BookFest!!

I took our boys to BookFest today - a children's book festival taking place over 2 days at The Panacea Museum in Bedford, and it was brilliaaaaaant!! We saw Julia Jarman who was fantastic. We listened and laughed and spotted and counted and sang and stomped. The boys loved it and so did I :)

There were other author/illustrator talks going on throughout the day, which I would have loved to have seen too but with 2 young ones in tow it would have been hard to keep them contained and wriggle/whinge-free!

The overall atmosphere was great, as was the venue and I feel very lucky to live in a town where these kind of events take place. Huge praise to the wonderful Rachael Rogan of Rogan's Books for making it all happen, and all the volunteers! 

Sadly no pictures from our visit today as my phone died, but thought I'd show some pics of what we've been doing in preparation for my workshop which is taking place tomorrow (Sat 10am-12:30pm).

With our littlest one being completely unpredictable with naps these days, I've not had much time to work on this but we have stamps, stickers and various materials ready to be used, and I've even had a little bit of time to play around with them too, yay!

Looking forward to seeing what the kids come up with tomorrow :)

A Sea of Blue

Managed to squeeze in a bit of prep for the BookFest workshop I'll be running on Saturday 29th October, whilst the little one sleeps, hooray!

There'll be a range of folded papers ready to be stamped/stickered/scribbled on etc, including these textured blue backgrounds which I thought worked well as a sea background. 

At the bottom are some stamped sea pictures my older boy has been creating. Maybe a little influenced by the wonderful "Swimmy" by Leo Lionni, a family favourite :)

Order of Things 2016

Many many years ago, my good friend Jon scribbled a little doodle on my school folder called "Order of Things" (below). Here it is revisited 20+ years later, through my son's eyes during school pick up. I don't get a look in.

Stamps 'n' Stickers!

We made some new stamps and stickers in preparation for a workshop I will be running as part of BookFest, a children's book festival taking place at The Panacea Museum in Bedford at the end of this month. For it, we'll be making a 6/8 page book out of a single sheet of paper on the theme of "SPACE" or "THE SEA"! 

I got my chief space explorer and his little sidekick to test out the products and I think we got the thumbs up, yay!

2 weeks to go and I still have a bit more prep to do but I'm really looking forward to seeing what the kids come up with :)

Noooooooooooo!

Me upon dealing with the possibility that our littlest one could be giving up his daytime nap. 

No warning, no easing into it, just suddenly refusing to sleep for a whole week. He's always been such a good sleeper...sniff.

And just when I was getting all excited at the prospect of making pictures again. I hope hope hope it's just a phase.

Tortoise

I made a new header for my blog. The duck was bugging me so I decided to go with a tortoise instead. I think it suits my pace these days. Not getting very much done. You'll find out why in my next post...