Hello!
I wanted to follow the last post with one talking about all the personal details I put into the book. It sounds kind of weird to say (maybe), but I didn’t put any of these in consciously - well, most of them, at least. It was only afterwards that I began to realise, ahhhh, that was from…
Starting with the sitting room.
Just a little thing I suppose, but a good one to start with. The cushions on the sofa are the same ones we have on our sofa - this was probably more of a deliberate choice
The fireplace is an amalgamation of ones we’ve had in various flats we’ve lived in. I invented the tiles around it, and the ones on the floor (based on a little bit of research). This was a really fun part of the book. Maybe there’s an interior designer/tile designer in me somewhere!
The base of the standing lamp in the corner is based on the one we have in our sitting room. The lampshades are purely ones I wish we had in our house - I love a lamp with tassles!! At the moment our lampshade is tassle free - I really need to sort that out! My mum always used to have poinsettias around Christmas time, so I added one in the room. I always get them and manage to slowly kill them over the weeks leading up to Christmas. Any tips gratefully received!
This is a bit of a funny one (well, to me at least). When I was designing Santa’s sleigh, I looked back to the decorations at my favourite funfair; it used to come to our local park when I was growing up, it’s called Carter’s Steam Fair, and they tour the country in the UK over the summer. It describes itself as a “vintage fun fair” with rides from 1890s to the 1960s. I used to love it! The music - delightfully old fashioned, the food - ooh, the hot doughnuts!! I especially loved the arcade where you exchanged your money for old-fashioned pennies and you could get your fortune told by putting your penny in a slot, and a little card would pop out with your fortune on it. Anyway, I’m getting carried away with memories… What I loved the very best was all the paintings on the rides and stalls, and so I found myself wanting to design Santa’s sleigh in homage to that fair!
I realised afterwards that I had put some really specific details in. The bedcover mum and dad have is just like one I had as a child and the rug in their room is almost identical to the one in our sitting room, and the mats on the table are those coiled raffia ones we used to have at home. All those details I think I put in subconsciously, as I only really noticed after I had finished the book.
A detail that got lost in the gutter (the middle of the book - well, something had to go there!)… In my childhood home, we had a cupboard we used to call The Brown Thing. One of those names that seems completely normal, until you look back. Have you seen my book? you might ask, to hear the answer in the brown thing! Of course! So when I was furnishing the dining room, it was fun to put The Brown Thing in!
Finally… When I was designing the street scene, when the moon gives a lustre to objects below, I instinctively knew I wanted a person in the scene, it makes things feel extra peaceful somehow - you can imagine being the only person making those footsteps on the new fallen snow. As I sketched it out, I found myself wondering who they might be, and they slowly turned into my friend Tor Freeman and her dog Rusty! I used a bit of artistic license and gave Rusty floppy ears!
I’m sure there are lots of other details I put in from my life that I’ve missed, but those are the ones that stand out.
Right, I’m off for the annual viewing of Father Christmas…!
Until tomorrow…
Ella xx
Loved reading about the details and how conscious or not conscious we are when we draw them. Really grateful to you for this granular sharing of the process of doing detail really well. Merry Christmas to you!
It been so lovely reading about the book story like that. Thank you for sharing it with us 😊