Fruits of the Spirit

Fruits of the Spirit: Color - Cut - Embellish

"All of the fruits (yes, they are all fruits) in this book are inspired by a collection of Styrofoam(TM) pear ornaments my mother made before becoming a housewife," says author and illustrator Sherry Crocker. "Dresden lace, gold foil medallions, sequins, ribbon, faux gemstones and pearls imitated Fabergé eggs. The eggs decorated our holiday tables for many years. As we grew older, and my mother became an art instructor at our school, she created many simple kindergarten projects that became elaborate gifts for our parents-they also tested our finest of fine motor skills and left with me with the habitual desire to make rather than buy. (Although, I am a sucker for a good German hand-blown glass ornament.)"

As a rubber stamp designer and artist, the same principle of "make rather than buy" inspired not only the designs for the stamps themselves, but the projects that we made with them, the likes of which you see on the back cover of this book.

After painstaking sketching-and much erasing-each hand-drawn illustration is inked with Micron pens on Canson art paper before being submitted to the book designer, who then presents them to you to color, cut and embellish. You can use them for card making, scrapbook pages, framed art to use in conjunction with your own rubber stamps, and as holiday or party decorations... anything you can imagine, really.