I made this book because I wanted to experiment with leather covers.  The leather is a bit thicker than I would have liked (6-7oz) but that thickness is supposed to be superior for tooling.  The design is based on one of my favorite fairy tales “Ivan and the Firebird”.  On the cover, the firebird is eating one of the tsar’s cherries, and on the back, Ivan’s hand is grasping one of the firebird’s feathers. 

After tooling, but before painting, I painted the leather with gold ink.  This sank into the tooling marks and hid the pinkish tone of the leather. It also put down a basecoat that helped with the icon-painting feel I was going for.  I used mica pigments for the bird’s feathers, and interference violet to highlight the crest feathers.