The invites are like a little book...very cute. I will show you when I finish. My fluffball cat Madi was keeping me company warming her belly under the lamp.
Follow me on Facebook and you will get this print for free in February.
4 Stars Into the Pumpkin Kinda Franklin Schiffer Publishing No. Pages: 48 Ages: 4 to 11
It’s Halloween Party time again and the witches, bats, ghouls, ghosts, black cats, scarecrows, ravens, and spiders have come together for the annual bash. Questions remain. Where should they have the party, in the graveyard or the pumpkin patch? Will they dress up or go as themselves? Take a ride on a witches broom to find the answers to this year’s Halloween party.
You will hop on the witch’s broom for a journey like no other. Each creature of the night has a part to play. The bats are letting all know about the party, the ghouls are planning the treat or treating. The witch mails out invitations. Is she not a little bit late, or does she have magic on her side? Everyone has a job to do, right down to the scarecrow, who is the host of the night’s ball.
The biggest question, it seems, is where to hold the party. In the graveyard, the haunted castle, or the pumpkin patch. I like the haunted castle. It has great character standing amidst the ghosts. The graveyard is the spookiest and the pumpkin patch says nothing about the Great Pumpkin, so for me, it must happen at the haunted castle. Once the party is over, and the raven has sung all he came to sing, the witch sends us back home by way of the pumpkin patch. It is quite a journey on this Halloween night.
Told in rhyming verse, the Halloween party plans are whimsical. There is nothing here to scare a little one. The illustrations have a ghoulish, haunted feel, yet are bright and fun. It is the illustrations that make this book for me. I like the orange cast of Halloween and the feel of spider webs and wisps of clouds covering each illustration. This lends a feeling of motion and emotion to each picture. All the fall colors of Halloween are there. The oranges, yellows, whites, browns, and especially the blacks come together in delightful ways. The ghosts are dancing in a circle and I can hear the music as they twirl.
The text is a poem broken down verse by verse on the pages and illustrated by the author. She has made an unusual book with a familiar theme. Most of the lines roll right off the tongue in the lyrical way I enjoy. I think the illustrations are what make this book a winner. Anyone who enjoys Halloween will delight in Into the Pumpkin. I see this book as a family favorite, visited each year alongside the Great Pumpkin and treat or treating.
Into the Pumpkin is party planning that will not frighten a soul. To those of you who collect picture books for the fantastic illustrations, this is a must have. The illustrations are wonderfully enchanting. Into the Pumpkin could have just as easily have been dark, ghoulish, and frightening; the thing nightmares are made out of. Ms. Franklin chose to go the opposite direction and made a story any child can enjoy at any age. Into the Pumpkin is a Halloween winner.
Author/Illustrator: Linda Franklin website Publisher: Schiffer Publishing website Release Date: July 28, 2012 ISBN: 978-0-7643-4183-0 Number of Pages: 48 Grades: Pre-K to 6 Ages: 4 to 11 ..................... ...............
We’ve made two big changes that make it easier to encourage friends, family, and colleagues to interact with your WordPress.com blog.
First, now you can invite people to follow your blog. If your blog is public, anyone can use the Follow button to sign up to receive an update each time you publish new content. But if you’d like to share your blog with specific people, we’ve made it easy to send them an invitation to check out your site.
Try it out now and invite some friends to follow your blog:
1. Head to your dashboard and click on Users → Invite New. Type the users’ email addresses or WordPress.com usernames.
2. Set the Role to Follower.
3. If you like, add your own message to personalize the invitation, then click Send Invite.
When your friend accepts the invite, they’ll start receiving email updates each time you publish a new post.
Secondly, you can also use the new invitations to add contributors to your blog. Have you ever thought that it might be fun to have a friend write a guest post? Or perhaps you want to ask a colleague to help moderate comments. Adding contributors to your blog has never been easier.
Head to Users → Invite New in the dashboard and enter the person’s WordPress.com username or email address. Then select the contributor, author, editor, or administrator role, and send the invite.
Your new user will now be able to access your blog by visiting the My Blogs section of their dashboard when they log in to WordPress.com. They’ll also receive an email notification that they’ve been added to your blog.
For more details on the new invitations, check out the Support document on Inviting Contributors, Followers, and Viewers.
Thank you for everyone's well wishes from the last post! Things are still crazy here as I now have the Surtex show in two weeks. Doing a trade show and getting married all within a month of each other = absolute craziness!
I wanted to finally post my chicken wedding invitations though! As many of you who might be artists/designers/illustrators, the first thought after getting engaged was...not the dress, or anything else, but....oh what am I going to do in terms of the invites?!? I had so many elaborate things going through my mind: sending everyone bound books, or a box, or a poster in a big tube. In the end, I wanted to keep things simple and sophisticated. Hard to do because I realized I struggle with doing anything sophisticated.
I ended up doing a tri-fold invitation, which gave me the story book feeling but much more simple than actually doing a book. The concept was (of course, us designers had to have a concept for an invite, haha!) a path on which we went from the streets where we first met to St. Thomas for the ceremony, and back to New York for the reception. Here is a picture of my "assembly line":
To finish my theme of a chicken wedding, we had plastic egg favors filled with chocolates tied with a matching blue ribbon, thanks to my mother-in-law (again)!
It was very easy to come up with some matching thank you flat cards afterwards.
Thanks again to all the well wishes, I'm off to do some Surtex stuff and hopefully survive the next two weeks. Back again soon!
My wedding reception invites in pretty blue envelopes. I'm sorry I can't show the actual invite now- I will later and I promise there are some chickens involved!
Things are super CRAZY here with too many things going on, and I find myself not handling the stress very well. With work, a wedding, and now I added on another to-do: I will be exhibiting at the Surtex Show in May-exploring art licensing opportunities with a group of other artists. I'll post more as I get more info, but right now I am trying to build my portfolio. This is something different than children's books and right now I feel like I'm going into it blindly...but I am very excited at the same time!
I want to thank everyone who has tagged me, given me awards, mentioned me in the blog world. And the comments too! I've been very frazzled lately so I just want to let you all know I appreciate them even if you haven't heard from me in a while.:-)
We’re coordinating a children’s book drive as part of the Podcasters Across Borders 2007 conference taking place in Kingston, Ontario (Canada), June 22-24, 2007. If you’re attending PAB2007, here’s what to do:
All books collected will be donated to Central Public School in Kingston, ON.
As an added bonus, you can qualify to win an author-autographed children’s book of your own. Submit a two-minute audio review about the book that you are donating and what makes it one of your favourites to the Just One More Book!! podcast. Your name will be entered in to a draw.
If you have questions about the book drive, email Andrea.
Tags:book drive, Central Public School, childrens books, Kingston, pab2007book drive, Central Public School, childrens books, Kingston, pab2007
Its been a while since I've posted...I've been super busy. When it rains, it pours as they say! Well, here's a little project I finished up recently--some invitations for a baby shower with matching envelopes.
I found a really great printer online that I've been using. They are super inexpensive and the quality and color is great! I've been experimenting with a sort of collage look: using fabric patterns for clothes, etc. I'm looking for some royalty-free books of fabric patterns to use in my illustrations. Does anyone have any suggestions?
You're an awesome friend for making the invitations, My son recently married so I know the work that goes into it!
I hope you're back feels better soon!
Tammy
HOT. love!