Marley's World

Tuesday, 30 June 2015

Marley's World had it's first review!! Check it out here...

Marley's World has it's first review from Hannah, Dean and A over at Zombiiemummy

Recently, I FINALLY got a hold on Twitter... It's been a love hate relationship from the start!! All the @, RT and # just confuzzled me and I could never just WRITE something!

I was pushed into Twitter by a friend, and social media guru (34,000+ twitter followers!) last week and given some tips.

I have now gone from 19 to 140 followers in a matter of days, with a 'mention and retweet' count of nearly 100k, and met some lovely bloggers at the same time! :)

Happy, happy me :)

Sunday, 28 June 2015

<a href="http://www.bloglovin.com/blog/5153383/?claim=sjmttya2naw">Follow my blog with Bloglovin</a>

So, what's new?? I'm getting along with Twitter-at last!! I know, shocking considering I hated it so much. I now have over 100 followers in a matter of days. Pretty happy. Still learning though.

I now have crowdfire, sum all, blog lovin and god knows what else along the way. Now I just need to update my blog and sort a new title etc. Make it look all nice a posh, and more organised. I'll get there.

Monday, 1 June 2015

Hello, hello and hello!!! I've a had a 'mummy day' today with the last day of half term. Had my first try of sushi... It was nice... The kids didn't think much of it though!!

I've also had a great discussion morning on the workings of Marley's World and I have a whole list of things to do with my blog, and books! Firstly I REALLY need to properly be-friend the dreaded TWITTER! I'm not going to lie... I hate it! I've never gotten on with it and still hardly understand a thing that people 'tweet' about, it's all so confusing. But I'm making it my mission to get to grips with it and make Twitter my BFF!

On another note, my blog is going to have a COMPLETE makeover soon, so watch this space!! Eek

Thursday, 30 April 2015

The books are OFFICIALLY for sale!! They are listed in the Etsy store or can be bought in a few clicks through the paypal button on the top right!! Easy peasy!

Each set comes with a hard gift box complete with gold foil logo! There is plenty of room for other books that are due in the series too.

Friday, 24 April 2015

The books are all arriving tomorrow!! A week ahead of time....so excited!! I need to get organised with packing them all ready now! Today I have set up Marley's own paypal, and spent over 2 hours uploading all the book files to be officially copy written. Whoop!

Here's a pic of all the proof copies with the posh gold foil printed gift box :)

Tuesday, 7 April 2015

All 7 books are now uploaded to print, at last! Hopefully in about 3 weeks time I will have all the boxsets ready to sell-whoopeeeeee!!
I have more stickers being printed to go with the world map posters I had made, these will be sold alongside the boxsets. I can't wait :)

Thursday, 2 April 2015

Wow hello world!! It's been a loooooooong time since I even LOOKED at this blog!! Been away for a while popping out babies, going back to work... Etc etc. BUT!!!! Marley's World is in the process of being printed!!! YAY!!!

Back in 2010 I started designing the dinosaurs for Marley's Dinosaur World... I got about half way through and had to stop-I was about 6-7 months pregnant and sooooo fatty fatty that it hurt to lean across a table to draw :/ Then nothing got done for ages-you know, with having a tiny person taking up all your time!! ;)

Last year I FINALLY started it all up again, fully edited ALL the pages-had a proof reader check them all over- then edited the pages again... And again... Ahhhhhhhh... Until finally I found a company to print them with!! Waaa hoooo!!

So all the previous images on the blog-the texts have all changed now... Ignore them, haha!!

Thursday, 7 June 2012

Competition time!!! Illustration Gems Hand-painted vinyl wall stickers has reached 500 likes on my page!! So, so happy so wanted to run a small comp to win a sticker of a character/design/animal of your choice!! The vinyl will be approx A4 sized. No cash alternatives. Winner will be announced on this blog AND on my FB page and will have 48 hours from the time I announce them to reply to me with what they would like painted. If I don't hear from you, another winner will be drawn.

Just comment below this post with your answer and a contact email. The winner will be drawn at random on the closing date...This will be 20th June 2012 (my birthday!!)

To enter comment below with your favourite cartoon character and why :) Simples! Don't forget your email!!

Go!!

Ok, so I've been away for a LOOOOOONG time due to other commitments (my ikkle home run business of hand-painted vinyl wall stickers!) So Marley is waiting til I get some spare time to sketch more dinos!!

www.facebook.com/illustrationgems is my FB page...to which I'm setting up a competition from- Using Marley's blog to run it (Have to keep the Zuckerberg happy by not breaking FB comp rules! ) Next post will be the comp :) x

Friday, 14 October 2011

Character Development!!

First I had to sort out what animals I was putting into each book, and it wasn't easy! Africa, for example, it was very hard to narrow the animals down as there are SO many!! But some, like the meerkat and ostrich, just didn't make the cut! There were over 80 animals that I had to design and it took over 2 months!!

Here are some of the developmental sketches...Once I had the general look of the first few animals down, it became quite easy after that!

ZEBRA-this one took a few sketches to get right as I just wasn't happy! It wasn't coming out cute enough!

LIONS-I was happy with my first sketch for the Lion! Just had to change it slightly to make it male.

KOALA-This one took 3 sketches to get it right-it's head kept looking too fat!

CHEETAH-developed pretty much straight away from first sketch! Had to put it in motion in the book being that it's the fastest land mammal but I just really loved this sketch!!

Marley Development!!

So, this is my cat Marley, he was my mountain lion-he was HUGE!! Unfortunately I had to give him up when our landlord back in Cambridge caught me with him :(

But before that, I was bored one day so turned him into a cartoon!!

Initial ideas for creating Marley...As you can see they didn't all start out as cute!!

I liked the sketch top right to start with, but then decided it looked too kitten-like and kind of bug-eyed, like E.T with cat ears!! Bottom middle sketch was showing more potential...

Further developed the sketch from last page...experimenting with eye shape and ears. Then gave him a body....

Gave him some colour and finalised him.

Then... voilà! Marley was created!!

Monday, 10 October 2011

Marley's Underwater World

Marley's Underwater World is now up and running on a separate blog! Follow the link above to go to it!

Sunday, 9 October 2011

Make over!

Bearing in mind that this is my first time producing a blog it's still in the making, and being updated and designed as I go! So now it's starting to come together, what do we think?? Loving the paw print background!!

Saturday, 8 October 2011

The Marley's World DREAM...

So, what's the DREAM? What do I want to accomplish from my books? Fame? Fortune? Who doesn't!?! But to hold a proper published version of Marley's World would be an awesome start!! : )

Marley's World is educational, as well as being fun to look at! I loved learning about animals when I was younger, so I really wanted to make my books something that children would like to look at and learn some fun facts at the same time!

So, back to that DREAM!! I don't want Marley's World to just be a series of books...and there's quite a few in the series that I'm working on!! But, I want them to come in a set with a soft toy Marley cat of your own! And a big fold out map of the world with stickers or magnets of each of the animals to add to the map, there's just so much I want to do with them! And the "ULTIMATE DREAM" is for Marley's World to become an animated series for children's tv! I wonder if Disney are looking for a new, fun puddy cat character!! Marley is available! ; )