This December I was busy doing a lot of things, from Disney World with Mark, Jaryth and Mark’s parents, to both our birthdays, to Christmas, to work, and more. But one of the fun things I was doing (okay, all of those things are fun for me) was making some books. These are some of the books I made in December (and early January):

Elves

My mom sent Jaryth some mail art of some elves, and every picture had one elf sticking his foot out. Jaryth does that when he’s crossing the street, to check for cars. And of course the elves cracked my mom up. So she sent us the postcard. I loved the elves so much that I carved a stamp of them. And then made two books about them.

The first book is a carousel book of the elves:

This book was made on cardstock, red, white, and a pink paisley one, with red ribbon. The elves are all stamped from my hand carved elf stamps and colored in with fine point sharpie pens. It was my first attempt at a carousel book.

But I also wanted to tell a story about the elves, and why one of them needed to point his feet at danger. So I wrote a story about it. This book was made on artist paper with cardstock facing paper. The cover is bookboard covered with some fancy paper I got in Seattle. The illustrations are hand carved elf stamps, watercolor pencils, sharpie pens, and a red felt hat for the main character.

Pandas and Turtles

Then yesterday I suddenly was inspired to carve a tiny (about 1″ by 1″) panda face, which made me want to do a book with it. This is a miniature book only 1 1/8 inches square, you can see from the first photo it’s only a little larger than a quarter. It has sewn bindings and is drawn and stamped on white watercolor paper. I used two hand carved stamps and colored pencils to draw in the book and gel pen for the writing.

Cover of my 2011 Holiday Book

This is the outside. On the inside it’s blank except for the instructions. The idea is that everyone who gets a book can then customize it with their own family memories. I’ll be taking mine to Thanksgiving this year to get people to write in it.

The inside of the holiday book for 2011

My mom sent me instructions for a box that I modified to hold my Firefly ATCs.

Here are some pictures.

So, carved a stamp for a Zodiac ring and when I mentioned that the carve was approximately 5″x5″ a couple people freaked, saying it was too large. So I made this ATC that showcases the print but is still only 2.5″x3.5″. It’s a card AND a pop-up book.

closed

open

I decided to carve a three layer print. It looks odd at first, but as I stamp the layers it really comes out well.