Thursday, May 5, 2011

Happy Birthday Billie

Billie B Brown turned one in April and it was celebrated with the launch of the 10th book The Birthday Mix Up!
Sally Rippin, the author, also held a BIG Billie Birthday Party at  The Victorian State Library in Australia. It's amazing how quickly time goes past. I can't thank everyone enough, the readers, the parents, the wonderful team at Hardie Grant Egmont and or course Sally for making Billie B Brown such a successful series! (Although I don't really feel it much here in NZ....maybe I need to get out of my studio more)

The cover was a pretty pink one featuring balloons and Billie in a fancy yellow dress!
A new character named Poppy features in the story. Wanting to express variety in the Billie B Brown cast I came up with two possible options for Poppy.
Read the book to see which character design was chosen!
The story was told over several days leading up to Billie's Birthday party. I always want to mix girly, funky and a bit of tomboy in Billie's wardrobe! Here goes a little sketch I did before working on the internal illustrations.

Like all other books Billie faces some trouble in this story and in the original illustration brief there was a lot of Billie being upset. Karri, the editor, decided that maybe there was one too many sad Billies and replace it "Jack resolving the problem" illustration.
Speaking of Birthday parties I have recently attended a friend's 3year old daughter's birthday party. It was filled with candies, Easter eggs, games, face painting, cup cakes and fairy dust. With nearly 30 children's laughter (and a few tears)  it was such a fun magical day!
cupcakes




face painting



face painting



Birthday girl and her towers of cupcakes!



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