Monday, February 28, 2011

B is for Book

I realized that I never told you about one of my large projects that took on for Christmas. When I was working on my 30 things to do before I turned 30, one of the items I had listed on there was write a children's book.

Did I write a book? No. I wrote seven. So my cousins on my mom's side have some very adorable children. I am going to refrain from posting pictures of them though, because I'm not sure that their mothers would like that plan. Regardless though, there is Jacob, Ethan, Emily, Naleyah, Jaydah, Aleada, and Gavin. And so I wrote 7 different books that had each of them as the main character and then illustrated the book to match. Each book also had a lesson that was appropriate for each of them. It was a lot of work, but I loved it!



And... the best part? Well, it started out as not being the best... but I had to call the printing company about an error on one of the books. While I was talking to the man, he complimented me on the books saying they were really good. As I was thanking him, he also told me that who ever I had illustrate them also did a really nice job. I then told him that was me too. So he then passed the online version around his office and was getting others respond about how much they liked them. It was a very nice compliment and if this was their way of handling upset customers, I bought it! I definitely wasn't upset in the end, plus their customer service was great.

Anyway- here are a few pages of some of the books:

Gavin, Don't Bite Me

Gavin, Don't Bite Me

Gavin, Don't Bite Me

Aleada's Big Tantrum

Aleada's Big Tantrum

Aleada's Big Tantrum
Naleyah's Not Naughty!
Naleyah's Not Naughty!
Naleyah's Not Naughty!

Jaydah Wants To, TOO!
Jaydah Wants To, TOO!

Jaydah Wants To, TOO!

 The other titles were Jacob's Big Game, Ethan Visits the Magical Farm, and Emily's Tea Party. Unfortunately, I forgot to take pictures of those.

I wrapped up all the gifts in brown package paper, used some twine and attached these little ornaments that I made for them that had their "image" on it. This way I could tell who they belonged to, without having the little annoying To-From tags on them. I was very anti-tags this year and memorized all the gifts so I wouldn't have to use them. This would have been nearly impossible though- since they were all the same shape.
 
The tags were made by printable shrinky-dinks. I love those! Last year I made a ton of personalized ornaments for someone for Christmas using these as well.

The good news- I think the kid's enjoyed them as well. Naleyah is able to read and was very excited to read her book to me (and let me know that I spelled her name wrong in place- whoops!) and read her sister's book as well and tell me about the accuracy of the books. I was able to take some very cute pictures of them reading their books that day!

2 comments:

  1. Pennie - these are awesome!! Really amazing. How did you do the pictures?

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  2. Thanks Kathleen! I used illustrator and drew them out. They are pretty accurate to each of the kids- but like I mentioned, I didn't want to put the kid's pictures up here. I do have a picture of Naleyah and I in my facebook pics from Christmas though if you want to actually compare.

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