Secret squirrel business

Mooncar (the Monster) and I wrotes a book for my young Niece as a Xmas present... Okay, it's only seven pages long but Iz drews the piktures too. See!

It's a story about the friends a young girl meets on the way to show her mate Pete a frog she befriends.

The book is made with different textured papers; smooth Japanese printed paper cover with a silk with metal inclusions title label; inside cover is embossed pink; illustrations are done on cartridge that were individually glued back to back with the story pages which are made of a delicate soft paper impregnated with silk fibres. The silk pages are hand torn to size to give the pages a fluffy silk edge. Basically, the point being, if I was kid (not just mentally I mean) and came across a book made that way I wouldn't be able to help myself but to pick it up.

The illustrations are pencil drawings scanned and coloured digitally in my 'secret squirrel' 'had an fine arts major complimenting my abilities with water colours' style. The silk page illustrations are done using a similar technique and are colour meditations on the people involved in the story. They where my Niece, my Sister in-law, Myself, Mooncar, my Bro and the Frog of course... the last one being purely imagination. I don't really know any frogs that well.

The font has been done in colours which help elicit particular emotional responses at various parts of the story. The fonts are formatted on the page in a very particular 'secret squirrel' style which I hope to use in the future as a way of helping adults learn to read to their children with the intended intonations meant within the sentence. I don't think everyone needs that help but it's nice for children of those who do... and it's a great marketing idea... um... I think I could work on these ideas a little more. They do work really well within this book though.

And the whole package is beautifully bound in an ornamental Japanese style by a guy who is well known for his leather hand bound volumes and work with large American film productions such as the Matrix and Mission Impossible part deuce. This binding style was admittedly a little bit of research and development for his company... of course meaning that at one stage it didn't go exactly to plan. The covers warped due to the multiple paper layers absorbing glue at different rates. That made me *sigh* *kick* *grumble* *a lot* but as you can see everything turned out great in the end. *smile*

Anyway, that's the end of my tale of what's been keeping me so busy. I hope you all had a Merry Xmas and you're planning a blinding... um, safe and happy New year.

THE END