The Twelve Magic Changelings Paper Dolls--Two Bonus Dolls

These two paper dolls are marked as copyrighted in 1906 by the Frederick A. Stokes Company, which I don't know much about except that it published the 12 Magic Changelings book that I posted the paper dolls from a while back. I found these two here, from the New York Public Library Digital Collections. They match the other twelve in style, so I wonder if they were made at the same time and not chosen for the book, or whether there was another book, or what. There wasn't a lot of context associated with them besides the year and the publisher. Anyhow, I have made them printable by removing the aged paper background (to use less ink) and brightening them up a little. I also repaired a nick in the hare's ear and a scratch on the turtle's face. So, they've been cleaned up very slightly and sized to go onto standard paper but not really altered otherwise. Instructions on how to put them together after printing are on my earlier blog post here.

Valentine's Day Twins Paper Dolls

I've always enjoyed the twin paper dolls by Jessie Louise Taylor--they're so sweet and lively, and they have both front and back sides (I do love double-sided paper dolls). For Valentine's Day this year I thought it would be fun to make my own version of one of the sets, so here are the French Twins in a new Valentine's Day variation to be printed out and played with. I have recolored nearly everything and added some small details to fit the Valentine's Day theme, as well as removing the background so it uses less ink to print. The original version was published in the Ladies' Home Journal in March 1922.

Edit: I'm sorry these print out so small--the base file I had at the time was not the best. I have better ones now and might eventually redo these.

Samuel Stories

And again I neglect the blog. My only excuse is that, well, I have kids. Two of them now, and one is a baby that wakes me up every two hours all night, so blogging hasn't been much of a priority. The baby is actually sitting on my lap right now and forcing me to reach around him and type with one hand. But I thought it would be nice to share a project I've recently finished.

The picture is of my older son (I have his permission to post it) with a proof copy of the book he wrote that is finally formatted and printed. We worked on it together for a little over two years. He was three years old when I asked him offhand if he wanted to write a book, too, and he enthusiastically said yes and immediately started telling me stories. So I took dictation and helped him edit the result, which is now a cute little paperback volume containing 18 stories he wrote at the ages of three and four. He has chosen the first story in the book to share on this blog post. 

Goldilocks and the Snake

Once upon a time there was an old snake named Big Bye-Bye, and a frog named Baby Bye-Bye, and a turtle named Chuck.

The snake and the frog and the turtle walked all the way to a vacation, and a girl named Goldilocks ate the snake’s soup.

And the snake said, “Oh, my! There must be a girl in my room!”

And Goldilocks took the frog’s soup.

And the frog said, “Chooga, chooga! Help me!”

Then Goldilocks ate the turtle’s soup.

And the turtle said, “Help! Help! Find my soup!” 

But the soup was gone.

The End

The stories were originally planned to be illustrated with his own crayon drawings, but the drawings did not scan very well and he did not like them. So we got creative with a mix of the badly-scanned crayon drawings (this one has had the colors inverted) and some public domain images that my son picked out from various appropriate web sites. Then we eventually figured out that he could draw pictures on my android tablet and not have to worry about scanning them, so the stories from the second year are illustrated with those. 

I really like the way the whole thing turned out, and so does my son. The main objective was to give out copies to all the relatives as Christmas presents, but we've also made it available on Amazon for the sake of convenience (and so that anyone who wants to can get a copy, because it's really a lot of fun). You can find it here.