Baby Ballads: A Family Treasury

Baby Ballads: A Family Treasury is now available on Amazon! The link is here.

This was quite an interesting project, since so many people were involved. It took a bit of extra effort to make sure everyone liked the pictures I put next to their songs in the book, but I think it was worth it. A book for babies must have interesting pictures! I found a lot of great public domain images from old Mother Goose books and greeting cards and advertisements and such, but of course most of them needed some work to make them fit our songs and look pretty on the pages together (and to remove irrelevant text advertising handkerchief soap or stating a copyright date of 1890). I spent a lot of time working on the pictures. I wasn't able to include musical scores, which is why I have listed the book as poetry, but I did put in a note about it if I know a song fits the tune of "Clementine" or "London Bridge" or another familiar song.

Essentially Baby Ballads: A Family Treasury is a collection of as many songs and games for babies made up by my family as we can remember. In the end we came up with 40 items, including lullabies, silly songs, and educational songs and games. Lots of them are mine, but a fair number were submitted by other relatives. I also added 10 blank pages at the end to write in songs that don't exist yet or that we use a lot but didn't make up (or for others to add their own family's songs). It's a small book, but it's very personal. The oldest song in the collection was made up for me by my grandma who died when I was little; I don't believe she ever wrote it down, but she sang it often enough that my mom and I both remembered it. Putting it into the book means that my children will also remember. 

Realistic Heart Valentine

I've removed the original picture from the center of this old-timey valentine and replaced it with an anatomical heart, just because I thought it was funny. Here's a sheet with nine copies of it, in case anybody else wants to print out a few. Happy Valentine's Day!

St. Patrick's Day Twins Paper Dolls

Here's another recolor of the Twins Around the World paper dolls--this time it's The Irish Twins, of course, because it's St. Patrick's Day! The original version of these was from the September 1922 Ladies' Home Journal. I thought it would be fun to make them into redheads, since the originals had black hair. But the red hair clashed with the red slip and shawl, so I made those green. And then I recolored the pig, too, just because I could, and added a few other details to fit the theme--I'm quite pleased that the harp stands up properly, since that didn't exist on the original. I have better files to work from than I did last month, so these should print out a lot better than the Valentine's Day ones did. I'll have to redo the Valentine's ones sometime when I get a chance. Anyhow, happy St. Patrick's Day! Have fun printing these and cutting them out. 

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.

Guardian Angel Costume for Lammily Doll

I'm a couple of days behind on NaNoWriMo at the moment (Don't worry! I'll catch up soon!), but I wanted to show this off anyway. I won a contest on Facebook with this picture of my Lammily doll. Now, making doll costumes instead of writing can be placed firmly in the category of procrastination, but I had a fun idea and decided to carry it out anyway. I made everything except the sword (a letter opener my husband bought years ago when he studied abroad in Spain) and the two dolls (Lammily herself and a Tyco Quints doll from somewhere around 1990).  The sash is a bit of ribbon from a present I was given; when I saw it I immediately thought of making doll clothes. :p  The dress was made out of an old bit of cloth I had in a drawer (dare I admit that it was originally a pair of underwear?), and the wings were made from some crafting wire and a sparkly garland I picked up at the dollar store. They had feathers every time I looked at their craft aisle until the time I was actually looking for feathers, of course, so I ended up having to make do with something else. It turned out all right in that I didn't have to worry about pointing feathers the right way, but the garland did need a lot of trimming and made a terrible mess! The tiara I made out of some more wire and some beads from a broken necklace (gold-painted plastic) and others that were left over from making my wedding jewelry a few years ago (clear glass).  Oh, and the baby is wrapped in some other fancy ribbon I had not really used for anything yet. I don't have a sewing machine, so the stitching is minimal and a bit rough, but the contest was for dressing up and photographing a Lammily doll, not for sewing quality. I won a certificate and two entries in a drawing, and I guess I also got a cool picture and something to blog about (I have been sadly neglecting my blog).

The general idea is that she's supposed to look like those angel statuettes that are holding a baby, so I guess she is a guardian angel. I've never seen one with both a baby and a sword, though! It took a lot of work to get a decent picture, because any time there was enough light to show the doll's face properly all the glittery stuff on the wings reflected and made streaks and flashes of light in my photo.  Posing the doll was fun, though. I am rather fond of my Lammily doll (I call her Hannah, because Lammily is the name of the brand, not the doll). If you don't know what a Lammily is, here is a link to the official site. Essentially she is a fashion doll with realistic proportions. I played with Barbie a lot when I was a kid, but I would have loved it if I'd been able to get a doll that was shaped a little more like me, so when they came out with Lammily I had to get one even though I was already an adult. Oh, and there are a couple of paper dolls to print out on the blog section of the web site, too. I like paper dolls, and the Lammily ones are cute. 

I really should go back to writing my NaNoWriMo novel now. Happy Thanksgiving a day late!