Birthday boy

We have just celebrated William's first birthday with a birthday tea with his little friends. It was such a lovely day and a real reminder of how quickly they change in their first year.

Here is a picture of Oliver meeting his new brother a year ago...

And here is the birthday boy all grown up...

Friday's fun fact - polar bears aren't white?!

Did you know that a polar bear's fur isn't actually white... they have clear hollow hairs that reflect the light and make them look white!

Happy Friday all!

Happy Chinese New Year - Year of the dragon

How about making this fun handprint dragon with your little ones...

Here are Oliver and William getting crafty...

Cute kitten for language therapy

Lovely to see on this blog that one of John's books featuring some of the animals that appear in our prints is considered a favourite book for pre-school speech therapy.

Friday's fun fact - Wise owl

Did you know the reason owls are often perceived as being wise is because Athena, the Greek goddess of wisdom, was often depicted holding an owl.

Happy Friday all.

Sleeping babies

At the same time as working on new Little Blue Zebra projects, John is busy illustrating his new book "If your dreams take off and fly", which will be coming out early next year. The little boy sleeping soundly in this sketch is based on the eldest of the Little Blue Zebra offspring.

And here are the other two Little Blue Zebra babies enjoying their nap time!

Friday's fun fact

To take your mind off the fact that it's Friday the 13th, we thought we would share the first of our 'Fun Friday Facts' about our A-Z animals. Kicking off with the jolly giraffe...Did you know that a giraffe can go longer without water than a camel?

Happy Friday all.

Happy 2012

We hope you all had a wonderful Christmas. We had great fun with lots of little ones running around, ripping open their presents and playing with their toys (as well as the boxes and wrapping paper). Wishing you all a very...

We are looking forward to a busy and productive 2012...

Deck the halls...

We can't believe that Christmas is less than 3 weeks away now. If like us you haven't quite finished (or started) your Christmas shopping yet, why not avoid the crowds and do some hassle free shopping online...

And just in case the snow doesn't fall where you are, you can always create your own snowflakes here...

We have two new members of the Little Blue Zebra family who will be enjoying their first Christmas - and here's a photo of little Lara opening her cute calendar, with a little bit of help from her Mummy!

Super cute duckling

We were really pleased to come across this lovely review of our illustrator (and father) John Butler's recently published book, Rainy Day Duckling, in the current edition of Baby London magazine. We definitely agree with them that his illustrations fall into the 'super cute' category.

More cute customers

Our prints are gracing the walls of even more homes - here's a gorgeous photo of little Kimberly in Austria. We just love her outfit, she clearly has good taste in art and shoes! The photo was sent in by Kimberly's mummy, who is a fab photographer - check out her website here. This amusing shot caught our eye!

Cute customers

Today we are very happy to share some adorable customer photos of our prints in their new homes. A big thank you to Georgina's mummy and daddy in Kent and to Dean and Isabel's mummy and daddy in Houston, Texas who sent in these gorgeous photos. We love seeing our cute customers and look forward to receiving more photos from around the world.

Website wizardry

We're very grateful for all the lovely feedback we have received about our new website. Many thanks to our brilliant website developer, Iskander Mellakh, for all his hard work in building it. It's all gobbledygook code to us but makes perfect sense to him thank goodness. He's now busy working on another exciting project, the animation for a wonderful new programme for children called The Adventures of Abney and Teal, which is on CBeebies.

Little Blue Zebra Towers

Today is our first full day working together at Little Blue Zebra HQ without any little ones running around. As much as we have missed them, it's not surprising that without the distraction of 3 children under 3, we have managed to have a very productive day.

The day has finally come

We are extremely pleased to announce that our website has now been launched! It has been a long journey but we have made it. A very exciting day indeed. Like anything, it didn't all go to plan, but we are all really pleased with the results and feel it has been worth all the effort to make sure everything was just right before we hit the go button. We hope you enjoy browsing!

Back to the Cotswolds

The Little Blue Zebra gang headed to the Cotswolds for a family holiday. My favourite day was spent walking through the fields to Daylesford farmshop. They have such lovely produce and a gorgeous courtyard where we sampled their delicious cakes. I liked it so much we went back a couple of times and both times spotted Kate Winslet there stocking up on local produce and taking part in a cookery class. Well if it's good enough for Kate, it's good enough for me!

Photoshoot

Never work with children or animals... Well our first experience of doing so went surprisingly well. Our little models (in the form of our children) took their art direction well. It may also have been because we did it at lightning speed, as 2 year olds are not known for staying still for long. Little Lara was more relaxed about the whole thing as she slept through her starring role.

Raspberry picking

We were too late for the strawberries, but there were plenty of raspberries - which with a little help of this very easy recipe turned into delicious jam.

Whitstable

After having some food at the Whitstable Oyster Co. for a birthday treat we discovered this lovely little shop as we pottered down the high street. There was also a nice little children's barbers opposite in another children's shop which was brilliant as they were all geared up to entertain the little ones as they snip away.

October sunshine

We took full advantage of some glorious October sunshine to take the staging shots for some of the prints. Again it was a family event with everyone lending a hand...

It was a bit of a production line but we managed to get them all shot before the light went.