I’ve posted about Simon’s Cat before but just had to tell you about his new book Simon’s Cat 3 – Kitten Chaos that arrived in the post at the weekend. It stars the usual cat plus a kitten which causes so much mischief. It’s hilarious! I don’t know how he does it, coming up with so many funny drawings. Daz and I both laughed out loud so many times as we looked through it.

I think what I love about the book is that it reminds me of four and a half years ago when Arty came into our lives. It was so funny how such a tiny little kitten could turn our world upside down.

Check out www.simonscat.com for more awesomeness.

I love discovering new illustrators who inspire me. I was browsing in Foyles yesterday and came across ‘A Home for Mr Tipps’ by Tom Percival which I instantly fell in love with. He’s probably more well-known for the Skulduggery Pleasant series which to be honest I’ve not really ever looked at. Being a sucker for any book with a cat on the cover I knew I had to check this one out. The story makes me think of our lovely Oscar, a poor little cat living at the end of a garden, by a bin, who takes a while to trust anyone but then becomes a happy little house cat.

I love it! The pictures are a really cool combination of photography and artwork which seem to work oh-so-well.

I was lucky enough to get a signed copy :D

There’s also a super cute animation.

I got a new sketchbook today. I couldn’t find any with covers that I liked though so I decided to make my own cover.
I started off with a plain book from Paperchase.

First of all, make a pattern piece by folding a piece of paper around the book and drawing round it. You need to trace round the book when it’s closed, if you trace an open book the cover might be too tight when you close the book.

Cut out a piece of iron-on facing the same size as your pattern piece. Cut a piece with a 1cm seam allowance all the way around out of your chosen cover fabric and again out of plain fabric to line the cover. Cut two pieces the same height as the book and about 5 inches wide in the pretty cover fabric.

Iron the facing onto the wrong side of the cover material. Making sure to centre it on the fabric, leaving the seam allowance all the way round. Also, take the two smaller pieces of covering fabric and fold in half lengthways, wrong sides together, iron.

Now place the pieces together. Place the lining fabric down first (wrong side up if it has a wrong side). Then take the two folded pieces and place one at each end of the lining, with the folded edge pointing towards the centre of the book. Then place down the cover fabric, wrong side down.

Sew around the edge, taking into account how much you left for seam allowances. Leave a gap where the spine would be to turn the cover inside out. Once turned out the right way stitch around the edges to neaten up and close up the hole left earlier.

Once all the sewing is finished and the thread ends trimmed neatly you’re ready to put the cover on the book. The cover should fit snuggly around the book covers.

Now you have a pretty covered book! What’s great is when you’ve filled the book with all your notes and drawings, you can get another one and slip the old cover onto the new book :D