I see this as a story about a ball of string that sits in a shop being all bored, gets bought and is left in a box getting all tangled when a grandmother comes along and untangles and keeps it in her pockets where it gets to many exciting things like wrapping parcels up etc…
This needs to be done carefully because string gets cut up!
This is going to be a story about the big air ducts you get in the ceilings of places like super markets and theaters. The idea is that at night when no one is watching they turn into ceiling snakes who go and have adventures around the town!
I definatly need to work on this idea a bit more – the other thing is that it is not supposed to be scary at all so will have to work on that aspect I feel!
One thing I do know is that they live off of socks and pencils that are left around but that they hate eating the same thing twice so they always leave an odd soc behind even if they found a pair!
I envision this as two worms – one half down a whole having conversations. It has occured to me that this is more of a Web-comic idea than a children’s book but I believe there is huge scope for over lap there!
This has led me on to wondering weather ‘Shrooms and maybe some of the other idea might not be better suited to this sort of format?
Anyway – next time my Dad is about I’m going to sit down with him and see what the worms say and weather it turns out to be funny! (Our sense of humour is the same and we sort of end up feeding ideas off of each other where as my husband can’t stand this type of humour!).
When my friend was going through a hard time I drew him a cartoon which was basically two identical mushrooms but one had a happy face and the other a sad face – there was a giant tick next too the happy one and a cross next to the sad one.
It occured to me that mushrooms could be fun characters – they come in a variety of shapes and sizes and indeed colours! Again I think this is one of those ideas where I need to work out characters and styles first!
So that is yet another job to add to the too long list!
This idea came from a cute thing my little girl used to do on her potty – yes I know but it really was cute! She would sit there and lift the front of each foot up and down pretending they were mouths singing.
This has given me an idea for a picture book and it has little to do with potties!
The child goes through a list of things My feet are singing look at my feet singing, my stick is singing…. etc. It is a basic board book but I think it will be liked by my up and coming baby and Jean might even read it to them!
So work wise with this I really need to start by writing the words!
This is basically just a misspronounciation of penguin by my little girl but I thought it would make a great tittle to a story about brightly coloured penguins possibly made from polymer clay and photographed.
I haven’t thought much along the lines of storyline yet and I think this is one of those things where I need to create the characters first!
Children love bubbles and this got me thinking about all the different types of bubbles you see and places you find them. I’m not sure if this is going to be just a factual book yet or if a fairy is going to be involved and small child.
I’m sort of edging towards the fairy side of things to be honest!
Being a geologist by training I’m going to include things like pumice – bubbles in stones!
This again already exists and was another tongue twister I made up for my little girl – I want to polish it, check my facts and then do some drawings!
It’s about the differences between bees, wasps, hornets, hover flies etc… and I even chewed of the ear of an insect expert to see if it worked!
Ok first off a confession – this already exists – well sort of so I probably shouldn’t have put it down as an idea but never mind. I came up with this silly rhyme for my then 2 yr old daughter about same dancing Flamingos.
We had just been to Slimridge Bird Park and I was rather taken with the big pink birds especially after finding out they had the world first gay flamingo parents raising a chick! (Flamingos pair for life and they were given an egg to hatch by the center staff.)
Anyway this thing has sort of evolved into a tongue twister – the only thing I’m really worried about with it is that I tend to say it in a silly accent so am not sure how others would read it out :/ I can also see it as a little animation but that is far in the future yet!
I have written it down and now need to type it up and see how others read it!
I also already know what sort of art I want to accompany it but it involves a technique I have never tried and my to-do list as always is growing!
Me and my little girl drew pictures for my husband when he had to go away on a conference abroad (US). I drew him what I always draw him and that is us as a colony of polyps. Polyps are little creatures that make up colonial organisms like corals. I was studying corals and bryozoans in a paleaobiology class when I first started going out with my husband and we decided we were a colony!
Since then I have drawn or painted pictures of the colony – it has had hamster fish, bride and bride groom polyps, pregnant polyps and colony with new baby (which I painted for our first year wedding anniversary just before our little girl was born). This latest one I did had Mummy Polyp and Jeany Polyp sending love to Daddy Polyp who has had to leave the colony for a while, Mummy Polyp is growing a new baby Polyp and there are catfish, bunnyfish and sausage/guinea pig fish swimming around.
When Jean saw this she got very excited and said she wanted a book of stories about these creatures – I laughed but when I sat down to do the picture book ideas this month I thought – no hang on I thin I could!
So now I think I’m going to have to root around and find all the pictures I’ve already done and see what I’ve got! The picture at the top isn’t that good because a) I didn’t realise the nice paper I’d picked up was going to blot the ink so and b) the photo is from my husbands camera phone!