A few months ago, Lisa Pavelka invited me to participate in the AMACO Designer Challenge with the theme "Itty Bitty Books".

Entries had to be under 4 inches square and made using at least 80% products in their lines, which include FIMO polymer clay.

Designers were allowed to pick up to 8 products from the catalog for their use.

All entries were to be displayed at their booth at the CHA-Summer show July 21st in Chicago and judged by a panel of editors.

Although short on spare-time for new projects due to the BIG book I'm currently finishing, I couldn't resist the challenge.

It helped that I already knew exactly what I wanted to do!

It also helped that I started caning many years ago with FIMO clays, and am familiar with its properties.

I chose FIMO's Decorator Gel, a clear liquid polymer clay used to make transfers and as a clay-to-clay adhesive.

I also picked FIMO classic in black, white, yellow, red, and blue. These nice bright primaries mix well and afforded me the color range that went perfectly with the drawings I had already done.

I also had to have some varigated gold foil for that gilded touch on the inside covers anad page edges!

I started with high resolution scans of the drawings I did more than 2 decades ago for a childrens' book that did not find a publisher at the time. These started as black and white pen and ink line drawings that I then colored in with Prismacolor markers--coincidently they are the brand that works best with polymer clay as well!

After I'd colored them in, Cris Murphy designed silk painted borders for each. We had photos taken by Bob Grieser, who later shot the photographs in my first two books. These proved too large to use in the Bitty Book competition entry, so only the central portions were used.

However, the full color (and full-sized!) prints are now available as a 2007 calendar at http://polymarketpress.com

For the Bitty Book, I used my computer to reduce the size of the images, and printed them on Epson Glossy Photo paper. This brand gives the easiest and clearest results for me.

I also printed out the words for the facing pages. Each was cut out and coated with an even layer of the liquid clay.

After baking for 20 minutes, the images were cooled by imersion in a bowl of water and then peeled away! The paper is thrown away, and the ink is now imprinted on the clear flexible film of polymer. Each was placed on a page made of a sheet of white FIMO that had been rolled through a pasta machine and cut to size.

A very thin layer of the liquid was sponged onto the backs of the decals to assure a good bond. The "gutter" edge of each page was covered with a thin slice of canes made using the other colors of FIMO clay. After baking, all were hand drilled for the binding.

The colors in the canes were all mixed to coordinate with the illustrations. The shading on the roses and daisies looks very much like the shading in the flowers in the drawings, but is done by making canes using clay in the Skinner Blend to form the petals. Flat "fabric" was made using slices of the canes to form the covers, and the insides are covered in metallic foil.

Since I had lots of extra cane, I also made some beads. Two were used in the binding of the book, shown on the cover and strung on pink silk thread. A three dimensional version of the littlest pig, who has a "thing" for balloons, also graces the cover.

The judges liked this book---and I hope you do too!