'Jungle Book' slip case

I love books.  I also love book illustration, and over the years have collected quite a few illustrated books.  These are often children's books, though not always, but they're beautiful objects whoever their intended audience.

I've made a few slip cases - a cover to protect a book that it can slide in and out of, rather than something attached to the book itself - for books for myself and others in the past, but I haven't made one in ages.  Time to change that!

I'm going to make a slip case for The Jungle Book, illustrated by one of my favourite illustration artists, Nicola Bayley. As usual for a slip case, I want something that reflects the book it's for, and in this case I'm basing the design on the cover art.

Here's the front of the book:

(it's a bit greener than that in reality)

And the back:

It's not all that big (about 20cm by 24cm, or 8" x 9.5"), so there's not really room to get a great deal of detail on.  As such, I've taken the building (temple? palace?) from the front and Mowgli sitting under a palm tree from the back, and added them together:

I don't know about you, but that says 'goldwork' to me!

Return of the Bookshelf Project

More of my bookshelves have appeared online!  Book blogger Peter Sandico is collecting pictures of people's bookshelves from around the world, and I sent him a picture of the books in my living room.  He wrote a very nice post about them in January.

More recently, he sent out a call for more pictures, so I sent photos of yet more bookshelves, including the sewing and art books in my workroom.

He's now written another very nice post about them, so if you want a glimpse into my home, take a look!

And yes, I do have a lot of books...

The Bookshelf Project

A quick bonus post: a photo of the bookshelves in my living room is on Peter Sandico's terrific Kyusi Reader blog.

Spot the embroideries!