The Caterpillar

The Caterpillar is a new arts and literature magazine for children aged 7 - 11 and the summer issue is out now. It is brilliantly quirky and very funny with an old fashioned feel.  With short stories, and poems such as 'A poem which aims to dissuade you from bringing your horse to Tesco' and 'A week in the life of Mr Potato head' it is a great and entertaining read. It includes work by Michael Morpurgo, Andrew Kaufman, Julie O'Callaghan and lots more. I was happy to be asked to contribute some illustrations - these were originally done for Food and Wine magazine, but seem to fit in with the feel of the Caterpillar rather well! You can order copies from the Caterpillar website. 

The Poundshop in Manchester!

The Poundshop is an amazing pop up shop selling great, affordable designer products under the strict price bands of £1, £5 and £10. This time the shop is being held at the Chinese arts centre in Manchester where it had a very successful launch on Saturday. I am selling my 'Zany zoo' notebooks (a collaboration with Noodoll), and my bike owl tote bags, all priced at £5. There are 4 notebook designs available, a problem solving giraffe, a wordy aardvark, a creative kangaroo and a mathematical moose. Notebooks have tactile embossed cover details, cloth binding and plain white paper inside.   The shop is open Tuesday - Saturday 10am - 5pm until June 22nd, and products are also available to buy online. Get down there and grab yourself a bargain! 

Fishing in Turin?!

Whilst at the Turin book fair, I did some children's workshops based on my new book 'Drawing in the Sea'. The theme was fishing - children had great fun first of all making 'the sea' out of large bits of blue paper and decorating it with waves, and marine animals and plants. Then, they made fish and other sea creatures out of coloured paper, and finally fishing rods out of wooden sticks, string and magnets. By attaching paper clips to each sea creature, kids could then fish for them out of their seas and catch them with their magnets!  'Drawing in the Sea' is now available from my online shop.

Floral fringe at Knepp castle

I had a lovely time selling my wares over the weekend at the floral fringe fair, held in the beautiful grounds of the Knepp castle estate in Shipley, not far from West Grinstead in West Sussex. The weather was perfect and the fair had an amazing 5000 or so visitors, twice as many as last year! Here are a few photos of the event.