Ironic? I hope not

When I hung up my art teaching beret & returned to school librarian, I inherited a collection that hadn't been weeded in 20-30 years. It was time for a haul-out. I started folding some book pages, and thinking about the discarded books as sculptural objects. I laser cut some letters I want to add to the books to make a read sign.

laser cut books

So I'm still learning Illustrator, and after doing a tutorial, I tried making some simple, stylized deer out of basic geometric shapes. This took me awhile. It would be a lot faster if I could import my drawings, and find the outlines. Seems pretty basic, but I'm not there yet. I'm going to start a month free trial of Lynda.com. And when my month-long trial of Illustrator runs out, I'll probably start paying to continue. Inkscape, while free, just doesn't compare. 

I was worried about the book smoldering or catching fire, but in fact, the book cover is far harder to cut than cardboard. It is pretty dense, after all.  So this is a quick experiment, but there's so much more I want to do with these. First I have to build my skills.