Earlier tonight, erotic romance author Saskia Walker asked on Twitter for s link to an online retailer that sells bookplates.
After giving her a couple of links, I suggested she could do some of her own as it can be fun and easy to do. Then I thought I should upload a sample of bookplates I did for friends, plus I feel a little guilty for neglecting this blog so this should ease the guilt a bit, heh! Click on an image to see it in its full entity.
[Note to random Google image browsers: all bookplates display here are in low resolution. If you think of downloading one to print a batch of bookplates for yourself, good luck because it'll come out pixelled or rather unfocused. And no, I'll not give you the hi-res version because these belong to friends who asked me to create these for them. Thank you.]
Here’s a selection of bookplates I did so far:
I used images from various public domain image sites. In some cases, I cheated by making a montage from a selection of images to make it look as if it was originally created that way.
I think the most difficult one would be the colour bookplate. It took me a couple of hours to bring six sources – the Chinese bloke, the ink blot and so on – together as one. Plus I’m not keen on creating colour bookplates because a) printing a batch of colour bookplate can be incredibly expensive and b) I’m lazy.
My favourite of this lot is, probably, the carp rider. I decided on these elements because not only he’s idealistic and romantic with a massive zest for life, he works as a solicitor on behalf of children in Japan. It’s a dreadful and heart-breaking job, which is why his idealism and romantic personality left an impact on me. So I was happy and relieved he and his wife loved it. Phew. He wants me to do the Japanese version of this one, too (he’s researching which make the best replacement of ‘Ex Libris’). Incidentally, I’m creating a bookplate for his wife as well. [edit: Doh. I forgot to explain what a carp has to do with romanticism. Romaji for ? 'carp' is 'koi', which is also a romaji for ? 'love' (in sense of 'single-minded passion').] [edit #2: Eep, kanji are showing up as question marks. Bah on you, WordPress!]
My all-time favourite isn’t here as I’ve promised not to display it anywhere after I handed the final work over to a friend. I wish I hadn’t promised because I like it enough to wanting to share it with you. I will ask if a thumbnail will do. I’ll grovel if I have to.
The least favourite is not here as well, because I don’t want to inflict it on anyone’s eyeballs. This friend’s mother insisted on using Comic Sans (the ugliest font in the entire universe) and a generic-but-ugly cartoon clip art she wanted for her bookplate. Just remembering that one still makes me want to cry.