Merry Christmas!
Well it was hard work especially being in the last trimester of pregnancy but here is the printed out Festive Poetry!
It being read to Jean!
Hope you’ve had a good one – and Happy New Year 🙂
This week has seen me trying to get the poems to fit with the illustrations – in some cases being part of the illustrations – it has been another of those tears and shouting weeks!
But it is done!
And now I shall print, make cover and read to small child!
I have taken my husband at his word and made a set of Christmas cards from the images! It is probably too late this year but they are avalible here.
Some people I know will be getting these through their letter boxes!
And again I come to the conclusion that I am not going to have hand made covers done for family and friends – there will only be one such copy this year and that is for my little girl!
I have spent large chunks of the last week sorting the illustrations I did last year in felt tip pen, into something ok for publication on the computer. There has been apoplexy and tears but I think I am almost there!
And layers oh how I adore you!
Anyway poems are all ‘fixed’ and sent off for spell checking!
I feel I am almost there 🙂
Again I have to say Thankyou to Tara Lazar for coming up with this idea in the first place – the brain storming of ideas and then having the rest of the month to sort them into order I find so helpful!
And with that it is the end of my second year of PiBoIdMo!
And I am very happy with the results 🙂
After the last few days I think I have now sorted out my priority to-do list. It starts with The Little Book of Festive Poetry.
I have already scanned pictures and have been ‘fixing’ some of the poems. So now all I have to do is:
1) Get the poems checked over for missed spelling and grammatical errors (so important for this inept dyslexic!).
2) Clean up the pictures in Illustrator
3) Use some of the images to produce a set of Christmas cards
4) Add the poetry text to the images
5) Turn into PDF or something of that ilk
6) Print copies for my little girl and a few for family
7) Hand make some covers (idea I wanted to do last year!) I have already decided from my work towards my poetry collection that I will only ever make 100 of a book with hand made covers
8) Sort out the printing/ISBN stuff
9) Repeat step 8) for The Little Book of Spoogy Poetry
10) Sell them for their respective holidays next year!
1) All the ideas I had during PiBoIdMo I will have at least rough drafts of by the end of 2010. Gulp – that is like 30 books though I do already have three of them written!
Hahahahahahahahaha!!!! This one was never ever going to happen but I do have ideas more fleshed out for everything and 11 drafts from the ideas to be getting on with plus 2 that pre-date the challenge and 1 that spawned off of one the drafts – so it’s not that bad!
2) I will take part in NaPiBoWriWee (National Picture Book Writing Week) which is in May and will hopefully see me produce seven picture book drafts in seven days!
I did this but finished late but it did give me 7 of my 10 drafts! And showed me that I want to have story lines sorted before next years challenge!
3) I will do the illustrations/clean them up to The Little book of Festive of Poetry, It’s Raining and What Can You See Under the Sea, and also one that’s not a PiBoIdMo The Little Book of Spoogy Poetry.
Well I have managed this for the Little Book of Spoogy Poetry and am about to sort out the Festive book but What Can You Sea Under The Sea still needs alot more work as does It’s Raining.
4) I will publish The Little Book of Spoogy Peotry and The Little Book of Festive Poetry before their ‘events’ happen i.e. Halloween and Christmas.
Ok well one of these didn’t quiet happen and the other will probably be in a similar place but that is alright as they will be in plenty of time for next year!
5) I will write the Easter Themed stories before Easter so I can test run them on kids 🙂
This one actually happened and I have 2 stories which the kids liked but again these need alot of work still – like being typed up and illustrated!
6) Take part in the Paleo-Art Galleries
This has definatly happened – I have taken part in every Time Capsule that Art Evolved has put forward this year which is great!
7) Finish my art journal which does indeed contain illustrations 🙂
I’m still working on this 🙁 Also the man behind this has died 🙁 which as he wasn’t old is very sad but I am still determined to get it finished. It is far more finished than it was at the beginning of the year and has had over 30 hrs spent on it.
8) Illustrate some of my poems for a postcard set
This has not even been looked at – bad Sarah – but I did come up with a good idea for postcards with specific poems on them as part of the NaPoWriMo challenge I did on my Poetry Blog Turquoise Monster. I did also make visual poetry cards which is sort of the same thing right?
9) Get my Wiggly Pets blog/stories up to date
Well erm… no not even been touched 🙁 Though to be fair I have taken a ton more photos for the stories and found quiet a few drafts in old note books I finally got back from storage (the blog is behind because of the 2007 floods which saw us out of our home for over a year and from which we really are only just recovering).
10) Get my work exhibited (this is probably more straight art than illustration but there does tend to be cross over subject matter for me!)
This I managed with the result of a painting selling! It was the most expensive one I had up which is great – it was the only abstract to sell in the four weeks of exhibition. The only down side to this was that the sale only just covered my costs once framing of the pictures and petrol where taken into consideration :/
Ok well after what amounts to an uber productive month I am sitting down and assessing what I actually have and the answer is too many projects and too many ideas. Now this isn’t a bad thing as such but I need to get myself back on track with what will produce finished products!
Off of the top of my head I would say my priorities are getting the Little Books of Poetry ready for publication – I am so close with the Spoogy Book and Festive Poetry is not far behind but there is also now the Sparky Book of Poetry though I haven’t even typed those poems up yet!
I want to write the East Poetry Book too to complete the set!
Drawing up a to do list of these books is important and I feel they are my highest priority.
Fallowed by finishing the illustrations off of for What Can You See Under The Sea.
This then leaves the House Dragon stories and Hetty Peglar stories as slightly lower priorities. They all need alot of work but at least there are whole stories written and waiting to be dealt with!
I also want to make a cross reference back on what I wanted to have done by the end of this year!
Another wed-comic idea this one I feel :/ I have actually done a few scetches of this and will hopefully get around to uploading them 🙂 The concept is lines with eyes on them, hair bows and the like, to create different characters!
This I think is one of those ideas that will work best as a web-comic. I made all these little animal lolly stick puppets for my little girl which we act out stories with and I thought photos of them would give a good base to construct something out of!