Myvoxsongs Nursery Rhymes in BabyLondon Magazine

In the Autumn issue, BabyLondon contained an interview with Myvoxsongs, describing our app and website and what inspired us to create Myvoxsongs.

You can read the whole interview by clicking the links below:

BabyLondon Autumn 2011

BabyLondon Autumn 2011 – Business files

Time for a tea break

Now that the Summer holidays are over and the school run replaces those lazy summer mornings, we can all get back to doing some work whilst also having the odd tea break. We’ve finally been able to do the finishing touches to our latest video and we are very pleased to present to you our latest  cartoon nursery rhyme video ‘I’m a Little teapot’. 

This nursery rhyme is a favourite of mine that I have wanted to do for a long time. I wanted to recreate a traditional English afternoon tea  – with cakes, cream scones and jam tarts – mmmmm. Please feel free to leave comment – we love to receive your feedback and we really hope you enjoy this video. Well, I’m off for my tea break now…Enjoy!

Congratulations to the winners of YouTube’s NextUp contest Europe

It was a great to experience to create an animation for Youtube’s nextup competition in Europe.  Our nursery rhymes video entry made it into the top 60 in the UK however didn’t manage to get the public to vote us to the top. There were some great entries and think those that won must have had some great support behind them. Congratulations to the 8 winners in the UK and all the others in Europe. Click here to see the winners.

Myvoxsongs will continue to provide original hand-drawn animated nursery rhymes for you and we hope to release a few more videos nursery rhymes over the coming months.

Watch this space for more kids stuff.

Myvosxongs

Backstage at YouTube’s NextUp Contest

Myvoxsongs were fortunate enough to be invited along to a YouTube Partner Meet Up day in London in June.  We had a great day understanding the scale of what YouTube has to offer both it’s partners and it’s viewers. We were also told about a fantastic competition where they were inviting video entries from their partners with less then 50,000 subscribers to tell them what our YouTube channel is  about. Up for grabs is one-to-one mentoring and training with regard to video making and channel optimisation as well as £15,000 to go towards software and equipment.

Well, without further a do we set to work pretty much straight away. We don’t usually work to a strict deadline but as June 28th was the last day to apply for entry we had just two weeks to pull it off. We worked every spare moment we had , between a full time job, the kids school, playgroups etc and there were plenty of late nights. The dancing characters concept was something we have always wanted to do but as it doesn’t really form part of a  traditional nursery rhyme narration we hadn’t approached it…until this opportunity came along. I do a street dance class where I learned how to put a dance routines together so this helped when trying to choreograph the characters. As usual all the characters were hand drawn and all the dance moves animated frame-by-frame. This is the final result:

The song ‘Our World’ was written and performed by Olly Drew & Georgia Lyons. Georgia Lyons is our very talented thirteen year old niece who wrote the lyrics to ‘Our World’ (the song was slightly adapted by Olly to suit the YouTube NextUp contest). Thank you Georgia for doing a wonderful job! You may have already heard Georgia sing on some of our nursery rhyme songs such as Five Little Speckled Frogs, The Wheels on the bus and This Little Piggy Went to Market. Georgia recorded her first nursery rhymes with us when she was just 2 and a half years old and ten years later she is a budding songwriter. Watch this space for more from Georgia Lyons.

The song was recorded during one weekend and then set against the animation. Editing was the last factor for the video. We added a montage of our work and used wordle.net  to create a fancy backdrop with relevant messaging about us. We managed to upload and enter the competition in the nick of time and were overjoyed when we found out that we had made it into the Top 80 UK entries.

These 80 videos are up for a public vote. The Top 20 will be judged by YouTube where they will select 8 winners. There’s just 2 days left to vote so if you like the video please please vote for us everyday until July 9th. All you have to do is click here, select UK from the top right hand drop down box, find our thumbnail & VOTE . If you want to see more of our videos then please vote. Your support is always appreciated. We’ll let you know if we get through.

Emma

myvoxsongs

We need your Votes :)

See our NEW video entry into YouTube’s NextUp contest http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cT5Zz1Oz1H0. If you like us please VOTE for us HERE http://www.youtube.com/youtubenextup. Voting starts today until July 9th. If you want to see us win then please vote once a day until the 9th.

Log Off or Blog Off

There’s nothing worse than speaking to someone whose got their head buried in laptop or smart phone. Nothing you do will get their attention and it can be very frustrating. (It has even resulted in divorce!). The Log Off campaign is about mothers who are not paying enough attention to their kids because they are spending too much time on Facebook.

It will be midnight by the time I finish writing this post. I had  just  four hours sleep last night due to baby waking. I’ve spent most of the evening playing with the kids, serving dinner, clearing up, doing bedtime routine and replying to a few admin emails. Having listed all those things that one cannot avoid in their role as mother on a regular evening, it is essential that mothers get a chance to relax, whether that be a little yoga, talking to friends/family, watching TV or going online. Just for the record, I wrote this post in ‘my’ time.

The Log Off is a recent campaign that is encouraging mothers to quit using Facebook/internet. It seems to assume that mothers are ignoring their children because they are too busy online. The mothers that I know all go online ‘after hours’ and you certainly won’t find them distracted by Facebook while looking after the kids. Sure, they’ll always be a few who are distracted but I would say the vast majority of mothers are instinctively responsible when it comes to caring for their children. Take a look and see what you think of the video.

I agree that the internet can be a distraction sometimes however it is no more a distraction than the phone, TV, radio and other media or cooking the evening meal. On the other hand, I have to say, the video itself is effective in getting a message across.

After seeing the video, I was a little bit more aware of  my little kids voices speaking to me when I was checking texts or emails. As a result of this video I made a deal with myself and that was not to let cyber-space interfere with my valuable kids-space. So texts and emails checking is now kept to a minimum. So good luck to The Log Off campaign, lets hope it at least makes us focus on the important things in life…the undivided attention we can give our kids.

I created my website out of a need to work from home and entertain the kids at the same time on the same lap top. I remember feeding my toddler with my left hand and working on the laptop with right hand. I would put Youtube cartoons on to keep my son happy while I could finish what I was doing for my boss. Now, two years later, I create nursery rhyme cartoons to give parents something to show their kids on the internet, an activity on the web they can share. I hope that my website can be used as an integrated activity in Parents’ daily routines with babies, toddlers and young children. Twenty minutes of cartoon nursery rhyme videos mean a lot of smiles and happy children … and happy parents.

By the way, anyone made the Daddy Laptop Song / Video 😉 ?

Emma @myvoxsongs

The APPrentice – Apps for grown-ups, made by kids.

Your hired! That’s what I said to my 18 month old when she applied for the job as Quality Control Officer at Myvoxsongs iPhone app department 🙂

The task in last night’s episode of Lord Sugar’s TV show ‘The Apprentice‘ (UK) was to create an app and get as many downloads as possible in twenty four hours. The teams came up with some simple ideas but didn’t appear to be particularly passionate about them. To be honest their ideas were not properly considered and it made the whole app development process look so easy and even clumsy.  Their app concepts were n’t even highly rated by the online review websites TechCrunch, Wired and Pocket-lint featured in the programme. Click here for more information on last night’s episode.

We at Myvoxsongs developed our iPhone/iPad app out of a personal need to offer something to parents and kids that was fun, educational and entertaining. It includes five popular nursery rhyme cartoon videos. Sometimes, the best ideas are born out of necessity. We loved making this app and it definitely wasn’t as easy as it seemed on The Apprentice. It took time, passion and commitment.

Thankfully it was all worth it especially as we have received such positive feedback since its release. We have had emails from people all over the world telling us how much they love it and how useful it has been when their kids become restless. It seems people like to use them in the house, park, car journeys, planes, trains, in cafes, restaurants, waiting rooms and even at those difficult middle of the night wakings and baby feeding times 🙂 Watch this space for the android version.

Check it out and let us know what you think. If you like it, please leave a review on iTunes. We really appreciate it.

You can see our baby using the app in this short video – just click the PLAY button

 or go to the itunes store for more details – US Version (includes Itsy Bitsy Spider) and UK version (Includes Incy Wincy Spider).

Happy Mother’s Day World

For  most of the world it is Mother’s Day this Sunday. It’s a great opportunity to think of our mothers and what they have done for us and also to think about ourselves as mothers. We also need to think about having a little bit of ‘me time’ this Sunday, after all we deserve it. We’ve created a little cartoon video to that great song ‘You Are My Sunshine’. The video depicts our kids growing up and leaving home …but never forgetting their mothers. We hope you like it. You can check it out here  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sV9Dr8I-270

How to create your own Mother’s Day e-card: Just copy & paste the following and edit the words with your name and then just click ‘send’.

Dear Mother,

Happy Mother’s Day! Here’s a little video for Mother’s Day I thought you would like.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sV9Dr8I-270

Lots of love,

Your name

A tale of two weddings

How can we not write about the fairy tale wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton? It was truly an amazing event and a beautiful day here in London. There was a great sense of optimism in the air and it was a wonderful time to celebrate the future of the new royal couple and a great opportunity to reflect on british royal history.

It seemed like a great fusion between the old royals and the new generation of royals. While the pomp and glory, the splendour and the ceremony were amazing to watch and marvel at, it seems they rocked their socks off during the evening reception.  It seemed like the reception was pretty much like a ‘normal’ wedding reception with a wedding band, albeit, Ellie Goulding and the younger folk partying until the early hours. Best wishes for the future to Prince William and Kate Middleton.

For official wedding photos click here

I have started on a new nursery rhyme animation which I hope to have ready by the end of this month. It is a tribute to the royal wedding and has a royal theme.

Watch this space for the final cut, here are the lyrics

Emma

LAVENDER’S BLUE Lavender’s blue, dilly dilly, Lavender’s green. When I am King, dilly dilly, You shall be Queen Call up your men, dilly, dilly, Set them to work, Some to the plough, dilly , dilly, Some to the cart. Some to make hay, dilly, dilly, Some to thresh corn, Whilst you and I, dilly, dilly Keep ourselves warm.

The Alphabet Song

This is such a great song for children to learn the alphabet. Our 4 year old loved singing along with his dad.

Hope you find it as cute as we do. Check it out here. Happy watching.