Halloween fairy princess!

Boooo!!!!

Life in our household was very exciting this morning as my children got to wear dress up clothes to their kindergarten today! A Halloween treat. My daughter wanted to go as a fairy princess (a little bit of a surprise because she usually prefers monsters) however my 2 year old son wasn't interested in dressing up at all!

I thought I'd share with you photos of the fairy princess who left the house this morning plus an illustration to accompany it. (I also thought I share with you a picture of the same little person being a monster!)

Happy Halloween!!!!











And if you like the sound of creating a book for your little one don't forget to check out my new website!

www.createabookforachild.com

A handmade birthday card for my son!

My son Joel turned 2 on the weekend!

I love it when my kids have birthdays, they always provide such a great excuse for celebrations and the children are always so excited.

On the eve of Joel's birthday I realized in all the preparations (we had 2 parties to prepare for, both on the same day! What was I thinking?) I had forgotten to buy him a birthday card.

Of course, the obvious solution was to make one myself (infact making him a card is something I would like to have planned to do anyway). So, at around midnight, I sat down with my paints and paper and created a personal birthday card. I was quite tired and didn't have loads of time to plan the card but I thought it would be fun to have an illustration of him surrounded by some of the presents he was going to recieve and by a couple of his favourite things. The chair (if you are wondering) was included because it was one of his presents. Joel recieved a big grown up 'high' chair to sit on at the kitchen table. This chair was to replace his baby high chair, as he had made very clear to us that the baby chair was not for him any more as he is no longer a baby!

I plan to always make personal birthday cards from now on. They are so much fun to make and mean so much more than a card from a shop.

Meanwhile my husband was busy cutting out number 2s from coloured paper and hanging them from the ceiling.

Finally we fell into bed and I am glad to say Joel had a great birthday and both parties were a success- although we were all complete zombies come Sunday!

Anyway, here are photos of the handmade card.

Enjoy!




Oh, and another very exciting bit of news I almost forgot to share with you... I have literally just launced a new website. Create A Book For A Child This is a Create A Book For A Child courses website. So, if you are interested in taking a 5 week online course to learn how to create a personal storybook for your little one, please check out my new website. And please check it out anyway, just for fun and let me know what you think! I appreciate honest feedback.

To visit simply click on the following words... Create A Book For A Child and of course tell all your family and friends ;)

Warmly,
Nina
Create A Book For A Child

Creating storybooks for children- a slide show!

Over the past few weeks I have been teaching a group of amazing women how to create children's storybooks.

I thought you may enjoy some photos of them at work and of their works in progress.


Find more photos like this on Create A Book For A Child!

Somestimes it is the imperfections in an illustration that make it perfect!

When I illustrate it is more important for me to have fun and actually do it than to produce a perfect storybook.

If I were to be writing and illustrating storybooks to be professionally published there is no doubt I would spend a lot more time writing, rewriting and perfecting my illustrations. However, for the purpose of writing a personal storybook for a child I think the perfecting and getting it right element isn't at all important.

I also think that very often it is the imperfections in the illustrations that can make them feel alive, fresh and unique. So often when I am illustrating I make a lot of mistakes and so often I find that the mistakes work as a blessing in disguise. The 'mistakes' often push me me to find perhaps more unusual and creative solutions than I would otherwise.

An example is in my storybook "Sometimes Sofia Gets Angry When..." I was just finishing off the second last illustration when I realized I hadn't left any room for the text. To solve this I just added the text in a slightly different way. I'm not sure how successful my solution was here but it was fun to do. Below is the illustration so you can see what I mean....



I was reading the other day about the illustrator Quentin Blake. You may know him because he illustrated a lot of Rhoal Dahl's book among other things. Anyway, his illustrations are so fresh and inspired and they don't look at all 'touched up' or perfected and that is the charm of them. Ofcourse he is a genius but he is also an inspiration. I really suggest you stop by his website and have a look http://www.quentinblake.com/index.html

So, what I am saying is you can't ever get it wrong! And, as you probably have guessed my philosophy is 'just have fun!'.

On a slightly different note, I did finish the illustrations for my books "Sometimes Sofia Gets Angry When...". I invite you to take a look.


Find more photos like this on Create A Book For A Child!