Smiley Shark in Korean!

Look what arrived this morning! Several other languages came too, but this was the most exciting  because the Korean language looks so different and amazing. They've even translated my name into Korean, which I'm quite happy about. I always wondered what it would look like!

I finished my chair!

I just finished my little project, re-upholstering the knackered office chair I got a couple of weeks ago. I had planned to cover it in stripey fabric, but in the end I decided on plain after I realised I wouldn't be able to match up the stripes on the front and back of the backrest because of the curve.

The material is a heavy duty wool upholstery fabric that I found on ebay. The colour is called 'pumpkin', and I was hoping it would be a slightly brighter orange, but now it's covered I think it looks quite 1970's and kind of suits the chair.

More importantly, it's really comfortable to sit on, and doesn't lower itself down with a jolt at the worst possible moment like my crappy old Ikea chair did.

Here's a 'before' picture:

You can probably see that the arms are a bit wonky, this was just down to the way it was bolted together, one of the bolts was in the wrong place, and needed an extra washer. So I took it all apart, replaced the foam, then covered it in new fabric.

I took lots of photos of the process, let me know in the comments if you would like to see how I did it step-by-step!

Redlands School Mural III

Just a quick update on the mural I'm doing for Redlands School: I haven't had a huge amount of time in the last couple of weeks to work on it, the weather has been a bit more autumnal, and I can't really paint in the rain. Also I went to visit Drapers-Mills school in Margate last week, to talk to the kids about my books. It was a fantastic trip, the children were lovely - but I've had a lot of catching up to do, what with trying to move my studio etc...

You can see faint chalk outlines where I am going to add in more little fish and details, there will be more of these appearing soon as I finish the main creatures and move on to the finer details.

I added in some more pink and purples, and started on the greens, I think the greens really add a lot more depth. I am pleased with how it looks so far, it is just a bit frustrating when I want to crack on but the weather has other ideas!

Smiley Shark and The Great Big Hiccup in Finnish...

Here's another co-edition copy of my newest book, this time in Finnish. Or at least I think it is in Finnish, it's not always easy to tell. If I'm wrong maybe you could let me know!

As some of you know, I'm currently in the process of moving my studio from one room to another, I'm going to have a dedicated bookcase to house all these foreign editions of my books. It would be good to keep track of how many languages my books have been translated into, at last count I think it was about 25.

Brazilian Books

Every now and then I get a package from my publisher, Little Tiger Press, with copies of a new overseas edition, and yesterday these two arrived:

This one's a Brazilian translated edition of the first book I ever wrote, Fidgety Fish. It's great to see that it's still popular all these years later.

I originally wrote it when my oldest son, Mortimer, was a little baby, and now he's a great big nearly-fifteen year old! It's lovely to think that children all around the world are enjoying my stories -or at least I hope they are enjoying them!

This is also a Brazilian co-edition of my most recent book, Smiley Shark and The Great Big Hiccup. Craig, our lodger who's from Brazil was mightily impressed that I've finally had my books translated into his native language.

He said it was interesting because they don't really have an onomatopoeic word for hiccups, so they've just left it the same as in the English version. Maybe the word 'Hic' will catch on!