I have just completed a set of birthday cards all ready now for the printers.  I am off to London next week for the biggest trade fair for the greetings card industry Progressive Greetings Live.  My aim is to take a stand there next year so I am off to pick up some tips and I am really quite excited.

I have designed a series of cards and I am now in the process of painting them.  It is so satisfying to see a whole group of images come together.  Really enjoying myself, it is such a lovely feeling when everything flows.

I had a great trip to London visiting friends and getting a really good dose of inspiration from lots of great exhibitions.  The Pick Me Up festival in Somerset House was visually really exciting.  I do love a bit of screen print and there was an awful lot at Pick Me Up.  I managed to finally sit down after two days and spend an hour making a newspaper with The Loop.  This is my front page.  It was so much fun coming up with ideas really really quickly and the joy of making something just for the sake of making it.  I haven't done that for quite a while.

My husband found me the most amazing table for my studio.  I love it!

It is amazing what a good sleep can do.  I wasn't very happy with this when I went to bed but now as I look at it with fresh eyes it isn't quite as bad as I thought.  It is the result of rushing and being distracted so next week when all is calm again, children are back in school, routines kick off, I shall return to this little chap and paint him as he should be.

My favourite five year old is six on Saturday so I have made her a card.  I hope she likes it!

I did some illustration workshops last week for World Book Day and the children (and teachers!) were brilliant asking lots of great questions and producing some lovely work.  These pictures are from Year 2 and 3.  They drew fairy tale/nursery rhyme characters reading their books in a library.  See if you can spot some of the characters Rapunzel, Little Red Riding Hood, Humpty Dumpty, Prince Charming, Pinocchio...they are all there somewhere!