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Box of Treasures, Story Calendar, 2025
Gazing at my Christmas tree in 2023, considering the vast collection of hanging decorations - some passed down from family members, some bought as gifts from special friends, some bought as souvenirs from a significant event - an idea started to form.
Each trinket on my Christmas tree tells a story and holds a memory, which is personal to me. This is also true of a lot things I possess. I am a self confessed hoarder and a collector of things. I always have been. Maybe it's something to do with being the type of artist that I am, or maybe I'm just like the millions of other people out there who like to keep mementos and trinkets because they have important memories attached to them.
The idea of a "box of treasures" reminded me of my own collection that I had as a child. My favourite jewellery box had a musical ballerina twirling around in front of a mirror when you opened the lid, after winding up the mechanism at the back. Remembering this took me straight back in time and connected me with the child that I was. I think that's why we love to decorate our trees at Christmas. We love to reach for that box of collected treasures because they hold happy and nostalgic memories for us. Then we pack them away again for another year, to get on with our lives, knowing that we will return again.
Memories are powerful things and hold a certain kind of magic for each individual. This seemed like a perfect starting point for a new story.
The story begins on the front cover, where the viewer opens up the "Box of Treasures" and reads the text. I wanted the text to look hand written, possibly by a child, and old, so I did things the old fashioned way: I tea stained a piece of paper to look old, ripped it up and used a wax crayon to write the message.
The box itself is designed to be an old tin box, (maybe a biscuit tin?) and therefore I wanted it to look rusty, like it has been buried for some time. I drew each figurine individually, then once they were scanned in, I was able to collage them and place them into the tin box, almost as if it was a real collection!
The character of the fox only really entered my head because it was an easy rhyme with the word "box". The idea of a fox digging up some buried treasure appealed to me immediately, and I actually doodled a sketch of the front cover that moment on the eve of Christmas 2023. Like a lot of my work, a rhyming phrase usually enters my head alongside the imagery. These were the only words I used for this story calendar.
Each page in the calendar shows a different "treasure" as they spring to life and take you, the viewer, and also the fox, around different places in a garden.
After all the interior dolls house scenes of the previous year's calendar, I knew I wanted to go outside to draw plants and wildlife. I found my garden a great source of inspiration, so everything in this calendar is taken from my garden (there are only a few bits where I've taken a bit more artistic license.) I also wanted to show the changing seasons to take you through each month, so most of the illustrations show daytime scenes.
I realised early on that the illustrations could say so much and that text wasn't really necessary. In fact, I preferred having more space to work with to add in as much detail as possible.
As the story and the artwork progressed, I realised that there was much more I could explore. When it came to designing the back cover, this was another opportunity to hint at a little back story (or twelve!) I wanted to show where each treasure might have come from originally, so the idea of some old polaroid photos depicting this seemed to fit in well with the overall design. I liked the idea of them scattered across the lawn in the garden, almost as if they were also kept in the bottom of the tin. I drew out twelve scenes to place each figurine in, then altered the colour tone to a more sepia filter. I then collaged each photo as if I was really scattering them on some grass. the back cover probably took me longer than any other page to complete! However, through this process, it made me realise that that calendar had the potential to be so much more.
After various discussions with some friends, I knew I wanted to create a full picture book from the calendar images. This required a bit more work, but on the whole, the story was already there.
Now, of course, I want to build on this story and start to explore more of where it could go. It has been my main focus for the year of 2024, and it has really taken hold of my imagination. I too want to know the whole story of who exactly collected these treasures and why. Why were they buried and is there a significance to the fox discovering it in this particular garden? I hope I find out.
Box of Treasures is also available to buy as a picture book from my online shop.
Books are signed and come with a handmade book box sleeve, then carefully giftwrapped in tissue, ribbon and limited edition stickers.
Follow the link at the top to KerryDIllustrations on Etsy.
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