From the same customer to came to me with the idea of the album featuring the surfacing Atlantic salmon, his next request was even more challenging.  For this photo album for his son's birthday, he wanted to incorporate no less than 10 different symbols and motifs into the cover design that reflected the interests of his son.  I was unsure how I was going to accomplish this, but, given enough time, I came up with a more-or-less unified design.  I needed to include something about surfing (the emblem on the surfboard relates to this man's career), something about skiing, someting about pheasant hunting, and something about hunting dogs...each hunting dog this man has ever had. 
I decided to break the themes up and placed the hunting images on the back cover where I have a pair of raised, crossed shotguns (based on images sent to me by my customer) and a raised pheasant accented with gold pigment.  Below that are stamped multiple labrador retreiver hunting dogs (a custom die of a labrador retreiver silhouette was ordered for this); each one in the correct color (black or brown) with the correct name stamped below in gold.
The front cover features an Asian-inspired raised wave image carved from and built-up on the underlying cover board and accented with silver pigment.  There's a surfboard standing in tan leather "sand" and a pair of crossed skis standing in white leather "snow".  A brass ring meant to symbolize both the sun in the cover image and the fact that this man's son was married is wired into the front cover.  Gold lettering was added to the cover and spine.
This was all accomplished with many separate pieces of board carved to fit and covered with leather that was pared down very thin by hand to take the shape of the board underneath it.  The overall cover is dark green pigskin leather but is inset with pieces of antique blue cowhide, red British bookcalf, dark gray goatskin, and black goatskin leather.
Did I mention that this is a rather large album?  It has 50 pages that are 10" wide by 12" tall.
If you have an idea about ordering something this intricate, I'd love to hear from you as long as you allow plenty of time.  I can't make something like this in a week.  I would like to have at least 2 months for an order with this much detail in the cover.

A book like this would cost upwards of $1,000 or more due to all of the detail involved.

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