Cheesecake Toy T-shirt

This t-shirt design came from the Toy Story-ish design of the "Teamwork to the Rescue" t-shirt. It's a similar idea, with toys coming to life, only this one "set" in the Second World War. It's based on the very famous pin-up poster of Betty Grable. It was a fun little design, though getting the angle of the green army man who is knocked over by the beauty of the poster was pretty tricky. I tried to keep the poses of the toys are true to the real thing as possible.

The Lego-style Betty Grable was a lot more difficult to do, since Lego people don't have a whole lot of curves, and I didn't want to change it too much. I used the shadows to give in controuring more than changing the square shap of the toy. The shadow, however, comes straight from the real poster, so it's got plenty of human shape. The half-tone dots are, in my opinion, what really sets that off. The dark part is coloured around the dots, and the light half the dots are coloured. Gives a good contrast with just black.

This was a fun one! I think the design works well at capturing a Forties feel, with the halftone dots and vintage shapes. The design is named "Cheesecake Toy" because pin-ups were often called "cheesecake girls."

It's available in a few different forms at RedBubble. Enjoy!

New Toy!

Finally my new ruling pen arrived! I'm very excited. I ordered it for a project coming up after Tell-Tale Heart is done. (yes, it's far from being done, and I have a couple of books to make before hand as well, but I can't keep myself from dreaming up all kinds of new things to do). I've only used this once, at a calligraphy evening a couple years ago and couldn't find on in Regina so when I finally remembered what it was called I order one from ebay. There will be much practice on some old books I have lying around because I quite like when things are made on top of old pages. I may make some book projects out of the good ones.

Ruling pens are nifty little instruments that can be adjusted with that little knob on the side to make finer or broader lined, and, if I can manage to figure out how, will make one side (the one nearest the tip) of the letter nice and smooth while the other side (the open side) ragged and splattery. It can be used with ink and watercolour, of course, and also works great with masking fluid. I think it should also be great for my gilding size, whenever my gold leaf arrives. So many possibilities!

Stay tunes for results!

My Carnival Entry - Harlequin Box

Here we are finished at last. I posted some close ups of the individual books that make this up previously, but here it is allput together. This was made for the Bookbinding Etsy Street Team's Carnival Challenge. Take a look at the group's blog and feel free to vote for mine! It was just supposed to be one book... but I got a little carried away and started experimenting and ... yup, here it is, sort of over the top.

The theme of the challenge was carnival and I went with a traditional harlequin pattern and colour scheme. The piece is inspired by carnival's anarchy, disguise, mystery, games, and wonder.

The larger structure is based on those cubes they sell in museum shops - you know the ones that open different ways and reveal different paintings depending how you move them. It is made up of 8 smaller cubes that are hinged to open in different ways.

Inside each one is a different type of book. They are all usable, but they are designed to be confusing, clever, and odd. Some are difficult to get into, or out of, or figure out how to put back together!


This view shows (left to right):
1. A book in the round - no covers.
2. A back-and-forwards series of books with a spine the switches to be on all four sides.
3. An accordion book that falls apart and fits in a square and is very strange.


And here you can see:
1. A 'Jacob's Ladder' style series of books with double hinges so the books flip back and forth.
2. A folded maze book that meanders all over.
3. Four small books that look pretty normal until you open them and they become star ornaments.
4. A 'Jack-in-the-box' type book that unwinds. It does come all the way out, but will take some coaxing.

The last cube is empty and just has a lid so things can be kept in there.

The paper is used is both patterned, with a gold coloured print and reminds me of the patterns on Venetian masks, which is why I used it, and plain textured. The white stuff really seems to attract every bit of lint and dust and dirt in the house, though. ugh.

Jacob's Ladder Book(s)

Here's another of the little books that will eventually make up my larger Carnival project for the BEST contest. This one is based on a Jacob's Ladder toy. I was originally just going to make plain boards covered in paper but I didn't want to make something that boring and didn't really have enough decorative paper for all the borders, never mind the amount of ribbon putting it all together to be big enough.


So after plenty of staring at the already cut boards (of course I started before I figured out what I planned to do) while watching Secert Diary of a Call Girl (bit distracting) I decided to make a series of books. Two hours spent pretending I was going to go to sleep and not getting anywhere I'd decided to alternate black and red paper, and decorative and plain paper. This was in order both to make my little bit of remaining paper to go further, and because, given that the books have a very obvious front/back the ladder would not work quite the way the toy does and give the illusion of one block falling all the way to the bottom. I opted to go for confusion instead (which still fits very nicely with the overall theme of the larger project because carnival is about disguises, wonder, anarchy and all that other good stuff). I was going to checkerboard it, but the like the idea of it flipping back and forth between the colours better.

So, there you are. It actually didn't take nearly as long as I thought to put the whole thing together. The majority of the work on this was simply the figuring out how and what to do. I'm very pleased with the result, everything works together very nicely. The only thing is - it doesn't actually work. The books open so you can't actually make them fall like dominoes, you have to flip it one at a time. So it's really just a complicated series of miniature double-hinged books. But still, it's pretty cool. I think it might be worth some more experimenting, maybe with just three books and more strands of ribbon. I also don't think I'd put the ribbon the outside cover next time around, I just did it here to mimic the toy. What do you think?