ives for the Bookjam to make dragons at the library! Here is a sample of the kind of thing myself and the children are going to be making – this particular beastie is rather cute but I’m hoping for fire-breathing, toothy, spiky, scaly and generally fearsome additions… Do come and join in, the event runs from 11am – 11.45am which should be plenty of time to create some fabulous dragons!

Not everyone is cut out to be terrifying... — Not everyone is cut out to be terrifying…

June 5, 2014 0

Dragons at the Book Jam!

On the 7th June I am going to be taking part in the St Ives Book Jam for the third year running. The theme for this year’s summer reading challenge is “Mythical Maze” which has inspired me to want to make DRAGONS! This year I will be holding a collage and drawing workshop at 11am at the St Ives Library and the children who come along will be making dragons from all sorts of collage materials including glittery stuff and anything suitably dragony that we can make stick.

I will be writing a bit more about this before the event but for now here is a little dragony inspiration to be going on with from my book Ready, Steady, Ghost!

May 28, 2014 0

Owls and Pussycats at Cambridge Central Library

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!

December 3, 2013 0

Creepy House!

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:

August 28, 2013 0