Mini Grey

Here are Ashmole and Beetle, who are coming to the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford very soon. Ashmole is a mole archaeologist, Beetle is an Egyptian Scarab beetle who would talk in hieroglyphics if he got a chance. They're going to be romping round the new Ashmolean Activity book.

11 June

Drew a couple of pics of wolfpup howling so thought might as well do this with them...

25 Dec 2025

#25CardofChristmas2025 Here they all are - the last 25 years in Christmas cards. Wishing you all good cheer!

25 Dec 2025

#25CardsofChristmas2025 And so we come to 2025. I've always loved the Looking Glass Insects in Alice, particularly the Rocking Horse Fly. I couldn't make one of those, so here is a flying rocking horse. Merry Christmas one and all!

24 Dec 2025

#25CardsofChristmas2025 We have reached last year! In October 2024 I made an alphabestiary of animals I'd sketched in Natural History museums. The raven was seen at Wollaton Hall. Is a Poe Raven a Christmassy thing? We don't know.

23 Dec 2025

#25CardsofChristmas2025 In 2023 I went to a tabletop museum thing and came across a Hoffmann's ReisStarke Cat - little cut-out cat - and thought - I'll steal that. My cat Pepper is extremely enthusiastic about Food, so here's Pepper the Hungry Cat.

23 Dec 2025

I was quite proud of getting her tail into it, as the Hoffmann's Cat doesn't have one that sticks out. Here's the original Hoffmann's cat, and Pepper modelling for it.

22 Dec 2025

#25CardsofChristmas2025 2022's card was all about cheese and chocolate. The chocolates were Quality Streets - one of the most important Xmas things to me as a child - squirrelling away the jewel-like foils and films and then making them into new things. I have been known to hang them on the tree.

22 Dec 2025

So it was a bitter irony that in 2022 Quality Street ditched the foils and films and dressed their chocs in 'sustainable' waxy ugly wrappers. The magic, and a Christmas tradition, was gone.

21 Dec 2025

#25CardsofChristmas2025 It's 2021 and I'd been drawing Puss in Boots for fun, so this cat and mice card happened with a panto theme. I just wouldn't trust that cat, you mice...

20 Dec 2025

#25CardsofChristmas2025 And we reach 2020, when we were all locked down. Who could escape this grim isolation for more exotic climes? B. Bird could, complete with openable suitcase for all the holiday essentials: sunglasses, towel, mixed seeds, holiday reading by Thomas Hardly...

18 Dec 2025

#25CardsofChristmas2025 Here we are in 2018, and I was a bit worried about the state of our planet: there was increasing carbon dioxide and decreasing nature. Maybe good to think about the Earthlings of 2050, and the planet we'll pass on to them.

citizensclimatelobby.ukAsking for a climate income to tackle climate change. | Citizens' Climate Lobby UKCitizens’ Climate Lobby is a non-profit, non-partisan, grassroots advocacy organisation focused on policies to address climate change.

18 Dec 2025

So 2018's card is a planet present, that opens up to show a Slight Accident, from the People of 2018. Whoops. But then the inside layer opens to show an underlayer: Of course we didn't do that - you'd have to be NUTS to break your only home - from the People of 2019.

18 Dec 2025

All we need is more wildlife and less CO2. PS: One way to reduce carbon emissions here: citizensclimatelobby.uk

Mini Grey reposted

Tom Gauld

@tomgauld.bsky.social

@peterbrannen.bsky.social

A Christmas cartoon from my new book of science cartoons PHYSICS FOR CATS. In good bookshops and online now: www.tomgauld.com/comic-books-v2

Mini Grey reposted

Peter Brannen

An absolute bedrock institution for understanding how the planet works, just civilization-scaled vandalism by the most incurious morons on Earth

#25CardsofChristmas2025 It’s 2017 and I’m keeping things simple by making another zig-zag card. This time it’s from the birds. They’re very disgruntled at having to wear Christmassy scarves and they’ve been promised bird seed and it hasn’t arrived.

In 2017 I’d been doing imagery for the children’s audiology department at the JR Hospital in Oxford, and my birds are borrowed from there. #ReduceReuseRecycle

16 Dec 2025

#25CardsofChristmas2025 In 2016 I was thinking about joining the humanists, then realised how human-centric it was. What could you join if you were a reptile or a fish? So I joined The RestoftheWorldists. Because the Rest of the World can't talk, but someone needs to give them a voice.

15 Dec 2025

#25CardsofChristmas2025 We're at 2015 today. I had a longing to send a chocolate coin somehow as a card, for, to me, chocolate coins scream Christmas. But I was mindful of 2012's postal disaster with the impounded matchbox cards. I had to keep the card to a strict 5mm thickness.

15 Dec 2025

There was a lot of chocolate coin testing to find ones that were slim enough - but it was Sainsbury's coins that could squeeze through my thickness-tester with enough room. And so here is the Souvenir of Earth Planetary Bauble. (The chocolate coin lurks under the cut-out Earth.)

15 Dec 2025

The wings were cut with a Pazzle Inspiration Suicidal Cutter that we got third hand which kept trying to eat the wings instead of cut them. At the bottom is part of Gillray's cartoon of The Plumb-Pudding in Danger. Now you can have your world, eat it too - and hang it on your tree.

14 Dec 2025

#25CardsofChristmas2025 2014: The Cabinet of Mystery This card I’d accidentally made when messing around with my book The Bad Bunnies Magic Show. The Bad Bunnies have locked their magician the Great Hypno in a trunk and are attempting his tricks and unleashing unexpected transformations.

14 Dec 2025

I thought this could be an excuse for some crazy paper engineering, so the first sketch model book of the Bad Bunnies had things like woven panel dissolves in it.

14 Dec 2025

Eventually I realised less in more, and all you need for picture book magic is your reader’s imagination and maybe an unexpectedly-shaped page. The Brenda Cabinet of Mystery never got into the book, but it managed to be a card. Here’s Brenda disappearing and reappearing.

13 Dec 2025

#25CardsofChristmas2025 In 2013 I’d been running an after-school club in pop-up at my son’s primary school. This card happened after we’d looked at angle folds, & I found out you could use the power of a tiny fold to make wings beat. Everyone needs one….a pocket Fairy Godmother

12 Dec 2025

#25CardsofChristmas2025 It's 2012 and I'm wondering: could I make a Christmas card that was also a matchbox? And what would you put in a matchbox? What about a spare Pocket Planet, just in case of a planetary emergency.

12 Dec 2025

With instructions on the back for what to add to make your habitable planet (then simply wait for 4 ½ billion years and – Hey Presto!) Now, dear reader, this card was a painful lesson about Royal mail Postage prices.

12 Dec 2025

Yes, it was but matchbox-sized and fitted in a teeny envelope, but it was 2 ½ cm deep, and this means it was ACTUALLY a Large Letter. So most of the pocket planets were impounded in Royal Mail depots and the unlucky recipients had to go and pay at least £1.70 to release their miniscule item.

11 Dec 2025

#25CardsofChristmas2025 It's 2011, & we have the chance to check in with how Christmas is going for the insects.Uncle Fly is wrestling with sellotape,the young ants are playing charades,in the attic the little maggots are looking in their stockings. Just a bit worried about what Mrs Weevil is up to…

10 Dec 2025

#25CardsofChrstmas2025 In ThreeByTheSea, Cat Dog&Mouse are given packets of herbs by a passing foxy stranger. This card includes a packet of herb seeds to grow your own stuffing. The seeds were a bit random - everything I could find in the garden shed. There were mixed reports about what came up.

#25CardsofChristmas2025 Phew! Reached No9 so now officially On Track. It's The Christmas Dinner Chocolate Selection, an unwise mixing of Turkey, Sprouts and the usual suspects with light & dark chocolate, praline, ganache, and so on. A card to make you feel slightly queasy.

#25CardsofChristmas2025 I have an ongoing obsession with model theatres. I was given a teeny toy theatre from Prague by my sister Pippa & that inspired this pocket theatre. It folds flat. Dress your fingers up and act out your favourite panto scene. Oh yes you will. Oh no you won't.

#25CardsofChristmas2025 2007's card is a pretty simple affair - a police line-up of guilty-looking vegetables. The sprouts were stencilled in white emulsion then fed through my printer. They are wanted for crimes against air quality thoughout Christmas time.

#25CardsofChristmas2025 My son Herbie was born in August 2006, so that Christmas I made a bag of mixed Herbs reflecting the many moods of a very Small Person. Looking at the herbs in the bag - looks like a pile of rosemary.

#25CardsofChristmas 2005's card: I screenprinted this one down at the Oxford Printmakers Co-op. And that was about the last batch of printing I ever did at the Co-op - son Herbie was born in August the next year, and going out printmaking stopped being an option.

#25CardsofChristmas I was so excited to find those cardboard bangy bits (that go in crackers & explode when you pull em) were for sale at my local Oxford Art Shop: Cracker cards! The idea: two people pull either end & it goes bang. Hidden in the middle is pointless gift, small paper hat & 'joke.'

#25CardsofChristmas It’s important to remember the Inventors at Christmas. This card from 2003 is also a tiny party hat, featuring Orville & Wilbur Wright, Thomas Edison, Alexander Graham Bell, Frank Whittle & many more. Sadly no female inventors: nowadays I’d definitely have had some there.

#25Cards OK this is actually a card from about 1999. There's no evidence of the 2002 card but it wasn't very good. This is from when I liked collaging people's heads on insect bodies. The box packs flat to be sent in the post. But it arrives empty. Disappointing.But same idea cd become a teeny house

#25CardsofXmas In 2001 I got hold of some lenticular plastic and I wanted to make a little animated shopping fairy. This may be the fiddliest card I've ever made. Film of it coming up...

#25CardsofChristmas No.1: Zooming back in time to the Year 2000... At last! Definite proof of Santa’s existence with these genuine fragments from the Relics at Christmas range. I can’t remember what I made the fragments out of – maybe it was real earwax...revoltingness: quite high

@pippagoodhart.bsky.social

I suddenly realised that it is 2025, and that I have been making batches of Christmas cards for 25 years. So I thought I'd do a countdown of 25 YEARS OF CHRISTMAS CARDS. But I am late to the party so today I need to get up to speed with the years 2000 to 2009, so here goes....

Mini Grey reposted

Pippa Goodhart

15 Oct 2025

My ABBA review of this very beautiful new picture book version of the classic tale - awfullybigblogadventure.blogspot.com @mini3grey.bsky.social @faberbooks.bsky.social I’ve had readings of it demanded over and over by grandchildren!

Mini Grey reposted

Children's Books at The Agency

@theagencybooks.bsky.social

16 Oct 2025

📣Exciting book news!📚 @littletigeruk.bsky.social has acquired the hilarious gothic tale Frankenkitty, a new picture book from Maudie Powell-Tuck, illustrated by our very own @mini3grey.bsky.social!🐱 Publishing September 2026! www.thebookseller.com/rights/littl...

thebookseller.comLittle Tiger pounces on Maudie Powell-Tuck and Mini Grey's ‘hilarious’ Gothic picture bookLittle Tiger has acquired the “hilarious” Gothic tale Frankenkitty, a new picture book from Maudie Powell-Tuck, illustrated by Mini Grey.

Mini Grey reposted

Children's Books at The Agency

@theagencybooks.bsky.social

24 Oct 2025

Thrilled to see The Coming of the Iron Man, illustrated by @mini3grey.bsky.social, Letters to a Monster, illustrated by #SarahWarburton and Anya's Quest, illustrated by #JaneRay, all longlisted for @peters-books.bsky.social Children's Book of the Year! 📚✨

Peters@peters-books.bsky.social

🌟Peters Children's Book of the Year 2026 Longlist reveal!🌟 Awarded annually to celebrate the best children’s fiction and non-fiction published in the UK, longlists have been announced in four categories: Picture Books, Junior Fiction, Teen Fiction and Non-Fiction 📚 peters.co.uk/news-page/re...

Mini Grey reposted

Fox Lane Books 🦊

@foxlanebooks.bsky.social

1 Sept 2025

We just love this stunning picture book edition of The Coming of the Iron Man! ✨ Each copy comes with a #signed art print + bookplate from illustrator Mini Grey @mini3grey.bsky.social Only a few left—grab yours before they’re gone 👇🏻 www.foxlanebooks.co.uk/product-page... #TheIronMan #BookSky💙📚

Mini Grey reposted

Simon Smith

@smithsmm.bsky.social

18 Aug 2025

Love what @mini3grey.bsky.social has done with the start of #TedHughes “Iron Man” “The coming of the Iron Man” has beautifully abridged text that keeps the punchy power of the original and adds wonderful playful art that makes it accessible for younger readers. fab stuff. #PicturebookPage