We love to read!

When I first found out I was pregnant with Kaylee, one of the first things I started to do was build up a collection of children's books, I wanted to share the ones I remember as a kid and remember reading to my two younger sisters when they we're little. Among these were 'The Very Hungry Caterpillar', 'The Cat in The Hat' and 'Funnybones', all classics I'm sure you'll agree. So I  started to read to the bump from pretty early on! It was fantastic and gave me a real chance to bond with my little bug.

Kaylee is now two and adores her books, she'll read several books over the course of one day and has at least two stories before bedtime each night. Yes, she is a little bookworm!! Now she's 2 I've been busy trying to change her room from the nursery into a little girls room and one of the recent things I've done for her is to create a 'reading' corner. We purchased some paper mache letters from Hobbycraft and decoupaged them with tissue paper to spell out the work READ amounted it on the wall as a piece of art. We also got one of the inflatable Ladybirds from Ikea, but instead of using the air element we've filled it with bean bag beans making it a comfy place for Kaylee to sit with her books while she enjoys reading to herself and her toys! Her bookshelf was made by her Grumps (Grandad) and is filled with all her favourites!

I thought I'd share a couple of those favourites with you! First of all is 'The Gruffalo' by Julia Donaldson. This has been a favourite since she was very little and nowadays she joins in with the story describing the Gruffalo as we go along; with his terrible teeth and terrible claws, his knobbly knees and turned out toes and even his purple prickles!! As a parent I just love Julia Donaldson's stories. They are so imaginative and have a lovely rhyming style to them that makes them so very easy to read! I must confess that we actually have all of her books to date, many in not only hardback/paperback but also in board book format and some even in their 'sound book' format too!!

One of my other favourites by Julia Donaldson is 'Night Monkey, Day Monkey'. As a parent who often works night shift we use this one to help explain that I'm sleeping during the day and quite often when I come home from a shift in the morning I'll be greeted with 'Hello Night Monkey'!

We discovered 'Owl Babies' when we were in holiday in Spain in an english newsagents and it has become a firm favourite with Kaylee ever since. Again its another good story to help explain that I'm off to work at night but just like the Owl Mother will be back in the morning!!!

For reading by herself she can't get enough of the 'That's Not My...' books. She loves all the touchy feely bits and the simple style of them means she's picked up the basic story really easily.

I'm very happy my love of books has rubbed off onto my little girl... she has a whole world of adventures open to her now!!

The last few months (Part One)

So it seems I've been a little remiss with the blog for the past few months... oops! Since having gone back to work in March I've been getting used to juggling work, millinery, motherhood and just life and it seems to have all gotten away from me... I had plans for lots of blog posts for the remainder of last year that I just never got round to. So here I present a quick round up of how the later past of 2011 went for me and my little family... Part One!

August saw us visit Edinburgh on two separate occasions for the Edinburgh Book Festival. Firstly to see the fantastic Neil Gaimen, my favourite author, and listen to him speak about the amazing American Gods. It has always been on of my favourite books as I am drawn to the mythology used by Gaimen in this particular novel. I've always loved world mythology, especially from the Norse pantheon! Listening to Gaimen talk was wonderful I especially loved the part where the interviewer asked him whether it was all to much to expect the reader to believe that Shadow's wife Laura had risen from the dead and was there in the novel providing help and guidance along the way. Gaimen's response was simply... but there are millions of people all over the world who believe in Jesus and that he was resurrected so why would this be such a hard concept to understand??

I did treat myself to a new copy of American Gods (which I have to confess as to still reading as we enter the New Year... I just don't seem to have as much time to sit and read any more!) and was lucky enough to meet Neil Gaimen and have him sign my copy of Angels and Visitations. I also made myself a little fascinator to wear on the day... made from literary print fabric with Suffolk puff flowers, vintage buttons and a miniature copy of American Gods atop!

Our second trip to the Edinburgh Book Festival was to see Kaylee's favourite author Julia Donaldson (Author of The Gruffalo - Kaylee's favourite book!!) along side illustrator Lydia Monks. This was a storytelling session in which we heard the author read, among others, Sharing a Shell, The Princess and the Wizard and the new book Rhyming Rabbit. Julia Donaldson has such a talent for storytelling and the kids were all entranced by her! Kaylee even sat still for the full hour!! At the end we had the chance to meet both Lydia and Julia who signed a couple of items for us including Kaylee's giant Gruffalo poster which is not up on her bedroom wall!!

I've also had the chance to produce some fantastic custom pieces in the past few months. As much as I love making my stock pieces, I love the challenge that comes from creating custom pieces. This year I've had two very challenging pieces to work on. The first for Laura, who came to me with the idea to recreate the look of Sharpe (played by Sean Bean in the TV adaptation of the novels by Bernard Cornwell) for an event she was attending. The costume was being made by Marie from Forever in Black Designs, but Laura a previous customer of mine, knew to come to me for the hat. She wanted a miniature Shako Hat in the style worn by Sean, so after much research I set to work to create this piece! It was not a style I'd tackled before and I was very pleased with the result!!

The second piece was for the Pin-up for Heroes Calendar 2012. I was heavily involved in last years calendar and this year the organisers came to me looking for a very special piece. I was told that one of the shoots was to recreate this piece of artwork by Gil Elvgren and that they needed the hat! 

What a challenge that proved to be. With a deadline of little over 2 weeks to complete and ship the piece I set to work. The first version proved disastrous as I have miscalculated one of my measurements, but after some careful planning and mathematics I was able to finish the project on time... and look at the resulting image from Egner Photography... stunning! The calendar is available to purchase at  Pin-up For Heroes

and as always proceeds from the sales go to the Help for Heroes Charity!

 Well that's it for part one of the round-up of the last 6 months... more to follow soon!