Introducing Monarch Tales

"If nothing ever changed, there would be no such things as butterflies.”

 - Wendy Mass


Handmade red clay maple leaf logo that reads MONARCH TALES with a small monarch butterfly on the upper left. A Canadian toonie sits beside it for scale on a white background.

This week I am so excited to be sharing the logo for Monarch Tales.

I made it as a small clay piece, a red maple leaf with a monarch butterfly on the edge using FIMA oven-baked clay from a design that I made in Krita. I ran out of plain red clay and ended up with some glitter if you look really close you can see it sparkle.

The photo includes a Canadian toonie to show the actual size once it was finished. I then photographed the clay and brought it into Krita to clean it up a bit so I could use in print and online. I debated "fixing" the letters but decided that I couldn't do that and so they stay just as they are in the books.

For these stories, some elements stay exactly as sculpted by myself or my helpers at home out of the clay. Others are drawn or refined digitally so the final art is clean and ready for publishing. That mix lets me keep the handmade texture while shaping the pieces to fit each page.

Why this look

For me it was important to keep the maple leaf because I feel that it anchors the series in Canada. The monarch butterfly stands for travel and transformation since stories move too. They change shape, cross distances, and still carry a thread of connection.

Where this fits

Monarch Tales will sit beside Little Goodbyes as a main series for children. It gives us a new home for picture books that explore fables, retellings, and original adventures which do not belong in the Little Goodbyes series that has a different focus and feel. The tone may shift from story to story and series to series, but the heart will stay the same.

The Process

Here is an example of how I combine clay work with digital finishing. The block of cheese for Fox and Crow started as plain oven-baked clay. After photographing it, I removed the background, added colour, and layered in extra details like shading and texture. This mix of handmade and digital gives each object a playful, tactile feel while still working cleanly on the page.

Four images showing how a clay model becomes finished artwork: Step 1 a plain clay block with holes, Step 2 background removed, Step 3 coloured bright yellow like cheese, Step 4 finished with sparkly details added.

What comes next

This logo is the first step. I will keep building the visual library in clay and Krita, choosing handmade when texture matters and using digital tools when I need precision.

Our bookshelf is growing, and all our published and upcoming titles can be found together at littlegoodbyes.ca/books/our-books.

Location: Canada

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