COVER OF OUR NEW BOOK

Here's the cover of our new children's picture book. This one is a joint effort as you see on the cover. 

'Captured' cover image from editing page.

Well on our way to getting it published. 

CHOOSING ART FOR THE COVER

Today I spread our grandkids artwork out on the dining room table. Time to choose which pictures to use for front and back covers, title page, and additional pages not part of the story.

I wanted the cover design to wrap around the book edges and a picture that had space for the title. These design requirements narrowed the options of which pictures would work. 

Nelson helped move the process along - photoshopping and uploading selected pictures into the program.  

PUTTING IN THE STORY

After Nelson loaded the snow pages into the BookSmart program, I put in the story text. 

Pondering changing some of the story's wording as I work. (dry brush filter) 

Keying in text across from our grandson's picture page.

GETTING THE SNOW PAGES READY

Moving toward publishing our 13th children's picture book,  I put the fourteen dummy spreads on the dining room table. Snow art pages are scanned into the laptop. click on photo to enlarge

All 14 snow pages, made by the grandkids and myself, need to be tweaked and sized before they are put into the BookSmart program. Nelson is brilliant at photoshop - which he uses at this step.  With great finesse he 'cuts and pastes' the snow image parts to get them just right, before loading them into the BookSmart program. 
Nelson at work this morning in the 'book-making' studio - now on the dining room table.

FILLING IN THE STORY

My grandkids created 9 illustrations for the new children's picture book. I created 5 more- making 14 spreads-pulling the story together. Shown is one of the pages I made for the project. This is our first book to be a collaboration by grandkids and their grandma.

SNOW PAGE SPREAD

Finishing up book art. Still working on the story.

Snow page by our 6 yr. old granddaughter.(below)

THE FEELING OF PROGRESS

I'm happy with the book project. It's moving along. There's a title though I'm not sharing yet. I almost have the 14 pictures ready for the final scanning and need to work more on writing the story. But today I really had the feel of progress being made. 

The project has come a long way from creating snow pages on the west coast to bringing it all together into a children's picture book on the east coast. From worktable to worktables.

GESSOING SNOW AND GLUEING DOWN STORY

Painted more 'snow' today.  I'll use it in the picture layouts for the new collaborative snow book I'm doing with my grandkids.

Actually I'm dipping a sponge into gesso and stamping, not painting, it on raw canvas. 

After the pieces dried, I cut snow shapes.  put the pieces together, making the pictures, began glueing them down.

The picture story is coming together.

HOW DOES THE BOOK FLOW ?

I'm visual. Story and pictures may not quite be ready but I wanted a look how the latest Kittykee Series book flows. 

So today I put together some of the 14 page spreads. 

Once again I'm working in Blurb's BookSmart program. 

This is one of the 'snow' pages in the new book.  

The illustrator? Our 4 year old granddaughter.