As soon as Nate sent me a link to 'The Most Gorgeous Cookbook Ever' on Amazon I ordered several copies and waited eagerly for their delivery. And they did not disappoint, I was overwhelmingly excited and proud to see my work in print. It had been a long time in coming.

Lets take a look at my first submission though from March 2014...

As you can see I hadn't quite found my style and I was still working out the finer details of PS. If you followed my self imposed TDAC challenge I set myself at the beginning of last year to have 30 recipes submitted by the end of 2015 you'll remember my IG feed being full of food! One of the marvelous outcomes of drawing so much food was I became very quick at it, flitting between dip pens and brush pens, which in turn made me swifter in PS and that in turn gave me further confidence to explore and refine my style.

To reach that magic 30 took over EIGHTEEN MONTHS - the same amount of time I was pregnant my two kids. It was a true labour of love because I knew the goal was worthwhile. Each time I sat down to dip that pen in the ink for the sketching or hand lettering, played about with page layouts was a tiny step towards this book. Goals take time, in some cases some longer than others.

The most important thing is to KEEP taking those steps, however small, to make that dream happen!

I was prepared to be consistent, keeping my eye on the prize, despite the many detours, leading up to that major goal. You can use this approach in most areas of you life. If you allow yourself to take small steps, one day at a time, you are least likely to overwhelm yourself. Planning also plays an important part, plan for progress not perfection!

I don't suppose the returns from selling this book on Amazon will be huge. But I plan to send a copy to many, many art directors in the future so they can reference my style and approach, and fingers crossed send briefs my way.

You can order copies of this book from Amazon.com US

Or Amazon UK