Easter cards – made with love…

This is my 101^st blog post, so by rights it should include some dalmatians, but it doesn’t. It’s more about rabbits.

When I get that rare luxury called ‘free time’ I love to read, but if I have more free time than time to just read, I do like to make handmade cards, but this is quite rare these days with more commissions and so many other concerns and worries that the world seems to be throwing at us all at the moment!However, putting the world issues to one side, I recently found these handmade cards that my youngest niece, Cora and myself made a few years ago, before my middle sister and her family moved to California. Most Saturdays my sister and my two nieces would come over for a cup of tea and a piece of cake and Cora and I would either play Cluedo (my very favourite board game) or make cards.

Cora has a natural talent for card making and crafts and together we fashioned some cardboard templates and found some nice gingham paper backgrounds and things that would be suitable for Easter cards and we got to work. Quite quickly we could produce a good few cards and then put on the wording and the features of the rabbits’ and chicks’ faces.

Easter is my favourite time of year and although this Easter has been anything but usual or expected, I have still found time to enjoy this special time of year and the odd one or two pieces of chocolate eggs.

There’s nothing like an Easter egg, unless of course you can have two…

Witch Hazel – Bear-a-thought Illustration

I’ve done many teddy bear illustrations over the years, but some of them I do forget, but this isn’t one of them.  Although I am not a great fan of Hallowe’en, I do love the colour and imagery that I had to capture in this drawing.

I was asked by a big company in America, to illustrate one of their many beautiful teddies and after looking through their glossy catalogue several times, I was ‘taken’ to this little witch bear, with her sequinned cape and starry hat.  I liked drawing this teddy bear ‘as she was’, which included her rather sad looking face.  A number of my customers used to say, “Can you draw that teddy bear smiling?” and I replied, “I draw the bears as they present themselves”.  Teddy bears have individual characters: some happy some sad – just like human beings.

I remember my youngest niece, Cora, was just a baby when I started this illustration and the small wizard or witch that was coming out of the jack-o-lantern resembled her a little bit (she will be cross with me for putting this on here!), so I had to include him/her in the illustration.  Many of my teddy bear illustrations have a soft pastel theme, but with this one I could use the strong colours of green, orange and purple without hesitation.  I loved doing the confectionery: lollipops, cupcakes and biscuits with the ghosts and black cat cake toppings.  It was a great deal of fun (I think I ate them ALL afterwards!).

Whatever you have done or are doing for Hallowe’en, I do hope that you get a lot more treats than tricks!  Enjoy yourself and be safe…

Michael – Boy’s Birth Picture, by Cora

I have been very lucky to receive some marvellous feedback about my work over the years and it’s lovely to feel that my illustrations have brought so much joy to the lives of others. I have kept a lot of the letters that I have received and they are like a little treasure trove of memories for me to reflect upon…

One of the younger people who appreciates my work, a very young lady called Cora, gave me this picture, which she drew especially for me.
Cora mentioned that I am always drawing pictures of other people’s names, so she decided she would do me a birth illustration. Carefully researching what some of my favourite things are (from my leaflet and my blog), Cora drew me a giraffe, an owl, a ladybird, a butterfly and a nice little swarm of bees – a great combination of my favourite things. To add to this, my name is in purple, which is, of course, my very favourite colour. The M is for ‘monkey’ and ‘Michael’ and Cora has replicated some of my illustrations, which I thought was a very nice and flattering and thing to do.

Feeling very proud that I have inspired this young lady to do a drawing for me (which despite being very small and detailed only took her two-hours), I would like to publicly thank Cora for her kind gift. Thank you, Cora, it is much appreciated x