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.

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 :)

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 :)

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!!

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

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!!