The BEST children's books ever!

This is a family of Barba-creatures. The big and pink one is Barbapapa and the black one is Barbamama. Above the Barbaparents watch their kids been born after they had planted them in the ground earlier. Barbabooks are created by French guys Annette Tison and Talus Taylor. They were defianetly among the best things of my childhood. These colourfull lumps of creatures can change their shape to anything, like you can see from the picture below.

As a kid I was obsessed with witches. I wanted to be one. My ultimate hero was Mimosa the young witch created by one of my favourite illustrators and authors Camilla Mickwitz. This Finnish artist also made some of the most memorable animations of my childhood. As all the best books I know, don't really exsist in England I asked my poor mum to scan some of the pictures from them and send them to me. So below are ome good bits from Mimosa books.




This bathing beauty is the wild child Mimosa her self


Here all the adult witches celebrate with Mimosa.


These guys are not witches but wizards, obviously.

And finally, probably the best illustrator I know, Mauri Kunnas. Me and my sister have almost all of his books and there are plenty of them. This Finnish guy doesn't tell fairytales but makes very detailed informational books but his characters are animals instead of humans. His earliest and maybe most famous books tell how people lived in Finland over 100 years ago. The twist is that the family of characters are all dogs. These books made me very interested in history. My favourite one of his books must be The Big Space Book which happens in the future but all the facts about our universe are true. Needles to say that it made me super interested in everything to do with solar system etc. Mum couldn't find that book though. I think my sis must have taken it. So below are few pages from a book that tells what happens during the night! Brilliant. These books are defianetly the most influential children's books in Finland. All the kids of my generation and generations after me love them!

Free doodle book anyone?

The presentation is everything! Above are all essential equipments for handing out kits at the tube station!


I was also wearing matching colours, ofcourse. I chose my local tube station Finbury Park for the grand moment. It is a relatively busy station with 2 tube lines and National Rail as well. I did't want to go to any of the famous central stations as they are full of tourists. My kit was ment for Londoners who use tube daily.






Kits went very quickly and people seemed pleased. One man asked to have an extra one for his other kid as well and one woman came back to thank me! It was brilliant! I am sad they are gone but pleased that people really seemed to like them. I saw several smily faces and therefore mission accomplished.

60 kits soon to be gone

This morning I still had a big bunch of freshly made kits in my hand...I have to admit that I started to feel bit precious about them but a plan is a plan. I made them to be handed out so that's what was going to happen to them!




This is the whole kit: sleeve, doodle book and pencil

Boredom Survival Kit for Tube Travelling

This is it! TADAAA!!! Above is the front of the sleeve and below the back.



And these are the pages of the actual doodle book which is found inside every sleeve among a pencil.










Guess I need to explain myself a bit. Our latest project was called Publish. We needed to create a publication with minimum amount of copies being ten. I only did 60....but that was my whole point really. I wanted to do something to cheer people up. People in this big city seem very busy and often look bit miserable or stressed out. Especially commuters on public transport, they don't look enjoying their journeys and I'm not blaming them. They squeeze into rush hour tubes every day to get to work and back. My aim was to create something positively unexpected for their everyday journey. If I managed to get a smile on someones face I succeeded!
So I needed to make as many copies as possible and therefore could not do complicated book bindings etc. My doodle kit was to be handed out as a freebie just like daily newspapers such as Evening Standard. And as I am just a student, not a millionaire my methods needed to be cost effective as well. Therefore I decided to make a more substantial sleeve for my booklet and print that with colours on thicker paper. The actual booklet was photocopied. I wanted to copy it on cheaper paper like newsprint or sugar paper but realised soon that none of the photocopiers wanted to use any other than their paper. It was therefore cheaper to make it on nicer paper.I also included a pencil into each kit. Pencils were my cheapest investment though...only 3 pounds for all of them! What would we do without pound shops!

idiotic working methods=making of the kit

This is my hand doing colour separation...by hand...not computer which would have been so much more advanced way of working.



So this is it: colour separation for the cover of my kit. In the middle is the original art work.


I used Risograph printing machine for the cover sleeves. It is such a cool machine! Our tutors managed to get one to our department and my artwork was first one to be printed! Risograph is a bit like screen printing machine. Only 1 colour at time gets printed and obviously each colour needs its own artwork. This is why I was doing colour separation earlier. These are all 60 covers fresh from Risograph and before I cutted them to right shape(by hand) and clued together(by hand).


Each of my kits included a pencil. I got very cheap pencils from a pound shop but they all needed sharpening. Lee helped me with my 60 pencils. Both of our hands are full of blisters now.



And finally, these are all my Boredom Survival Kits for Tube Travelling!

More of the snow story...

I did these new versions for my snow story already on Christmas break. My plan was to redo them all but I chose very laborous and slow working methods like cutting every single letter out from paper seperately. So before new term I managed to do 3. I do like these versions better...