Christmas Angels

Merry Christmas! My internet hasn't been working at home lately, so I haven't blogged as much as I'd like. But I wanted to share this picture of my story-book angel with her real-life inspiration, plus two more "twin" angels--I guess they are triplets now--that I bought on eBay because my sister has the one that belonged to our grandparents (We spent Christmas together this year, so the angels did, too). They do all have their own names, of course. (Faith, Charity, and Mercy, since the book angel is Hope!) Faith was the original angel who needed a name--a previous post with a picture of her and the book she inspired can be found here.  Paper dolls of Hope are here and here, and a printable Nativity stable to go with them is here. Merry Christmas again!

 

Temple of Fancy Paper Dolls--Ellen, or the Naughty Girl Reclaimed

 

Here is another of the early paper dolls originally sold by S & J Fuller at the Temple of Fancy art supply store in London. Ellen, or the Naughty Girl Reclaimed was published in 1811 and is said to have been a favorite of Queen Victoria when she was a little girl. Like Little Fanny and Little Henry, which I blogged about here, Ellen's head is separate from her body and can be slotted into a paper pocket in the top of each of her outfits. I have constructed her in the same way as the others, gluing her onto paperboard for sturdiness. Ellen's story is, like Fanny's and Henry's, very much a product of its time. Ellen, the "naughty girl," refuses to do as she is told, eventually going through enough hardship as a result that she learns her lesson and reforms.  I especially enjoy that one of Ellen's outfits is shown in two states, before and after she falls into a muddy ditch. 

The hat from that particular outfit looks strikingly like Little Fanny's fancy hat, so I'm throwing in a picture of Ellen and Fanny wearing their matching hats. The outfits are not as similar; I'm not sure if that's a result of changing fashions or just Fanny wearing her winter coat and muff in the wrong season, as she does in her story. Ellen also has a red cloak and basket of eggs ensemble that looks a lot like two of Fanny's market outfits. It would be easy to confuse some of these pieces.

Ellen also comes with a dunce cap and a beggar's outfit. I'm not sure why the beggar's outfits were so popular for these dolls, but Little Fanny and Little Henry have them too. They can all stand around looking disreputable together while they wait to be changed into nicer clothing. 

Download PDF files of Ellen and her outfits here and here.  

Bartrug's Mother Goose Rhymes--Coloring Books

 

Some time ago I was looking for old nursery rhyme books on the Library of Congress website, and I ran across a quite interesting one by Carey Milton Bartrug. Mother Goose Safety Rhymes was published in 1940, but the Library of Congress lists it as being in the public domain because the copyright was never renewed. I looked up the author's obituary, and it seems that the copyright was not renewed because Carey Milton Bartrug died in 1952, before the time came to renew it. The Library of Congress people checked for copyright renewal in 2019, but since the beginning of 2023 the author's 1952 death date also qualifies his writing as public domain (though the pictures by Marjorie Peters may still be dependent on the lack of copyright renewal, since there are many women with that name and I have not been able to identify the correct one). His obituary and a picture of his headstone can be found here on the Find a Grave website. He sounds like exactly the sort of person to write nursery rhymes about safety; he was superintendent of schools in Iowa Falls from 1928 until 1945, and then he ran an insurance agency. Besides the nursery rhyme book, he wrote an entire series of workbooks about a character called Safety Sam. 

I've chosen a relatively innocuous page from Mother Goose Safety Rhymes to show here; Old Mother Hubbard falls off a chair while getting a bone for her dog, and the helpful moral is given to "Always beware when standing on a chair." Besides standing on chairs, children who read the book are warned against swimming alone, playing with matches, touching loose wires, riding on bicycle handlebars, etc. Some of the pages are scarier than others. Anyway, it tickled my fancy because it's so very... blunt. Me being me, I jumped down a research rabbit hole and discovered that Bartrug and Peters made two more nursery rhyme books, one about health and the other about etiquette. Since the illustrations were done in black and white, I thought it would be fun to turn them into coloring books for my kids. 

My Mother Goose Safety Rhymes Coloring Book, My Mother Goose Health Rhymes Coloring Book, and My Mother Goose Etiquette Rhymes Coloring Book (which are all available on Amazon if you click on the links) are formatted with a blank back to each picture. Not only does that prevent the pages from showing through each other, it allows the pictures to be creatively extended by those who are coloring with crayon or colored pencil. Here is an example page from My Mother Goose Safety Rhymes Coloring Book that has been colored by my son. Little Tee Wee has carelessly put himself in danger by going out alone in a small boat and tipping it over, and my four-year-old decided to increase the danger by asking me to draw a shark on the facing blank page. This was a fun, relaxing little project. 

How to View Stereo Cards in 3D

A friend asked me to explain on my blog how I view all these 3D pictures, so here is a post about that. First, here's a picture of my real, old-fashioned stereoscope. This particular one is marked on the bottom that it's a "Saturn" Scope, with patent dates of October 15, 1895 and February 1, 1896. It's a version of the Holmes stereoscope, which was invented in 1861 by Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. and deliberately not patented. Mine is missing a little piece of wood at the end of the part that divides the two views, so I've attached a bit of paperboard so each eye doesn't see the edge of the opposite view. Paper stereograph cards--the one shown here is the original of the last recolor I blogged about--sit in a holder that slides backward and forward to focus. Unfortunately it's easy to slide it all the way off, and therefore a lot of stereoscopes end up for sale without it. I have a second stereoscope that came in an eBay lot with this one, but it's missing both the card holder and the handle. I haven't yet tried to restore that one, beyond popping the glass lenses back in after they got knocked out during shipping. 

Anyway, the general idea is that if you have two pictures taken from about as far apart as the distance between our eyes, you can show each picture to the correct eye and your brain will register the combination as a 3D object instead of a flat one. The first stereoscope, designed by Charles Wheaton in 1838, was a complicated affair involving mirrors and hand-drawn images. With the development of photography and the invention of the cheaper Holmes stereoscope, though, the technique became an extremely popular form of home entertainment. So many paper stereo cards were produced that a large number survived and are still available today. Prices vary wildly, and if you want something specific you might be in for a long search, but as antiques go they're quite accessible.

 

It's not always convenient to get out a fragile, antique device, and the stereoscope needs good lighting. So more often I use this handy little modern gadget to view digital copies on my smartphone. Any headset compatible with the unfortunately discontinued Google Cardboard works, but I prefer this minimalist version I got on Amazon for $6.99. Here's a link to it; it's not an affiliate link or anything, I just haven't found anything cheaper or more effective. The product description doesn't make a lot of sense, but judging from the reviews I'm not the only one who likes it for viewing stereographs. To use it, just load the picture on a phone in landscape mode (turn on auto rotate) and clip the viewer right on the line between the two sides. Hold it by the phone and not by the viewer so as not to knock it out of alignment, and look into the lenses as if they were a pair of binoculars. Since this model has open sides, it's easy to swipe from one picture to the next. You can also zoom in and out to focus if necessary. And it folds up to about the size of your palm, so it's portable, too. I've had more than enough fun out of mine to justify the price, so I definitely recommend getting one of your own. 

 

Stereo Card Recolor--Simply to Thy Cross I Cling (1900)

 

I found this lovely stereograph card on eBay a while ago, and I colored it in Photoshop but didn't post it right away because it was so tricky to sort out the boundary between the painted backdrop and the girl's hair. Finally I decided to check it over it one more time and then go ahead and share, so here it is. I really like this card and have not seen it anywhere else.

This stereograph has a strong resemblance to one I blogged about earlier, here, ultimately based on a painting by Johannes Adam Simon Oertel. It seems to have been a popular design to copy; several other companies put their own spin on it. I've collected a few of them and find it fascinating just how much variety there is even when they're clearly copying each other. This particular version was published in 1900 by Griffith & Griffith. Since it's a photo and not a painting, the 3D effect is much more convincing than in the 1896 card. The cross is not made of rock--it appears to be cloth-draped wood--but the title is still a line from the song "Rock of Ages." The girl is younger than in many other portrayals; since she's understood to be a personification of Christian faith, I suppose that makes this one childlike Faith.

A Apple Pie: An Active Alphabet--Pocket Size

 

I thought A Apple Pie: An Active Alphabet would make a cute mini book, so this summer I formatted a 4" by 6" pocket size version. It's a lot more portable than the original 8.5" by 11" book. The extra stuff in the back that I excluded from the ebook because of unreadably small print was also left out of the pocket size version, though, so you'll have to get the full-size book if you want a historical tour of the A Apple Pie nursery rhyme. The more streamlined mini book still has the same information in the back about Kate Greenaway, about me, and about the nursery rhyme, just without the example pages from other old books. Unfortunately the black-and-white picture of Kate Greenaway's dog also didn't fit, but that meant I could include the photo of Kate herself in its original sepia instead of having to make it grayscale to match. And I think she looks more natural and friendly in sepia. Anyway, I am quite pleased with how the mini book turned out. Find it on Amazon here. 

This size of small book makes a perfect prop for 18" American Girl and similar dolls, so I got out my Kirsten doll to take some size comparison photos. My son was pretty goofy about having to sit next to her, but I wanted to show how well the pocket size book fits Kirsten compared to how the original book fits a real child. It's a fun option to have available.

Temple of Fancy Paper Dolls--Little Fanny and Little Henry

 

Little Fanny, published in 1810, is known as the first mass-produced paper doll. I believe that means she was the first printed and sold as a children's toy; older paper figures with changeable outfits are said to have been hand painted for adults. Anyhow, Little Fanny was sold by S. & J. Fuller at a London art supplies store called the Temple of Fancy. The Princeton University Library has posted an old advertisement here with a picture of the inside of the store. 

Bryn Mawr College has shared a nice, printable version of Little Fanny, with detailed instructions about how to put her together, here. I used that as a base and made a few slight fixes, most notably replacing the arm on Fanny's doll. Her companion Little Henry needed a bit more help--besides some unfortunate damage to Henry's sword and other projecting bits, Bryn Mawr's copy only had two of his six hats. I went to some trouble to restore these dolls by finding the missing parts from other sources, so I'm making my versions available as well. 

I have them printed on normal paper and glued onto paperboard I grabbed out of my family's recycling bin, but you can print them on cardstock if you prefer. If you use cut-up packaging like I did, you'll want to glue the dolls onto what was the inside of the box; it holds glue better than the outside and won't show through if you add spray gloss. Below is a picture of the back of my dolls. I labeled each piece with the doll's name and both the publication year and the year I constructed these particular copies. I used the inside of an empty wrapping paper tube as backing paper to make pockets to hold the heads on, but any thick paper should work fine. I lined the backs of the heads with it too, mostly because the printed paperboard isn't easy to write on. The spray gloss I used on the front made a few spots on the paper, but that doesn't matter because the back is already pretty funny-looking. 

I also made little paperboard stands by cutting three identical rectangles, folding two in half, and then gluing the folded pieces on top of the flat one and trimming the stand to the desired height. If you want stands, make sure to put glue only on the bottom piece. To use the stand, just slide a doll in between the unglued bits that stick up in the center.

I'm enjoying this style of paper doll more than I expected to--the detachable heads are a little weird at first glance, but they stay in place more firmly than tabbed paper doll clothing. The danger, of course, is that if you lose the head there's not much point playing with the outfits on their own. These pages have two heads included for each doll, in case one gets lost.

These characters also had rhyming storybooks to accompany them; you can read The History of Little Fanny on the Internet Archive here and The History and Adventures of Little Henry here. The stories are... well, they're very 1810. To a modern eye they are quite strange. It's an interesting bit of history, though.

I made PDF files of these that might be easier to print. Download Little Fanny here and Little Henry here. 

Stereo Photos--Orange Daylily

 

I took these photos several months ago, but I just found them on my phone and put them together in 3D. I was very pleased at how well they turned out, too, especially since it was my kids' favorite flower that my husband accidentally cut down with a weed eater not long after I photographed it. They were all happy to see that I managed to save these pictures of it.

Stereo Photo--Venus Flytrap

My family bought a little Venus flytrap plant at Sprout's this week! My kids named it Speed Eater Buzz, or Buzz for short. Obviously I couldn't resist making a 3D picture of it, and that turned out pretty well, so I decided to share it. To view it in 3D, load this picture in landscape mode on a smartphone and put the phone in any device that would work with Google Cardboard (I do miss Google Cardboard). We're all enjoying our new "pet," though I have to dissuade the kids from watering it too frequently. It's even caught a couple of flies by now. 

A Apple Pie: An Active Alphabet--Kindle EBook

 

Happy Pi Day! I decided it was the perfect day to format A Apple Pie: An Active Alphabet as a Kindle eBook, so here it is. An earlier blog post describing this book is here. I removed the selection of historical examples from the back of the eBook version--most of the text in those would have been too small to read--so the paperback is a better choice for those who are really interested in the historical background. But the eBook is a fun, less expensive option for those who want to check out the combination of Kate Greenaway's classic illustrations and my own quirky accompanying rhymes. 

Realistic Heart Valentine--Hot Air Balloon

 

I saw an old valentine on the New York Public Library Digital Collections web site (find the original here) and just couldn't resist adding an anatomical heart. It wasn't available in as high a resolution as I would have liked, but if anyone wants to print a few copies of my altered version, here is a sheet of four. You can also find a similar valentine I made in 2020 here. 

A Apple Pie: An Active Alphabet

The idea for my new book A Apple Pie: An Active Alphabet started out with a search for public domain pictures of pie. I was making the illustrations for Baby Ballads: A Family Treasury and needed pies for two of them, so I was happy to find a whole book about pie to choose a picture from. I eventually picked the illustration for the letter P to alter for my project--and in the process I fell in love with Kate Greenaway's sweet little alphabet book. It really bothered me that it was missing a page for the letter I, however, and that it ended with a single page for the last six letters. (See Kate Greenaway's original book on the Library of Congress web site here or on the Project Gutenberg web site here.) I showed it to my son, and those things bothered him, too--every letter certainly deserves to have its own page in an alphabet book. Then I realized that the book's legal status of being in the public domain meant I could make my own version and fix it up however I wanted!

In the end I used Photoshop to create eight new illustrations, seven for the letters that didn't already have their own plus a facing page to go with the original ending. I wanted the new pictures to blend in with the old ones, so I took all the people for them from other books illustrated by Kate Greenaway. Then I decided it really needed a little poetry to go with it, so I wrote twenty-seven rhyming couplets to put under the illustrations. Every letter is used as many times as reasonably possible on its own page and highlighted in red. Of course I needed to read up on Kate Greenaway so I could put together an about-the-author page, and then I went very far down the rabbit hole researching the nursery rhyme itself. It turns out that it's at least as old as 1671 and has a wide range of variations, so I thought it would be fun to select some interesting examples and add a historical tour of the apple pie alphabet. It all took me quite a bit longer than I expected, but I really like the results. Find it on Amazon here.

I love the public domain! It's great that it's perfectly legal to reuse an old page like this one to make new things like the two below, without having to ask anyone for permission. The baby jumping out of the pie on the page from Baby Ballads was originally found in a different picture by Kate Greenaway, and the poetry on both pages is my own.