Flashback Friday: Another Elf

There are going to be a lot of elves in these Flashback Friday posts. And also a lot of dragons. It's pretty much all I drew for years.

In this one, I was obviously still figuring out the inking thing, and ended up obscuring a lot of pencil detail with big, thick awkward outlines. Ah well...

This is about the same vintage as the last one, around age 14 or 15.

Fairy Book: Brown and Grey

Here's the last of the batch of fairy books I made recently. I had originally been working on the green one I posted yesterday to keep for myself, but this one turned out so well, I think I'll keep it instead.

There was one more, but the leather I chose was quite thick, and too soft to easily pare down as much as I needed for these tiny books (I could have done it, but it would have taken way longer than it was worth). So I've set that last book aside and I'll finish it when I get to work on another project that involves paring leather.

Fairy Books: Darker Blue and Green

A couple more fairy books. If you're interested in one, let me know. I'm going to offer them at a big discount from now until the craft fair next weekend.

I think regular price will be somewhere around $50 (Can/USD), which is still a pretty good deal considering how much work goes into them (I'll have a post up in a few days showing the whole process). But from now until Friday, November 29, 2013, they'll be $25 plus shipping.

Or, if you make miniature books, maybe we can do a trade.

Fairy Books: Blue and Green

Two more miniature books from the recent batch. The reason I keep calling them fairy books is because I was asked to make miniature books that looked like they came from Fairyland. Because, of course, not all fairies are tiny.

When I was doing the covers on the two from yesterday, I cut flowers out from the same paper I used for the endsheets. I realized this would work with the book above, too. For the next one, though, a motif from the cover worked better for the spine, and then I let the patterned cover stand on its own.

When I made this one, I picked the endpapers first based mostly on the size of the pattern rather than on the colour. It proved difficult to find leather and cover paper to go with it. I like how the leather and the endpapers go together, and how the cover paper and the leather goes, but I'm not sure all three are the best match. If I had to change one, I'd change the endpapers, because I really like how the cover looks. I don't hate the endpapers, I just wish I'd chosen differently.

Fairy Books: Pink and Lilac

A while back, I had a request to make some tiny books that looked like they came from fairyland. In a few days, I'll post the in-progress shots I took and explain how they were made, but for now, here are pictures of the first two, made for my cousin's girls.

I'm not the biggest fan of pink, but I'm really pleased with how this turned out, and I'm glad I decided to cut flowers from the same paper I used for the endpapers to put on the cover and spine.

I had focus issues with the shots I took of the lilac book, and even with photoshop I couldn't quite get the colour right -- it's still too blue -- but the book itself turned out really well. I wasn't sure about the white leather, but I love how it ended up (originally I was going to use purple leather and a different cover paper, but I couldn't get the leather).

OK, Yet Another Cover Post

No blurb written yet, but I'm working my way towards finishing the edits on Dark Stranger, so I made a cover for it. I wanted it to match Milk Sister, since it's the sequel (even though Milk Sister was originally written as a stand-alone novel, one character wouldn't get out of my head and kept insisting I ought to tell his story, too). Here's the cover for Milk Sister:

If you click to see if bigger, you can see the lovely leather... The background image is an actual book that I bound a few years ago (it's a K-118 binding, for you bookbinders out there), and that's pretty close to the actual colour of the leather. The fairies are excerpted from an intaglio print, also from a few years ago.

I knew I wanted Dark Stranger to be blue. No real reason, it just seemed right. SoI used Photoshop to make the same book image blue, re-did the typography to more-or-less match, and then had to find an image to use. Like I said, I wanted the covers to go together, so it made sense to excerpt another old intaglio of mine.

There aren't really any moths in the story, but books are kind of important (in a roundabout sort of way), so I guess it works. It's more about the feel, anyway (and the fairies in Milk Sister aren't the tiny winged kind, either, so ... yeah).

Dark Stranger should be up for pre-order in the next few weeks.

December Giveaway

I still seem to be trying to catch up with life post-craft-fair (how do people do multiple fairs several times a year?), and can't think of a good giveway for this month, so, in the spirit of the biggest commercial holiday of the year, and the tradition of leaving offerings for the fairies (or something), I've decided to give everyone something this month. Happy Holidays (or insert preferred greeting here)!

So from now until the end of the year, both my short YA fantasy novels are free to anyone who uses the appropriate code on Smashwords (you'll find formats for all e-readers and computers). So download one, the other, or both, and if you like it how about leaving a review? (but don't feel obligated to leave a review--please download and read anyway).

The Coming of the Fairies

Click here and enter coupon code CK38P at checkout for 100% off the cover price. Coupon will expire on January 1, 2012.

Milk Sister

Click here and enter coupon code YK42K at checkout for 100% off the cover price. Coupon will expire on January 1, 2012.

Folklore: Food Offerings to the Fairies

I was going to write up a blog post about Hallowe'en fairy lore, but I'm so stuck into getting my latest short story written that I don't want to take the time. So here, instead, is an extract from my MA thesis (completed in 1999) on food offerings to the fairies. How is this relevant to Hallowe'en? Because the Celtic festival of Samhain was one of the two most active times of the year for the Good People (the other was Beltaine, or May Eve), and thus a time when humans had to be most cautious about fairy encounters. A traditional Irish Hallowe'en fairy offering was a plate of mashed potatoes--the first to be served up from the pot--with lots of butter.

Leaving a food offering for the fairies is usually a domestic event, occurring within the home. The offering is commonly left in the kitchen, either in a bowl on the table or hearth, or in the case of some beverages, poured on the hearthstones. Less commonly, domestic offerings are left outside the door of the house. Non-domestic food offerings, left outside the domestic sphere in liminal areas closer to the fairy realm, may be placed in the barn, at the edge of the woods, or in the sea. These liminal offerings are usually given to specific beings or for specific purposes. Liminal offerings often consist of household provisions like bread, but certain kinds of fairies may require specific food items. Beverages are offered in a bowl or hollowed stone or are poured on the earth, since “all liquids spilled on the ground are supposed to go to their [the fairies’] use” (W. G. Stewart 124). In some cases, it is believed that the fairies eat the food itself, but in other cases it is thought that they “extract the spiritual essence from the food offered to them, leaving behind the grosser elements.” For that reason, food that has been put out for the fairies “is not allowed to be eaten . . . by man or beast, not even by pigs. Such food is said to have no real substance left in it. . . “ (Evans-Wentz 44). Food that has had its essence consumed by fairies may even make humans and animals ill (Evans-Wentz 164).

It is often important that offerings not be made obviously. Fairies are “shocked at anything approaching to the name of a bribe or douceur, yet . . . allow [their] scruples to be overcome if the thing be done in a genteel, delicate, and secret way” (Keightley 358). Though Keightley indicates that some types of food and drink were inappropriate as offerings, it is more important here to note the results of the way the food is given:

. . . offer Brownie a piece of bread, a cup of drink, or a new coat and hood, and he flouted at it, and perhaps, in his huff, quitted the place forever; but leave a nice bowl of cream, and some fresh honeycomb, in a snug private corner, and they soon disappeared, though Brownie, it was to be supposed, never knew anything of them. (Keightley 358)

In the one case the item is obviously offered, and in the other it is quietly left. Drawing attention to the offering can be seen as bragging on the part of the offerer, and gives it the connotation of charity rather than hospitality. Briggs writes about how, in the case of brownies, “the housewife was careful not to offer the tidbit to the brownie, only to leave it in his reach. Any offer of reward for its services drove the brownie away; it seemed to be an absolute TABOO” (Dictionary 46, caps in original). There are also indications in other stories that leaving an obvious offering, especially of clothing, constitutes payment, after which the employment of the fairy is at an end, and it departs.

I've decided to make my thesis available as an ebook, but who knows when I'll get to actually formatting and posting it. At least I have located rtf files of all the chapters, so I know I can actually do it.