wigging out

Hurrah! Do you like my new wig???

I just designed a bunch of hairpieces for my beastly boutique in Monsterville, the real-life, 3-D monster village I’m building with Ed Vere, Neal Layton and the design team at the Discover Children’s Story Centre in Stratford, northeast London. It opens on May 28th, so I’m trying to get as much finished as possible before I leave for America tomorrow.

I won’t be around on the blog as much for the next couple weeks. But I’ll have lots to tell you about my trip when I get back, about MoCCA comics festival in New York City (Table K10 in the UK/Irish section) and Stumptown comics festival in Portland, Oregon. If you’re in the States, maybe see you there. Come say hello and tell me who you are!


The luscious Ellen Lindner and Lauren O’Farrell (aka Deadlyknitshade)

Even though I’m rushing about like a crazy person getting ready, I had to dress up my studio mates in these fab wigs. Oh, and Elliot the intern. And Neal and Ed. I keep getting distracted putting wigs on people.


The monstrously dashing Gary Northfield and Elliot Baggott



My beautifully beastly co-designers Neal Layton and Ed Vere

And if you can do a bit of Photoshop work, here are a few wigs if you want to dress up you and your friends! (If you put them on your blog or Facebook, could you please mention Monsterville somewhere, so people know where it’s from?)


Click on the wig for a larger size

On the same monster theme, Irish writer/illustrator Niamh Sharkey just blogged her five favourite monster picture books over on the Library Mice book blog. She included Morris the Mankiest Monster… thanks, Niamh!

Okay, now we’re moving away from London and Monsterville to an entirely different city, Oxford. BUT THERE WERE STILL MONSTERS! When Philip Reeve and I visited Oxford’s yet-unopened Story Museum, we spotted this great light fixture above the door. (How cool is that?!)

And then some monsters nipped our finger tips. So fab.

It’s still very much a building site, but there’s a lonely dinosaur in a room that used to be a canteen, when the building was a telephone exchange. Philip has blogged much more about the museum itself, pop over to his blog to have a read about it.

Here’s the Story Museum director, Kim Pickin, showing us one of the garrets that they’re hoping to use as a space for writers and artists in residence.

It’s like something out of The Little Princess, and any rat found living there really ought to be named Melchizedek.

It’s a HUGE space, all these buildings around a central courtyard. And so lovely in a higgelty-piggelty sort of way. I can’t wait to see how they’ll use all the buildings’ strange quirks to build a world dedicated to storytelling. Have a look at the Story Museum’s website to find out more.

Kim showed us some old photos from the building’s rather fascinating past.

View from one of the windows:

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