From One Drawing to a Bookshelf: How Finley Became a Book

The first Finley book didn't actually begin as a book.

It began with me learning how to draw my dog.

I had stepped away from teaching and was focusing on real estate, which also meant I suddenly had room to explore some creative things I'd never really had time to pursue before. One of those was learning my way around Procreate on my iPad.

Naturally, I decided my subject should be Finley.

She's my ride or die, and I had approximately a million photographs of her from puppyhood onward. I started using those photos to teach myself new illustration techniques and figure out how to capture her rather than simply draw a generic black Lab.

There was also something a little sentimental behind it.

I wanted to have illustrations of her. Something I'd made myself that captured different versions of Finley through the years and would always exist, no matter what.

I wasn't trying to create a children's book. I was just drawing my dog.

Then the drawing started becoming a story

I have a lot of friends with young children, and somewhere in the process I started wondering whether I could turn those illustrations into a children's book.

I'd been told before that I was a storyteller. I'd also been told that my artwork deserved an audience. Both of those things require a slightly uncomfortable ingredient: actually letting other people see what you've made.

My partner at the time encouraged me to give it a whirl. So I did.

At the same time, I had been creating Canva templates for real estate, which meant I already understood enough about the platform to start experimenting. I discovered I could bring my Procreate illustrations into Canva, build pages around them, and start adding the story.

Suddenly there was a workflow.

Draw. Import. Write. Arrange. Change everything. Change it again.

The illustrations evolved. The backgrounds evolved. The story evolved.

And slowly, something that had started as an experiment on my iPad began looking suspiciously like an actual book.

And then TikTok gave me an idea

Somewhere along the way, I came across a TikTok explaining how someone had published a book through Amazon.

That caught my attention.

Until then, I had been thinking mostly about whether I could make a children's book. Now there was another question:

Could I actually publish it?

So I started figuring that part out, too.

The story I chose was simple and familiar: Finley going to the park.

It gave me a way to take a real dog, real experiences, and the personality I knew so well and translate them into a little adventure a child could follow.

 

It took a couple of months to finish.

There was plenty of learning as I went, plenty of editing, and plenty of moving things around in Canva until they finally looked the way they did in my head.

And eventually, Finley Goes to the Park wasn't a project sitting on my iPad anymore.

It was a published children's book.

That was a strange little moment.

One book apparently wasn't enough

Finishing the first book changed the question again.

It wasn't Can I make a children's book?

Now it was:

Where does Finley go next?

Fortunately, real Finley had already supplied plenty of material.

The next story became Finley Has a Sleepover, featuring the dog she met at the park. He's based on a friend's real dog who stays with us often enough that he's basically Finley's part-time brother anyway.

Then came Finley and the Rainy Day, exploring what happens when the day doesn't go the way you wanted and how we handle some of those feelings.

And the ideas kept coming.

I have outlines and beginnings for more Finley adventures waiting their turn. Some have stories. Some have images. Some are still collections of ideas waiting for me to sit down in Canva and turn them into something real.

From stories to something bigger

Once the books existed, the coloring book felt like a natural companion.

Then came more ideas for activities and ways children could interact with Finley's world beyond simply reading the story.

That's the funny part about creative projects.

Sometimes you know exactly what you're building before you start.

And sometimes you sit down with an iPad because you want to learn how to draw your dog.

A few months later, she has her own bookshelf.