The making of a Wizard (or is that "wizzard"?)

Thank you! He's been a blast to research and to make, and it's even more fun because I'm making him for Raven. Weeeee!!!

He's beyond awesome!  

Here he is on his first adventure.

THE ADVENTURE OF THE GIANT POTATO.


I do love potatoes.  This looks like a safe place for a walk.


Um... are potatoes supposed to be that big?  And have that many eyes?


Run away!  Run away!

I love it so much!!! He looks so dramatic and adventurous in this picture



And so cowardly in this one



It's just perfect!!!

I just realized I never posted pictures of the extra tidbits I sent with Rincewind to surprise Raven. Huge thanks to Pearl for helping me with ideas and quotes from the book to make them as accurate as possible!

Having watched the movie, I couldn't resist making a tiny Octavo book. And, of course, I had to bind it in the medieval way!

How do we make a tiny bookbinding frame? Hold down the twine with sewing scissors and hold up the top of the twine with my childhood wire basket

Sewing the tiny signatures! The twine wasn't tight enough, so we use needle-nosed pliers to hold down scissors!

A book is made up of stacks of folded papers that are nestled inside one another (called a "signature") and then those signatures are sewn to one another. In many medieval tomes, they sew each page to a cord, and then the cord is used to help attach the cover to the interior of the book. It's these cords that give books their distinct ridges on the spine!

Another way to help attach the cover is by the use of endpapers. I used pretty marbled paper I'd made with my kids a few years back. It just happened to have a lot of purples and greens. I sewed my little endpapers on, so they'd be more secure than just glued endpapers

Sewing on the marbled end papers! These will get glued to the leather-bound cover

I then mixed gelatin with water to make a cheap and easy hide glue. And applied that to the spine. Then I made the cover pieces. Tradtionally, these were made out of wood. But since this is such a tiny book, I just used my hide glue to glue layers of cardstock and marbled paper to make a thick-but-not-too-thick cover board.

Clamping the bound book so I can apply hide glue (aka strong gelatin) to the binding

I glued layers of cardstock (finished with a layer of marbled paper) for the hard cover, and then sewed the twine through it to attach the cover

The book now has a cover! But we need to cover that cover with leather!

I had this lovely purple leather. But it was too thick! Time to skyve it thinner!

I wanted to give the tome some sort of cover design. Woodburning might have worked, but I wanted to try embroidery. Embroidering an octagram is NOT easy. It took so many tries!

The finished tiny tome!

I love the little marbled endpapers!

I just love how the cords give the spine such a cool appearance!

I couldn't stop there! I wanted to try my hands at making a fractal chaos butterfly. Apparently, Rincewind has some devestating encounters with this fellow in later books. I tried first making it out of felt...I quickly abandoned that. Then I realized I had this lovely yellow deerskin from a deer my grandparents had hunted some 40+ years ago. It felt good to put it to use for a gift for a friend! I drew on the fractal designs and the woodburned them. They're not terribly fractal....but I'm not good at fractals and woodburning at such a tiny scale is hard. But, I still think it's pretty cute. And, it's thick and stiff enough to perch places!

Chaos butterfly and Octavo tome.

A dangerous combo!

Maybe you shouldn't read that book, Rincewind

apparently the chaos butterfly has made him be engulfed by moss!

EEEEEP!!! Look at the amazing, beautiful surprise that came in the mail today!!! Raven painted me Rincewind with her chicken, Henny Penny. It is so cute!! And the purple of his robe is my absolute favorite shade of purple. EEEEP!!!

Look who showed up in drawing class.



We were asked to bring in some things we wanted to draw.  He snuck in the bag.

I think it was unconscious that I brought the picture box and him (they go together in the story).  I wonder if there is some way to play with perspective and set up a painting?  He's small so if I put him towards the back and the camera near the front like it fell over... I can't figure out how that would look but if I can, I want to paint it.

Should there be some sort of angry little elf-guy inside the camera, too? That might be even trickier to draw!

I love that he got to go on a journey with you. Hopefully it was a much safer journey than most of the ones he went on in his stories!