Stationery for Noodoll!

I recently collaborated with Noodoll on a series of stationery designs for the Noodoll's friends range, born to celebrate friendship and creativity. Together we created two double sided journals featuring animal characters from the 'Zany zoo', plus a range of 4 notebooks. Journals feature two zany zoo postcards that you can cut out and keep or send, and notebooks have a cloth binding and tactile embossed details!

Noodoll is the brainchild of designer and author YiYing Wang, who created the World of Noodoll as part of her MA course in Communication Design at Central Saint Martin’s, London (also where we met!). For more info or to buy the products, go to Noodoll's site: http://www.noodoll.com. They are also available from my shop!

The Best Piece of Advice Ever

Last week I went to the launch of an amazing new book 'The Best Piece of Advice Ever'. The book is a collaboration between Creative Social and Bernstein & Andriulli, and features advice given to top creative people in the industry, brought to life by many brilliant illustrators: Brian Grimwood, Sarah Coleman, Andrew Rae, and Olaf Hajek to name a few. It was an inspiring night, with talks given by many of the socials, and a panel discussion chaired by Louisa St Pierre. 

My quote was 'Trust your instincts', advice given to Mariota Essery of TBWA Chiat by Neil Dawson, ECD of DDB London. I struggled with this for a while and eventually came up with the idea to base it around instinctive animal behaviour - birds flying South for the winter and bears going into hibernation. The book is available from Bernstein & Andriulli.

NPR summer books

For the last couple of weeks I've been working on a series of illustrations for NPR's (National Public Radio)'s summer books page, which I'm really enjoying. There are several more to come but here are a few of my recent images. Subjects include Crime fiction, Critic's picks, teen reads and the more general theme of 'Cool reads for hot summer days'. Not getting many of those at the moment mind you! You can see some of the images in context here.

Garden illustration

I recently created this illustration of a garden for Eating Well magazine. It was to accompany an article about a man who has created this amazing garden on his tenth floor roof terrace a few hundred yards from New York's Ground zero! Not quite sure how accurate my drawing is but I'm told it has all the elements pictured, including a cedar windbreak, grape arbor and plenty of fruit, vegetables and herbs.

Greetings cards

I have a small range of greetings cards now available in my online shop.

Floral fringe pics

Here are a few photos of the Floral fringe event I took part in over the weekend in the beautiful grounds of Bignor Park. The fair was a great success, and had nearly 2000 visitors over the two days. The sun even put in an appearance on Saturday! I haven't done much of this sort of thing before but really enjoyed the experience and got some good feedback.

Floral fringe fair

Next weekend I will be taking part in the Floral fringe fair at Bignor park near Pulborough in West Sussex, selling my books, limited edition prints, screen printed tote bags, greetings cards and more... It promises to be a great event with lots going on including contemporary crafts, photography, wildlife stalls, butterfly and bee plants, local food producers and a sausage sizzle! The fair is open Saturday and Sunday, from 10am - 5pm and I'll be there both days. More info can be found on the Bignor park website and Floral fringe Facebook page. If you're in the area it would be great to see you!