MOO.com

Sometime ago I was passed a link to Moo.com, an on-line print company with a contemporary feel. I loved using it to create my business cards, as you can choose a different image for each card. They also had a great set of on-line designs by illustrators that you could use. So I applied to be a 'Moo' designer and then last month they contacted me and asked me to submit some designs. I'm really pleased to have my work up there and there's a small royalty fee each time someone uses one of my designs, here's hoping they go well, I've begun with quite a few Christmassy designs being that time of year but after December hope to update with general images. You can see them here !

Big Red Barn

An artist I much admire is the late Jim Flora (1919-1998) , besides illustrating childrens books and magazines, he also did terrific album covers (jazz and classical) for RCA and Columbia. Check out his work, it's great fun. Here I've picked one of his album covers (his colour palette was always limited which added punchiness to the work), not because I think its his best but because the colour palette inspired me to limit mine to a similar range for my picture book, BIG RED BARN. It's a simple counting book, where the farmer enters his barn to attend to his animals, when it gets to 10 Geese Honking he opens the big barn doors and all the animals come charging out. Had this with an agent for over a year, but she couldn't place it and in fact gave up on the picture book market ('too tough right now') to concentrate on teenage publishing. Another agent I contacted also echoed the tough conditions and said she wasn't taking anything on but I still hope to get it published, or maybe self published one day...who knows !

Illustration Friday

An illustrator friend of mine pointed out this site to me - its an illustration site for creatives of all levels just to have a bit of fun. When I looked at it I noticed this weeks theme appeared to be 'baby'. As it happens I was uploading this (unpublished)  greetings card design at the time to HAI (hireanillustrator.com, which I've just joined). Its an image which I intended as a congratulations card for a new baby, in which I used an old paperchase character of mine, ( I haven't had it published yet but then again I haven't really hawked it around). So here's my first contribution for illustration friday !

Most used Blog spot....

Since 2000 I've been designing christmas characters for paperchase, mainly for christmas cards but occasionally used across roll wrap (and one year made into all sorts of merchandise). Each year it's a new challenge, same old santa et al, but how to be different and contemporary each year poses a challenge, last year though I discovered printpattern.blogspot.com. This excellent blog by Bowie Style shows passionate dedication to her chosen topic, print and pattern. Updated to the point where it's hard to keep up, it's not all my cup of tea there's such a variety on show, but I always find  much to inspire if your into contemporary design and if you're thinking of designing for the likes of paperchase etc then a visit here could be a good starting point, oh and trawl through the archives it's worth it ( and she featured me too April 2008 thanks Bowie style !)