What is that weird looking monkey? It’s a Koboldmaki!

What in the world is that? Some kind of weird monkey with a human face? I had no idea either, in fact I saved this image as “Weird Monkey.tif” on my computer until some top-notch google sleuthery turned up that this thing is called a Koboldmaki! That’s right! It’s real! Not only that, this little guy is on the Philippine 200 peso bill!

Ok, so actually it’s only called a Koboldmaki in German – a charming name because a Kobold is a type of underground troll that lives in a mine, but in English it’s called a Tarsier, they are really small, nocturnal, their eyeballs are bigger than their brain, and they’re the only primate that is exclusively carnivorous, primarily feasting upon insects!

Using my fancy Glowforge laser cutter, which you can read about in some of my previous posts I brought this adorably hideous creature back into the limelight from a royalty-free clipart disk from 1995 onto acid-free 100% recycled book board:

Then I went in with gold and copper ink to mimic the natural gold and copper eyes these little guys have – check out the reflection in the video below!

After that I had to decide which thread color to use…I put up a poll in my Instagram story (thank you for those of you that voted!) and the vote was in favor of yellow to orange 75%/25% – I was leaning toward yellow too. Then came the sewing and ta-da~ I currently have four of them for sale – you can see if any are left here:

Buy a Koboldmaki Journal in my Etsy Shop

There are all the cool progress shots – now on to the glamor shots – if you’d like to keep up with my everyday bookbinding or see what I’m working on right now, check out my Instagram.

Haha, this is what a tarsier looks like in real life! I think these critters had to be the inspiration for Yoda – don’t you think??

A big thank you to the folks who signed up for my email newsletter this past weekend! I can’t tell you what a great feeling it is as an artist to know that people are interested in your work. Thank you for reading my blog! Pinterest pins are always appreciated too, I think most of my traffic comes from Pinterest! 🙂 My Handmade Books + Journals Pinterest board has over 10,000 followers!

(Interested in buying a Glowforge? Use this referral link and we can both get $100 off – I’ll get a coupon for their supply store and you’ll get a $100 Glowforge discount)

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