Perruche perdu and book dummies; oh my, yes!

It's about time for me to plan, execute and send out another promotional mailing.  In the past, this has taken the form of postcards- colour image on the front with b&w printed contact info/email address on the back.  However, for this next one, I may spend a little more money and print both sides in colour- in fact, I'm considering the possibility of doing two or more versions and sending them out as a series.  It won't cost TOO much, I'm sure...the magic and wonder of Vistaprint never cease to amaze. 

The idea is to make the 'info' side look like a poster- a poster for a lost bird; my contact information will appear where the contact information for the bird's owners would be.  The poster/info side will remain constant even if I do several variations on the front.  The front will feature various people whose connection to the lost bird are vague and open to interpretation- a story of sorts, but one that is lacking a certain amount of information and so is prime for speculation.   I saw such a sign in my neighborhood and found it fascinating!  (I also kept thinking about how I might improve the poster- how I would do it if it were MY lost perruche!)

Here are some of the sketches- please keep in mind that these are REALLY VERY SKETCHY-  I don't think that I've ever posted anything quite so sketchy before- to be honest, I feel a little strange about it- as though I were posting some kind of lurid and probably undesirable tell-all confessional.

These first two images were my first impression- I hadn't developed the idea in any particular way yet.  I imagined a woman passing the sign appearing very emotional, and I just quickly sketched the sign so as to remember what it looked like, more or less:

I developed the idea a little bit more (i.e. at all!) here:

Here are a few sketches of other possibilities- much less developed:

(I'm kind of partial to this one, though!)

(alas, it is not clear that the patinaed man is supposed to be a statue.  He is.)

And here is my sketch for the 'poster' side (still much work to do, obviously!):

Clearly, I'm still in the 'thinking' stage.  I'll be working on this project in the near future; will keep you posted on progress.  However, there's a couple of other things that I'll be working on...


First, I'm going to finish TEN pages of my 'flying' book (the wordless book) to my satisfaction (this, unfortunately for me, is not as easy as I would like!) in order to enter it for the SCBWI's Don Freeman Grant , one of the SCBWI's work-in-progress grants.  I have quite a few pages done...but, as I said, 'to my satisfaction'.  This must be sent in- i.e. postmarked- no later than the 2nd of February- therefore, it's something of a priority.  I love a deadline!  I do, I do.

I'm also going to work on the dummy for this project as part of #kidlitart's 'dummy' challenge.  The entire online group will be sharing their progress on their respective dummies from 6 January until June.  I plan not only to work on the dummy for 'flying', but also for 'Otto', another idea I've had for quite some time now.  It will be good to have a group- virtual or not- to help to keep me moving ahead and not...ahem... re-doing and THINKING about things endlessly as I am wont to do.  Until next time then....