(Inside A Black Apple)

Magic Box

I happened on the Magic Box on Ebay.

I don't even know exactly what it is or how it works (neither did the Ebay seller) but I want to know its secrets. The Magic Box is not mine but I will probably be looking for it for the rest of my days.

Tim Walker for What Ails You

Sometimes when I am feeling a little beauty-starved, I binge on Tim Walker.

His heart is, I think, like my favorite people's hearts: that is, full to bursting with everything all at once, exuberance and shadows and wonder and love and magic. A devout maximalist, a baroque day dreamer, and obsessed by decadent beauty in a time when it isn't terribly fashionable to be any of those things. He's also quite good on mermaids.

Pictures, his monograph, is one of my most prized among my big shelf-breaker books. Above are just a few windows into his rabbit hole (the shadow creatures up top remains my all-time favorite.)

There are hundreds more, too, all beautiful little cakes to eat greedily & make yourself sick in the loveliest way.

A Piece of a Heart

This antique glass slide came from my valentine this year.

The little labels, with their perfect script...my stars. And the actual anatomical slide itself (heart tissue, looking so much like a tiny, delicate sea fan) make my own heart beat less like The Human Subject and more like a hummingbird.

I got out the Glitter

I couldn't help breaking out the glitter set and making a total mess before I sent these out. Vermilion glitter for the hearts, sparkly white for the mermaid's pearl and the bee-wings, sparkly black for bee-fur and top hats.

You can download these in the post right before this one (here's the link, just in case.)

I Made Some Valentines for You

Since you're the tops, I made this sheet of Valentines for you to download (send no pennies, they're free!)

* Click to Download the high-res, printable sheet *

Any excuse to feature some of my favorite oldie superlatives.
I've been excited to post these, and since many people's Valentines live far & wide (lots of mine included), I figured I really better do it.

The sheet is sized just a smidge smaller than standard 8.5"x11" paper, so they should be easy to print without fear of cropping, etc. (I'd recommend printing on any card stock your printer can easily handle.)

And of course, these are given for personal use only and cannot be sold or used in any way for commercial or nefarious purposes.

Little Fur Child

Last week, very out-of-the-blue, I got a wonderful package in the mail from one of my favorite people. Inside the wonderful package was the drawing above, an original Garth Williams sketch of the Little Fur Child from Little Fur Family, my all-time favorite picture book. I know I might've said all of the rest of this before, so bear with me if I'm repeating myself!

I remember there was an auction of most of the original artwork a few years ago, and I wanted so badly to swoop it all up. Feeling wistful about that made me all the more beside-myself to have an original Fur Child of my own. I love sketches in general, and I know this little guy (and his perfect little hat!) will be close beside me in my studio for forever. I just have to find the perfect frame for him!

My three favorite things about Little Fur Family:

- What a bunch of misfits the family is, but how perfect they are together. The little one is very bearish, the papa is a Scottie-dog/bearish creature, and the mama is...? A bush-baby? The grandfather (not pictured) is also very terrier-like, so I'm assuming he's on the father's side.

- The papa's outstanding singing-face in the lullaby scene (top R)

- And my most, most, most favorite thing of all...in the book but possibly just in general: the moment the Fur Child finds a tiny version of himself (top L)

"Then he caught a little tiny tiny fur animal,
The littlest fur animal in the world
It had warm silky fur and even a little fur nose
So he kissed it right on its little fur nose
And put it gently back in the grass
And the little tiny tiny fur animal
Ran down a hole into the ground.

The subtly frantic look on the tiny tiny fur animal's face really makes it, I think.