Short run children's book

A few posts ago I mentioned that I was doing some illustrations for a children's book. I can now show you some pics as the books have gone to England with my husband as gifts for some friends. Before, I have made single copies of my stories for my own amusement. This time I made a short run of four copies of a short story written by our daughter (who has just won first prize in a poetry competition - so proud!). Time was tight so I was looking for something that would come together quickly and be easy to reproduce, so I went for collage.

Here are some photos:

Magilla the Police Gorilla

Meet Magilla the Police Gorilla. He came into being about eight years ago (I have since seen a character called Magilla, but I had no knowledge of that at the time. Our Magilla was part of bedtime stories made up by my husband.) Anyway, after the Albertina Tiger Jones book success, Magilla was next in line. Here you can see him with his change of clothes - police uniform and banana pyjamas - along with the flap that he lives in when he's not moving through the story. 

Here is the fold out block of flats where the rabbits live. There is a whole crowd of them in the bush that can be placed anywhere on the building as the stairs, balconies, and window-boxes are all on foam pads.

This is the computer screen where Magilla goes through fingerprint recognition. The white pieces at the side are pull-out tabs so the reader can  match the print and the species.

Like all good police officers, Magilla has crime-scene tape. The cobble-stones are made with felt-tip pens scribbled on to a block stamp.

Here are some of the buildings of Animal Town.

These are some of the things that Magilla carries. You can see his radio, evidence bags, an A to Z so he can find his way around the town. Of course, nowadays he would have his mobile phone and that would serve for everything :)

Here is an aerial view of the town.

I had such fun making these books for my daughter and she had such fun reading and re-reading them. I've made three other story books since then and each one has its own style. I love exploring the form - writing the story, making the book, and doing illustrations in different styles, and incorporating as many interactive and pop-up elements as possible. 

How do you push your creativity in new directions?

Bookbinding without stitching

I thought today I'd share a new technique I learned for making a book swiftly and without stitching. It's called crown binding and I found out about it in 100+ Bindings by Alisa Golden. 

I'm aware there are a lot of photos here but I wanted to catalogue each step.

First of all, cut a piece of thick paper or thin card 20cm x 19cm. Orient it so that that the width is 20cm.

Fold it in half and open out again.

Fold in the edges to the centre fold and open out again.

Fold each section in half again so that you have an accordion with eight sections.

Fold the accordion up and fold the corners of the single layer on the top down to the fold to make triangles.

Open out the first layer and fold the next double layer down at the ends to make triangles. Fold them back the other way as well. 

Do the same for each layer and then open out. There will be triangles of folds top and bottom.

  Push each of the triangles back so that it folds down away from you. Do the same top and bottom.

Fold the whole piece back into the accordion.

Open out the first 'page' and fold in the top and bottom triangles.

Turn the page and fold in the triangles top and bottom. Repeat for each page.

Now you have a spine for the book. 

To place the pages (they need to be 13.8cm x twice the width of page you require), open the first section of the spine and open out the triangles. Align the fold in the page with the fold in the spine. 

Fold the triangles back down to hold the page in place. Do the same for each of the pages. This number of folds in the accordion will hold four folded pages. 

And there is your finished book!

WOYWW - new journal

Hi everyone. If you're wondering what WOYWW is all about, visit Stamping Ground and join in the fun.

I recently bought Journal Fodder 365 by Eric Scott and David Modler. It has prompts for a year's worth of exploration of where your inspiration comes from, how you deal with disappointment, what you do to stay connected. I thought with 48 prompts it would be fun to make a journal with 48 double-page spreads to work through the whole thing in one place. It's difficult to see from this photo (bad afternoon light) but the cover is leather and the closure uses an old key. Can't wait to start using it!

Now to visit a few other desks around the world...

WOYWW - books, shirts, and patchwork

Hi there desk-snoopers. And if you haven't yet learned the thrill of snooping around other  people's desks, go straight to http://stamping-ground.blogspot.com and join in the fun. 

I know for a lot of you it's still Tuesday, but here in sunny Australia it is already almost lunchtime on Wednesday, so here is my Wednesday morning desk. I'll link up when everyone else catches up :)

As you can see, I've been busy making books. The book on the left is in progress. It's being bound in leather and I'm working out how best to attach the book block. If I get it finished today I'll add another photo. The one on the right is covered in 'croc-skin' paper and made of all sorts of different papers. I've seen these referred to elsewhere as junque journals. Below are a couple of photos of the insides. 

And the sewing continues. I finished the tenth and last clerical shirt yesterday - the red one on the right. 

And finally, a king-size patchwork duvet cover that needs the border sewing on and a back attaching.

So, what's on your workdesk?

Update: Here is the finished leather notebook. I'm quite pleased with it :)

Tags galore!

I was preparing a journal yesterday afternoon and wanted a tag. Oooops! None left. But I did have a lot of glossy card pieces that I'd decorated a while ago and hadn't got around to using because they were leftovers and not full pages. I hadn't really worked out what I could do with them. I pulled them out and found they were just the right size to make tags from. Problem solved!

Well, of course, once I'd started it was difficult to stop :)

Soon there was a whole pile of tags ready for further decoration. I won't run out for a while...

I also managed to make a leather cover for my travel journal. I'll be able to swap out the books inside as I fill them up. So all-in-all a productive day. How was yours?

Linking to Show and Tell Saturday over at Artists in Blogland (use the button in the bar to see what everyone else is up to)

More sketches

Week 5 of the 6 week drawing class I'm taking. I find myself looking at things with a different eye, taking in where the light and shade fall. The thing that was the most fun today, though, was that the teacher wanted to know all about art journalling :)

Last night I found a stack of pages I'd removed from a book to thin it out to journal in. They were really thick, good quality pages, so I bound them together to make a book for journalling quotes. I like the square format.

Also, a new K-Mart has opened in the city centre and I managed to pick up enough erasers to carve a lower-case alphabet for $4! Guess what I'll be up to tonight...

recycling

I like to make my own journals. I also like ones that are not standard sizes and have a decent number of pages in them. This is my latest. It is 11½ x 8½ x 4in and covered using an old denim jacket. I liked using the jacket because it has allowed me to put a pocket on the front, one on the back, and utilise the buttons as a closure. Also I don't like to let anything go to waste.