And Now, For Something A Little Darker...

Hello Dear Friends!
Anyone who is a devoted friend of The Tearoom knows that I vacillate between the sweet and the slightly sinister!  I love them equally, so after some of my sweeter recent posts, my darker side has requested equal time.

Another of my favorite contemporary illustrators is the talented and visionary Camille Rose Garcia.  I have been in love with her work since her singularly gorgeous re-interpretation of "Alice in Wonderland".  If you haven't seen it, I highly recommend it!

I follow her work on Twitter and Instagram and was super excited to learn that she had a fun challenge, involving a printable mini-book, available as a download on her Big Cartel site!

The book is called "The Cabinet of Dr. DeeKay - The Hospital", the first in a series of three and the download comes with super-helpful and complete instructions on printing, cutting and assembling your booklet.  Then, the fun part of coloring her illustrations begins!!

(As always, please click on the images in order

to see them larger.)

I started the project by printing the pages on very nice resumé paper by Crane, which is a much better use for resumé paper, if you ask me!

After carefully cutting out the pages, I then started the cover by adding some Black Diamond Stickles on the lettering, as well as just a teeny bit of what I am calling "glitter-gore" on the roots of the tooth in shades of bright and dark red!  I also shaded the edges of the tooth.  She had recommended that we staple our books together, but I wanted something a bit different.

I punched holes in the spine of the cover and each of the pages and tied the book together with black and white twisted twine.  I love the way it looks!

I also made endpapers for the book out of black satin book cloth that I had stashed away.

Please forgive the blurriness of this picture, but it's the best way to show the colors that glimmer through the black of the Stickles.  I accented all of the pages in it for lots of dark glittery-ness!!

Also, I tinted the pictures in one of my favorite ways to work, using cotton swabs dipped in stamp-pad ink!  At a former job, I taught a class in rubberstamping and developed a new curriculum for the class, one which incorporated many altered book techniques.  Since that time, I have enjoyed using this technique on many projects.  It's not always the most precise, but sometimes I enjoy the freedom of it.

Here is an illustration of Dr. DeeKay, following his rather mad operation.  As you can see, I added more touches of glitter-gore to to his face, for just a touch more menace!

Here's a close-up of that picture so you can see the effects of the glitter more easily!  A bit of smudgy purple around his eyes just makes him a little bit scarier!!

This was a fun project!

And considering the time I spent in the hospital this summer, at least somewhat cathartic, as well.

Keep watching for the long-awaited announcement regarding the opening of Le Musée du Divan Rouge, coming very soon...!