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Welcome to the world of Mrs Pancake
Exciting times, we've just launched a spangly new site:
This is something we've been working on for a long time now and we're pretty excited. We love the thought of spreading the Mrs P joy in classrooms around the world (cheesy I know). If you're a teacher or a parent, please spread the word. Get on the forums and start chatting. Mrs Pancake's ever-so 2.0 - you can find her on Facebook and Twitter too.
Build a Beard
Just a quick note to let you know about our wee project for Kiva (Kiva is the world's first person-to-person micro-lending website, you can lend directly to unique entrepreneurs in the developing world - it's a super cool charity that we want everyone to know about)
We're great believers that "the best place to store food is in someone else's stomach" so we came up with Build a Beard Workshop. You'll see for yourself, but basically for everyone who posts a picture of themselves with one of our free beards, we'll put $1 in a Kiva account, probably forever.
If it's massively successful, we'll try to find other partners to match fund, or to make sure that the money stays in Kiva forever, but we shall see. It'd be lovely if you could do yourself a beard and post it! Plus if you have a blog, stick it up and we'll link to you - help us go bankrupt and spread the word ;-)
Go to Build a Beard do Kiva a favour and get hairy.
All the Beards,
Heather
Hollibobs Canada Land
The second part of our holiday was super relaxed. We lived with our chums Shane and Alli who have similar tastes to us when it comes to having fun. Plenty of good films and good tv series, hilarious fancy dress partays (Big Lebowski Night 2008) ... 
... eating lots, exploring, 
learning (pete and I learnt to knit! Thanks Alli!) big chats/debates/arguments (boys), swimming in rivers ... 
making cool stuff (girls) and generally having big laughs :-) Thanks to the wonderful Magees for being good chums. 
Hollibobs NYC
This is such a ridiculously late post I'm a bit embarrassed. NY and Canada were bundles of fun in very different ways. Thanks so so much to everyone who gave me tips for places to visit. Swissmiss gave me loads of lovely advice and Rosemary Travale's google map was amazing - the KinoKuniya bookstore opposite Bryant Park was the best! I could have spent severe amounts of moolah there. I did buy a great inky brush pen which I'm still getting to grips with but I think it's big winner so far. I'll post up some tests later.
We ate well. Most of our plans were based around food. We had high hopes for Katz Deli and it was certainly an experience. I discovered I wasn't a big pastrami fan but it was a pretty cool place to eat. I still don't think my stomach's forgiven me though.
We also drank copious amounts of extra shot iced caramel macchiatos and frappucinos to keep our little legs going. Pizza and bagels lived up to expectations. My big whinge is that you can't get everything bagels here.
Our special birthday meal was at Sushi Yasuda which blew us away. We sat at the bar and got master Yasuda san himself and were slightly terrified and in complete bliss. We got the Staten Island ferry afterwards and talked about the sushi the whole time. What geeks!
Pete also got his beloved Macbook Air after much deliberation and wrangling with the uninformed staff at the Apple store.
I loved New York. We visited Kid Robot, Bronx Zoo, Top of the Rock, MOMA, lounged around Central Park and loads more and there was so much that we didn't get crammed in. There's a lot of fun to be had there methinks.
Sesame Tree
We're back! The jollies were super duper fun but I'll tell more about that later. We got some great news while we were away. The BBC have given us the page impressions stats of the Sesame Tree website and it looks like it's making a lot of people smile. Here's some figures to ponder over:
April 14,654
June 253,232
August 2,662,160 (wowees)
We worked so hard on all the illustration and animation and we're chuffed to bits that it's a big winner. Big thanks to the lovely folks at FRONT and BBC NI for collaborating on this.
Special Things
Thanks to everyone who gave me tips for New York, keep 'em coming, we're leaving on Saturday - woot!
Ben and Sarah
Big love and hugs to Ben & Sarah Behzadafshar :-)
Sail (Illustration Friday)
This one's dedicated to my dear salty sea dog of a dad who could quite happily live on the sea and never touch land.
Completely off-topic, has anyone got any good tips for must-see things in New york? We're going on our jollies on the 23rd August and spending 4 days in New York and a fortnight or so with our lovely chums Shane and Alli in New Brunswick, Canada. I AM SO EXCITED.
Myah and Belle
I hope Marie doesn't read my blog because this is her surprise for tonight :-)
Sour (Illustration Friday)
I've been doing some work on a gallery of lesser-known-mythical creatures. The Japanese Takka-onna are particularly freaky methinks.
Animation premiere
If you happen to be passing through Galway at the weekend you might stumble upon the 20th annual Galway Film Fleadh. The festival promotes and screens some of the very best in new and classic Irish and world cinema. Including the premiere of an animation called A Wonderful Story we did a while ago which is finally seeing the light of day now.
It started life as a book written by our good friend and client, John Mooney. I did the illustration and design for it and John loved it so he asked me turn it into an animation. The books and dvds have just been released into schools as part of the NI curriculum.
The great thing is that the project donates all profits towards the prevention of suicide in Ireland.
I have to admit that I can't go to the screening because I'll just cringe so much at everyone looking at my work. Is that bad? My toes curl thinking about it. EEK! Its all very very exciting though and I'm so glad all the hard work is worth it. If you ask me very nicely I'll send you link to watch it online ;-)
Meet the monsters
The not-so-fierce but slightly bemused and very friendly Dekko monsters.
Dekko Monsters
Not so long ago our friends at Mammoth commissioned me to create a set of monster characters to promote Dekko's big summer sale. This was a FUN job. The media buy was huge and Martin, Emma and Barry appeared on billboards around every corner in Belfast which is all very exciting if you're me. Here's a few snaps of the Dekko monster team.
Hoard (Illustration Friday)
Punchline (Illustration Friday)
Yup
I don't use Windows Vista.
Obsession
Pete showed this to me late night and we must have watched it 5 times in a row. Its now the afternoon after the night before and the obsession still hasn't passed. I told myself I wouldn't post videos on my blog but this has to be the exception. I think my VJ ambitions have been resurrected in one night - oh dear!
Wide (Illustration Friday)
I've been experimenting with lettering recently. I really admire accomplished lettering artists who make it look so easy and can write whole paragraphs in a perfect composition without fear of making mistakes and make it look like a work of art. Practice, practice practice methinks.