She Doodled On My Book (it's cool, I asked her to)

I've said it before and I'll say it again, no other name rolls off my tongue quite as satisfyingly as this one. Elena Lombardi, Elena Lombardi, El-en-ahh Lommmmmbardiii.

Up top is the scribble sheet of Italian (now Stockholhm-based) designer Elena Lombardi, from a few years back. The reason I'm getting all nostalgic about it today is because we snipped-out her cute mess of a brain and chose it for The Scribble Diary book cover. See:

Elena's been doodling bits & pieces for this blog for years, so it's perfect to have her handiwork featured front and centre slightly-above-centre on the book! Here's a few roughs of the cover while we were deciding on colour/design. It was a toss-up between having a blank brain and a scribbly one.

A bit of trivia that's maybe only exciting to me and my Mum: It wasn't until I held The Scribble Diary in my hands for the first time that I noticed there's a little Australian flag hidden on the cover, inside Elena's brain. Apparently she was daydreaming about a trip "down under" at the time. This is cool because even though the book's published in New York, it was created in Australia. In my bedroom. In Melbourne. So there you go.

Ok, back to Elena. How about a quick skip down memory lane? These are a few doodling prompts I've thrown at her over the years and the neat black lines she delivers backatme...

above: Elena's train carriage for our Big Team Scribble colouring book.

She's neat, huh! To find out more about Elena visit her blog. Also have a peek at her silly hand-drawn answers over on Doodlers Anonymous. You can buy The Scribble Diary over here and wherever books are sold.