Neal's Yard Remedies

At the end of last year, I worked on a really lovely project for Neal's Yard Remedies (through my agent Lemonade) - a pattern design for their new mother & baby gift boxes. Since then I've been checking their website and looking in their shops every now and then to see if the products have been launched, and hey presto, the other day I saw that they had been! Very exciting to see them in the flesh, and although the design has been slightly tweaked here and there since my last version (see swatch at the bottom of the post),  I think they look really lovely!

I Can Colour Everything

I'm very excited that finally a colouring book I illustrated at the end of last year has been published and is available to buy on Amazon! It was the biggest project I've worked on, and was a real challenge - it really did feel like I was drawing everything - but I'm really please with the result. Here's the front cover and some of my favourites from the baby animals section.

Buy a copy here for any little artists in your life!

Hair Slide How To

My most recent DIY project for the wonderful Small magazine blog is up (and in fact has been up for a while, I've been somewhat lax) here.

Birds and Bees

My - slightly belated - July craft project for Small magazine is up on their blog now. It's a little cardboard mobile that was really fun to make and illustrate, but very hard to photograph with all those characters swinging around all over the place!

Pushing The Envelope

Have you heard of Envelop? It's an online shop where illustrators/designers can upload designs that can then be bought by the public and printed on demand onto cushions, tote bags, aprons and more. There are all sorts of cool designs on there. I've been meaning to try it out for ages, and have got my first cushion design up now.

Tea Towels

The other week a friend of my sister's got in touch asking if I'd design a logo/business card/comp slip for her brand new business. It's called Joan and Joseph, and prints lovely tea towels which are available for sale here. I was thrilled to be asked and am really pleased with the design she picked...

Tin Pot Project

My latest DIY project for Small Magazine is up on their blog, here's a picture of the result and you can see the steps to get there here... (they also recently had a new issue out which is very lovely to flick through).

The tins are covered with wrapping paper, and the yellow design is by a folk-art designer whose work I really love - Sanna Annukka.

Letter Box

My latest craft project for the lovely children's magazine Small is now online here. This is the finished product - cardboard oversized letters to hang on bedroom doors, or to spell out a word on a wall, or to have propped up on a mantelpiece. Inspired by the vintage-y letters you see in every interiors magazine going!

Easter Eggs

I've talked before about Small Magazine and their accompanying blog. Well, I've recently started putting together a monthly craft project for the blog, something for parents and kids to make together. This time, seeing as spring has sprung and the supermarkets are brimful of chocolate eggs, I thought handmade egg cosies would be apt. You can see the whole post here.

Toothpaste Kisses

Veering away from festivity for a moment, here are two little characters I made for a friend's engagement last week. The couple in question had mentioned to me that they'd thought of painting up toothpaste lids and for some reason the idea stuck with me and when I was cleaning the bathroom I noticed some toothpaste lids and one thing led to another! They're like little station masters with bad hairstyles, but I'm pleased with how they came out! I might see what other bits of household paraphenalia I can turn into people...

Small Glory

Today the new issue of Small Magazine (a very lovely quarterly online magazine) came out, an event I've been waiting excitedly for for a while because... I contributed this issue's "Small Project" pages! I put together step by step instructions for making a simple card finger puppet family a while ago, and am completely thrilled to see it in print. Beyond my small glory, the whole magazine is well worth a browse, whether you have children or not.

Finger Puppets

A couple of weeks ago a friend of mine was going for an interview as a teacher in a primary school. The day before, when she was preparing her lesson plan, she realised she needed some finger puppets. It was a Sunday, and hard to know where to go for finger puppets, so I offered to make some for her. So, I made some bear-type creatures by sewing round some paper cut outs, then painting on a face, some ears and some different patterns. They're barely bears (!), but I was quite pleased with them!!