Acorn elves are small acorn folk that live mostly in oak forests, but can be found almost anywhere. However, they are only seen by children and some adults who still have a childlike imagination.
Postcards! In today’s world, where we send dozens of messages and photos a day through our phones, something as “old-fashioned” as a postcard has a completely different charm. Thanks to Postcrossing, postcards are coming back to life even in this digital age. Sending a paper postcard is something personal! You have to choose a card that suits the recipient, write a few lines, buy and stick on a stamp, find a post office or mailbox, and send it off. It’s not just a quick click—it takes time and effort. And then, when a postcard lands in your mailbox, the joy is on a whole different level. Honestly, no phone notification can ever beat that feeling.Read more …
Like every year, I’ve selected the best acorn elves photos I’ve taken over the last 12 months and made a new calendar out of them. As always I have one version in Czech for my Czech e-shop, where you can find and buy three variants – desk, wall, family planning, but all of them are in Czech language.
But if you want the calendar in English, French, German, Spanish etc, including local holidays, order it on the Acorn Elves’ zazzle e-shop (you can choose how it looks, in which language, etc. in the calendar setting):
You can also take a look at the calendars I’ve added in the past years, Zazzle will automatically regenerate texts and calendars (dates) for any year and language.
Photos from the calendars
Except for the cover, all photos for each month are the same with the Czech calendar. Here you can see them in the mosaic:
All the photos from the calendar can be found on Zazzle as postcards – just like the ones from previous years.
Another year is slowly coming to an end and I have new calendars for 2024 so that the acorn elves can bring you joy day after day. As always I have one version in Czech for my Czech e-shop, where you can find and buy three variants – desk, wall, family planning, but all of them are in Czech language.
But if you want the calendar in English, French, German, Spanish etc, including local holidays, order it on the Acorn Elves’ zazzle e-shop (you can choose how it looks, in which language, etc. in the calendar setting):
For the third time I decided to draw an Acorn elves inktober – inktober themes, but in world of Acorn elves. My earlier drawings from this drawing challenge can be found here: 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021. Like last year, I drew it on an iPad in Procreate. Read more …
Just like every year, I have prepared new calendars with the best photos I have taken in the past 12 months. On the Czech e-shop you can find 3 different types of calendars – desk, wall, family planning, but all of them are in Czech language:
If you are interested in a calendar in English or another language, including holidays for your country, you need to order it in Zazzle e-shop. The calendar offered there has the same photos as the Czech one, and you can customize its appearance – see the section Setting the calendar options.
All the photos from the calendar can be found on Zazzle as postcards – just like the ones from previous years.
In mid-September 2022, a new book with full-page photographs of acorn elves will be published by OMAKE books in France: Acorn Elves – the lovely creatures from Petr Václavek.
The whole book is bilingual – French and English, has 160 pages and besides the 155 photos of the acorn elves with captions it also contains an introduction with my biography and an interview. The final few pages are a photo tutorial guide to making acorn elves.
À la mi-septembre 2022, un nouveau livre avec des photographies pleine page de lutins à glands sera publié par les éditions OMAKE en France : Le peuple des chêneses – Les adorables créatures de Petr Václavek.
Le livre est bilingue (français et anglais), compte 160 pages et contient, outre les 155 photos des lutins avec leur légende, une introduction avec ma biographie et une interview. Les dernières pages sont un tutoriel photo pour la fabrication des lutins de glands.
A few pictures from the book / Quelques photos du livre
Leafing through the book / Feuilleter le livre
Where to buy?
On Acorn Elves e-shop – if you are from the Czech Republic or a country close to it
The book is published in two versions – the standard version and a limited exclusive collector’s edition (only 500 copies), which has a different cover, includes an acorn elves memory game as a bonus, and can only be bought on the publisher’s website.
The standard version will then also be available on Amazon, other online bookstores, and also in the Czech acorn elves e-shop (I’ll be sure to let you know).
Size: 21 x 21 cm Year of publication: September 2022
Le livre est publié en deux versions – la version standard et une édition collector exclusive limitée (500 exemplaires seulement), qui a une couverture différente, comprend un jeu de mémoire des lutins de gland en bonus, et ne peut être achetée que sur le site Web de l’éditeur.
La version standard sera alors également disponible sur Amazon, dans d’autres librairies en ligne et dans la boutique électronique des lutins tchèques (je ne manquerai pas de vous en informer).
Taille : 21 x 21 cm Année de publication : Septembre 2022
A magnificent album with photographs, each more magical than the last. The author transports us into his rich and wonderful universe. It is a book that will please all lovers of photography, nature, miniatures and toy photography. There is very little text as it is mostly about the photos but it is good to know that it is written in both English and French. I bought one for myself and one as a gift. I recommend
Un album magnifique aux photographies toutes plus féeriques les unes que les autres L’auteur nous transporte dans son univers riche et merveilleux. C’est un livre qui plaira à tous les amoureux de la photographie, de la nature, des miniatures et de la toyphotography. Il y a très peu de texte puisqu’il fait la part belle aux photos mais il est bon de savoir qu’il est écris à la fois en anglais et en français. J’en ai acheté un pour moi et un autre pour offrir Je recommande
If you follow Dubánci on social media, you are probably already in love with the acorn elves and so you will love the book. If not, start checking out the acorn elves now – every day, you get a wonderful, new surprising image.
This book is a treasure, capturing a huge number of acorn elves in a wide variety of situations. They never get old or stale – you wonder how many more poses and settings there can be and I guess the answer is infinity. The clever captions are the icing on the cake, or maybe it’s the details you notice when you read the book, something I typically don’t spend the time to do when looking at the elves on social media.
Petr Vaclavek is truly an artistic genius and these elves are true art. I’m normally not one to go in for this sort of thing (I never fancied faeries, for example), but the elves are so unique and they have captured my heart. I feel like a part of the acorn elves family.
The book is very well made, with gorgeous photos. It’s got fun and interesting background info on the process and the artist. He not only sketches the elves, but serves as a model for them (he is not actually an acorn), creates them from the acorns and such, photographs them, and finalizes things on the computer – all that talent in just one person! And the text of the book is in French and English so I can use it to practice my French, at no extra cost.
Si vous suivez Dubánci sur les médias sociaux, vous êtes probablement déjà amoureux des lutins à gland et vous allez donc adorer ce livre. Si ce n’est pas le cas, commencez dès maintenant à consulter les lutins à gland – chaque jour, vous recevrez une nouvelle image merveilleuse et surprenante.
Ce livre est un trésor, qui capture un grand nombre de lutins dans des situations très diverses. On ne s’en lasse pas – on se demande combien d’autres poses et réglages il peut y avoir et je suppose que la réponse est infinie. Les légendes intelligentes sont la cerise sur le gâteau, ou peut-être que ce sont les détails que l’on remarque en lisant le livre, ce que je ne prends généralement pas le temps de faire lorsque je regarde les lutins sur les médias sociaux.
Petr Vaclavek est vraiment un génie artistique et ces elfes sont de l’art véritable. Normalement, je ne suis pas du genre à aimer ce genre de choses (je n’ai jamais aimé les fées, par exemple), mais les elfes sont si uniques et ils ont conquis mon cœur. J’ai l’impression de faire partie de la famille des elfes du gland.
Le livre est très bien fait, avec de superbes photos. Il contient des informations amusantes et intéressantes sur le processus et l’artiste. Ce dernier ne se contente pas d’esquisser les lutins, il leur sert de modèle (il n’est pas vraiment un gland), les crée à partir des glands et autres, les photographie et finalise le tout sur ordinateur – tout ce talent dans une seule personne ! Et le texte du livre est en français et en anglais, ce qui me permet de l’utiliser pour pratiquer mon français, sans frais supplémentaires.
Since March is the month of books and readers, I have prepared a diploma template with a reading theme and an acorn elf of course! Everything can be edited and rewritten. You can use the template completely free of charge – for non-commercial purposes only!
Template for download
PPTX with editable text – powerpoint format, in which everything can be changed – texts, images. It can be edited in Microsoft Powerpoint, Libre Office, Open Office or in the presentation editing tool in Google Docs (besides MS Office these are all free tools)
I use the free font Amatic a lot in my acorn elves templates, but it may happen that it is not installed on your computer, in which case you can download and install it for free from this source: Amatic on Font Squirrel.
I hope you will like the diploma and if you would like to give small prizes to the little readers – postcards, stickers, badges, small magnets, you can order them in the acorn elves e-shop.
Last year I decided to make my own cutouts for Christmas gingerbread cookies. Unfortunately, I didn’t have a 3D printer at the time, but as a DIYer I managed. First, I fortified myself with a beer and then I cut up the can and made a primitive cookie cutter out of it. Maybe a small tuna can would have been better and more practical, but I liked the beer better :)
But this year we already have a 3D printer, so I started to design the cutters. I drew the shapes in Illustrator and then created printable files using the online tool CookieCut (it can make an STL mold from an image).
I made two acorns, two oak leaves, little cutouts for eyes and a mouth. Then I had the idea to make a gingerbread kit, so I added a cookie cutter for the stick (hand, foot) and a shoe. And finally I wanted to make a gingerbread man :)
Here you have all 9 cookie cutters in .stl format for printing on a 3D printer (I don’t understand 3D printing, my son printed it for me): pernicky.zip
The result looked like this:
Important notice!
Never, I repeat never, put the moulds from the 3D printer in the dishwasher. They’re thin plastic, it’ll come out like this:
So to make linzer cookies, I’ll have to print again :)
Cutters for acorn elves linzer cookies
Since we had already baked the gingerbread cookies, I decided to reprint just a few molds.
And on that occasion I thought of new shapes – the reflection on the acorn and the cut-out on the oak leaf. So I added a couple of new shapes.
Here you can download a new batch of cookie cutters, you can find the eyes and mouth for the acorn elf head in the previous batch.
Gingerbread puzzle
I also thought of making a gingerbread acorn elf puzzle. The cookie cutters are in the first archive mentioned – I just had to cut the stem off the body, otherwise it would have looked “weird” :)
I tried to assemble one acorn elf from the still unbaked dough on the baking sheet:
And the second one I folded after baking and decorating. So the kids can play with it on the plate!
Toilet man not to be missed!
What would Christmas be without an acorn elf in the toilet!!
And the more skilful ones can even build him a cottage.
Next year, a new book will be published for the Acorn elves, written by children’s book writer Klára Smolíková. The book will be for beginning readers, more precisely for first graders. It will be published by Triton. It will be given exclusively to this year’s school first graders on the occasion of their readers graduation (if their school/library cooperates with this SKIP project). Which means, among other things, that for two years it will not be in normal distribution and will not be available for purchase. The only opportunity to get it is the above project.
Update (April 2022): the book is already printed, below is a small visual and textual sample:
Just like last year, I decided to do an acorn elves inktober (a global challenge for graphic artists who all draw a drawing on one specified one-word theme every day in October and then share their creation on social media), I called it oaktober – so I will draw the themes of inktober, but in conjunction with acorn elves. This is my fifth time drawing an inktober (you can peep my inktober creations from 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020). This year I’ve also decided to draw it all on my iPad in Procreate (I got it for Christmas last year and still haven’t had enough time to learn how to use it properly, so this will be a bit of a practice run for me.
Let me know in the comments which picture you like the most and if you can also think of a way to use the drawings…
