The Snow Queen by Yevgeniya Yeretskaya

We picked up The Snow Queen and also Woodland Christmas. And I also did a short interview with Yevgeniya. Scroll down to read about her inspirations for these gorgeous books.

I was still new at Up With Paper, working mostly on greeting cards and stationary, so I didn’t expect a dream project, such as a pop-up book, to land on my desk. My creative director, Monika Brandrup, gave me an opportunity to design one of the pop-up spreads for a new book that was in development. Fortunately, she was pleased with my work and asked me to design and engineer the rest of the book. This is how I got involved with “Snowflakes A Pop-Up Book”.

The biggest challenge for me was not to break into a little dance right after I officially got my first book project- just kidding… I totally danced. But seriously, since this was my first big project, the challenge was not to get too carried away with the designs. I had to curb the impulse to illustrate and pop-up absolutely everything I could on every spread and instead find a balance between desired visual complexity and logistics of print production.

It is difficult to say who has inspired me most, because there have been many wonderfully creative people who have shaped me over the years. However, I can say with certainty, that I fell in love with pop-ups when I was about three years old and opened a book called “Sleeping Beauty” by Vojtěch Kubašta.

I cannot divulge any secrets, of course. All I can say is that I am currently working on an engineering concept and layout for the next winter holiday book, which is based on a classic Ukrainian folk tale. It will be a movable and interactive book for a young audience.