saturday scribbles: mallory goes to new york

ok so if i'm being honest, since my final presentation on monday i've done very little that doesn't involve eating delicious food or drinking alcohol (a gal's allowed to indulge in a celebratory fashion, right?), so as you can imagine i've done very little creatively. i worked briefly on wednesday on some additional illustrations for my collaborative nhs project, but other than that i've done absolutely nada, and for that reason i thought i'd use today to share some extra spreads from my picture book, mallory goes to new york, and talk a little about the project. 

sunday synopsis & saturday scribbles

saturday scribbles

saturday scribbles

yeah, i know, i've got some explaining to do seeing as i haven't posted a saturday scribbles post (or sunday synopsis post, for that matter) for the last two weeks. last weekend i kind of had a legitimate excuse because i was away for the weekend visiting a friend for her 21st birthday, but i'd be lying to you if i said i hadn't just generally been feeling uninspired with my work and blog as of late.

since handing my dissertation in i've been focussing on my self promotion work and starting to think about my final project, and for the most part i've been feeling a bit uninspired and bummed out, by my self promotion work in particular. i'm still a bit unsure of where i want the content or aesthetics of my self promotion work to go, but i do know that i don't want to waste the opportunity to create another good piece of work for my portfolio, so it's something i really need to try and figure out, and pretty quickly, really. 

on the flip side, i've been writing another picture book for my final project to enter into the macmillan prize again, and above you can see some of the rough page spreads that make up my dummy book that i'll be taking in for feedback on monday. i've no idea how the session will go, but i do know that it's the happiest, most motivated and most inspired i've felt with a piece of work throughout the entirety of third year, so that has to count for something. i love the freedom of working on my own texts because i have complete control over everything and the permission to add or take things away where i see necessary, which i felt held me back a little throughout my alice in wonderland work because it never felt quite as natural and effortless as i'd have liked it to, but i suppose i'm learning that i thrive creatively when i can completely become the author of my own work. 

for now i hope you enjoy the little snippets into a story that was inspired almost a year ago now when i visited new york, and i hope to get the ball rolling again properly from now on and have lots to share every week regarding my progress while illustrating the book. 

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robynmakesthings & lilac edge 200 followers giveaway!

 

hello everybody! for around a month now i've been anticipating my blog hitting 200 followers, so in that time i've been thinking about putting together a little giveaway as a way of saying thank you to everybody that reads and engages with my blog from time to time. i thought and thought about things that would be appropriate to give away, and in the end i felt as though it'd suit my blog's content (and, in turn, hopefully my followers!) if i were to give away some handmade items of my own as well as a couple of items that i myself enjoy and have bought previously.

i'm sure you'll have spotted the lovely chokers i wear pretty much daily now in plenty of my outfit posts, so i got in touch with my friend alice who runs lilac edge to ask if she'd be interested in collaborating with me for this giveaway, and to my delight, she agreed! so much to my excitement, i've got quite the bundle of handmade goodies to offer you all the chance to win, including:

• 1x unicorn black cord choker
• 1x 18" lilac cord moon necklace
• 1x pair of sun earrings
• 1x handmade pug magnet
• 1x handmade house brooch
• 1x handmade 18" carrot cake necklace
• 1x 'the sloth who almost stole christmas' mini picture book (roughly 5" x 5")

and that's all the goodies! so if you'd like to get your hands on a bundle of jewellery and a copy of my first ever written & illustrated picture book, keep reading! the giveaway is open worldwide and will be conducted through rafflecopter, beginning on the 4th august 2014 and ending on the 17th august 2014. to enter, all i ask is that you follow my blog via bloglovin and leave a blog post comment with your email address so the chosen winner can be contacted, however if you're a follower of the other social media platforms i've noted in the rafflecopter giveaway, you can bag yourself some extra, smaller entries for being a super follower, yay! so, without further ado, here's the rafflecopter form. good luck!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

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finished picture book: the sloth who almost stole christmas

today i present and hand in my final *real* piece of work for the year, and i'm so stupidly excited about it that i might just bust! the idea for 'the sloth who almost stole christmas' has been floating around in my head since around october last year, so it's so incredibly satisfying to actually have my thoughts now out in the real world, written down and documented visually ready for people to have a browse through! a few of my friends and the tutors have had a read of my story in its entirety, and i'm pretty much getting thumbs up all round - one tutor even said he'd like to get a copy printed to read to his own children, what a dream! it's fair to say that i'm incredibly proud of the final outcome and i'm just so excited to be able to have it in my portfolio as a testament to the fact that i'm interested in writing as well as illustrating - note to self, explore more story ideas over the summer - and also to prove that i am capable of producing an entire picture book, on my own, from cover to cover. ah.

i'll not babble on any longer, but i am so darn happy to end second year with this hand in. squeeee! i'll leave you with some spread images to have a nosey at, which you can also view through my online portfolio.

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