Frog & Toad Collection

As a New Year resolution I promised myself that I would read for fun this year. I never have for some reason. I just always felt that I should be learning something if I am reading. A new tiny bookstore opened up the next town over from me and I have had fun popping in there every month or so and bringing home a small pile of books.

I was telling the shop owner about my love for animals (duh), nature, wildlife, but I don't want anything terrible to happen to the animals. Ha ha ha! So, we walked around the shop together to see what might fit. As we walked past a display table, I stopped, and she stopped. We both were looking right at the collection of Frog and Toad stories. "Yes, they might have been written for the younger generation but the stories are cute and the illustrations adorable!", she said. I brought it home.

I put my pile of books on the kitchen island when I got home and Josh noticed Frog and Toad right away! "Oh, I used to love these when I was little!" It was then that I had a feeling the Universe was asking me to create a collection around them.

What Actually Makes a Frog a Frog, and a Toad a Toad

Once I started sketching this collection, I found myself falling down a rabbit hole about what the actual difference is between a frog and a toad, since biologically it is a little blurrier than most people think. True toads belong to the family Bufonidae, and they tend to have drier, bumpier skin, shorter back legs built for walking and hopping rather than leaping, and they lay their eggs in long chains instead of the clusters frogs are known for. Frogs, on the other hand, usually have smoother, moister skin and much longer back legs made for big leaping jumps. Toads actually evolved from frogs, adapting to spend more time on land, so every toad is technically still a frog, just a very specialized branch of the family tree.

Both are incredible for a garden. A single toad can eat over a thousand insects in a month, including slugs and grubs that damage the very same plants I love, which makes them one of the best pest controls you could ever ask for without spraying a single chemical. They are also one of my favorite animals. You might have noticed that I make toad themed jewelry often!

So far I have cut out and pieced together a few of my favorite scenes from the stories but there will be a couple more. Some are finished and available on my website and some are still in different stages of production. These are photos of a few of them while I was designing them. Maybe they will be finished some day! But, they were made with my heart full of love!

The Frog and Toad Collection