Meomi's Olympics!

"Dress Rehearsal" by MEOMI

For someone who isn't particularly into sport, it's remarkable that I can get mesmerized by the Winter Olympics, like half-pipe snowboarding, speed skating, ski jumping or luge etc etc (but NOT curling)... but it's GREAT!! It's the same with the Summer Olympics... I loved watching the last Olympics in Beijing, and to top it off, they had a bunch of really pretty mascots! They were called "Fuwa" (good luck dolls, or "friendlies" - awww!) and were designed by Han Meilin, a famous Chinese artist.

And for this Winter Olympics, there's even more super-cute mascots! Here they are:


The Vancouver Winter Olympics mascots were designed by the fabby illustration couple Vicki Wong and Michael Murphy, who go by the collective name Meomi. I didn't realise until very recently though, that they've illustrated a series of children's picture-books called Octonauts.

Link to Meomi's site: http://www.meomi.com/
Link to the Octonauts site: http://www.octonauts.com/

Here's some pictures from their book, “The Octonauts and the Sea of Shade”. I love Meomi's sleek, colourful and cute style and the amount of detail they put into their pictures.

The cover which attracted me...

Look at the cute endpaper design!

It's a noisy world at the bottom of the ocean.

Not all Olympics mascots are so cute (there's some real abominations), but another particularly cute mascot was designed for the 1980 Moscow Olympics, a little bear called Misha, designed by the Russian children's book illustrator Victor Chizhikov.

A few years ago, an odd little shop called something like “Russian Cultural Centre” opened on Commercial Street in Sheffield. It was open for only a few months and because I was a bit nervous of going in to have a look around, I never did. I do regret that now. However they did have a Misha ceramic ornament in the window which Mathew really wanted, and the worse thing was, when they closed the shop they left it behind, all alone and gathering dust when it could have been warm and loved in our house! I hope that someone claimed it and is at this moment cherishing it.

Have fun!

Joey x