Evacuation Plan by the Gingerbread Man

Here's a Monday morning, after the holiday, funny I discovered over the weekend on Failblog. The line is slightly different from the source material--no "and" was needed--but the source material is obviously The Gingerbread Man. It's really bad advice for an evacuation plan, of course, but entertaining all the same. Come to think of it, it didn't work for The Gingerbread Man either, so consider it a cautionary tale when planning an escape.

Princess and the Pea Craft

After digging through my files, I rediscovered this craft that I regularly used for Bedtime themed storytimes when I was working as a children's librarian. This was always a favorite with kids and parents, especially after hearing the tale by Hans Christian Andersen. With summer here and so many children out of school, I thought I'd clean it up a little and create a new pattern to share here.

When I used this craft with large groups, we used wallpaper scraps to create the mattresses as you can see in the completed image above which was made for me by one of the girls who regularly attended my storytimes.

For the SurLaLune version of the pattern, I've created some mattresses out of clip art patterns that can be colored. The bottom blank is the base of the bed or can be used as a pattern for cutting mattresses out of different paper. Of course, the bedposts and base also are wonderful when made out of brown construction paper. The possibilities for adaptation are endless, but if all you have is a printer and some white paper, that's all you need to create this craft. Don't forget to draw a pea or paste a split pea below the lowest mattress. Enjoy!



I've made the craft available in full size in three different file formats:

Princess and the Pea JPG

Princess and the Pea GIF

Princess and the Pea PNG

Printing Tips: If you are on a PC, right click over the image to get a menu and save it to your computer. Then use a photo editor program to print it without any clipping of the image. Printing it from the internet browser will most likely cause clipping unless you adjust your printer settings to print to size. Or you can copy and paste the image to a word processing program such as Word and then adjust margins to avoid clipping before printing.

This is a smaller version of the pattern for illustration purposes only. Use the links above to get bigger images.

AbeBooks: Most Expensive Book List 2008

Here's another item I'm clearing from my archives as you can guess from the date! This past January AbeBooks shared a list of AbeBooks' Most Expensive Sales in 2008.

For SurLaLune, #8 was the most interesting, a copy of Grimms Fairy Tales by Jakob & Wilhelm Grimm sold for $11,388. "A first edition, first issue copy of these famous fairy tales, including 22 etched plates by George Cruikshank. It is housed in a clamshell box." Alas, no pictures were offered--the one provided is actually a volume illustrated by Arthur Rackham instead. However, the wonders of the internet provide the opportunity to see Cruikshank's illustrations for the low price of your time and internet access. I have posted many of his illustrations in the SurLaLune Illustration Gallery at George Cruikshank. These are older scans, some of the first I made for SurLaLune from a later edition of Cruikshank's work.

Of course, Cruikshank was not a romantic and his style is not as popular as Rackham and the other Golden Age illustrators, but he was influential and popular. He was chosen to illustrate the first English translation of the Grimms' work and his drawings are insightful and humorous and had much less to draw from for inspiration since he was one of the first to illustrate the tales.

Continuing Today's Theme with Bedtime Stories Project

Also don't miss the images from the Bedtime Story Project. I admit I'd prefer to have these sheets in real life to the fabric I posted earlier by Heather Ross, but alas, they were produced strictly for this art project, not for retail distribution.

The actual project webpage has evaporated into the bit and bytes nether regions but a few blogs have posted about the project, keeping the images still available. Just yesterday InkGypsy posted about these sheets on her Once Upon A Blog... at Fairy Tale 'Sheets'. (Me waving!) Great minds and all that....

Far, Far Away Fabric Designs by Heather Ross

Heather Ross is a designer and blogger who has a new line of fabrics through Kokka of Japan with a fairy tale influence. Usually anything with a fairy tale theme in linens is strictly for little girls and consequently very twee, in my opinion, with lots of flying fairies and generic princesses. Ross's new line mostly avoids both and has definite influences, especially the Unicorn Tapestries a personal favorite of mine after seeing them in person last year at the Cloisters in New York. (I didn't expect to fall in love with them, but their intricate design, their history as forgotten horse blankets and the outright magic of them wooed me completely.)

However, there are more direct fairy tale influences especially from the Princess and the Pea and the Frog Prince. You can read more about her influences and design decisions on this page Far, Far Away for Kokka of Japan as well a more recent post in which she lists online retailers selling the fabrics internationally at Finding Far, Far Away Fabrics Online. I didn't explore all her links, but found that PurlSoho.com has fine swatches at Far, Far Away.





Thanks to Valerie S. for passing along the original post about this fabric late last year. Once again, I've been collecting stuff for a blog for a long time.

Watch This: Slagsmålsklubben

I actually started and aborted a SurLaLune blog earlier this year after frustration with a few blog programs and sites. I'm finally happy enough with this one and am digging back through my collection of links and items to share.

This little gem of an animation featuring Little Red Riding Hood has been on my list for a while to share and here it is. Perhaps you've seen it before, perhaps not, but it's worth a 2nd or 3rd viewing either way. John, the family graphic designer, fell in love with it immediately since it fits his style even better than mine.

The video was created by Tomas Nilsson as a "school assignment to reinterpret the fairytale Little red ridning hood. Inspired by Röyksopps Remind me." I recommend watching it in as big of a resolution as you can to enjoy the full effect of the minor details.

Slagsmålsklubben - Sponsored by destiny from Tomas Nilsson on Vimeo.

Fallen Princesses Project by Dina Goldstein

JPG Magazine has published online the images for Dina Goldstein's Fallen Princesses project. The images are provocative, especially since Goldstein mostly uses Disney's versions of fairy tale princesses which are arguably the most glossy and pervasive versions of fairy tale characters in modern times. This photo essay enters into the common debate over the suitability of fairy tales for children, as well as women's issues and fairy tales, two of the top five most popular topics on SurLaLune's Discussion Boards. They are so popular that I've devoted pages to them with books and links for reference: Children and Fairy Tales and Women and Fairy Tales.

Goldstein explains in her introduction that "these works place Fairy Tale characters in modern day scenarios. In all of the images the Princess is placed in an environment that articulates her conflict. The '...happily ever after' is replaced with a realistic outcome and addresses current issues."

I squirm over the choice of "realistic outcome." So many detractors of fairy tales tend to argue along the lines that life is never happy, always miserable, especially if one chooses to marry or seek out long term relationships. Yes, I'm writing in broad generalities and I firmly believe that life is hard and painful, but I also think that the pain is tempered with joy and happiness that is only made greater thanks to the contrast of opposite experiences. Traditional fairy tales tend to promote just that message, not perfectly, but in a much more realistic way, encouraging endurance and perseverance. Here's a summation of one of my basic philosophies: Happily ever after does not mean "without ever a conflict or hardship" but is an optimistic view of overcoming those hardships when they arise in the future, often with the companionship needed to make it easier.

I'm not criticizing Goldstein's work, mind you. I enjoyed it and want to share it, thus this post.

Back to the project. Some images are more poignant or hard hitting for me than others, but I've decided to let them speak for themselves instead of commenting on them individually.