Bookbinding Gone Wrong!

Eons ago I made a book block on tapes but hadn't made a set of covers. When I saw yesterday that the weekly challenge at Inspiration Avenue was Books I thought well I can just quickly finish the covers, attach the tapes to the cover, be done with it and post it like I had worked for days on end. Ha! I had also made fake leather out of a paper bag using a top secret recipe. I knew I wanted to use that to cover some mat board for the book covers. Well the twill tape I had used was polyester so glue didn't stick to the tape or the fake leather cover and the edges frayed. So I pulled out the tapes from the 3 groups of stitching.

Another dumb thing I did was to endpaper the inside of the covers with a nice diamond pattern paper. I didn't want to glue the first and last pages of the book block down over the nice paper to attach the covers that way so what to do?! I took a deep breath and cut those two pages and then glued them down like I really meant to do that all along! I think I actually like how it looks... a book rising from the covers or a book melting into the covers, take your pick.

Unfortunately the spine feels flimsy and really needs to have tapes through the 3 groups of stiching. I think if I worked long tapes through I could just tie 3 bows at the fore edge. If that is too busy I could just tie one bow. Even thinking about bows at all seems too busy. 3 small buckles would work much better. Stay tuned!

Here are some examples of book blocks on tape so you know what the heck I'm talking about!

I Close My Eyes In Order to See

Over at One Powerful Hour this week's theme is "Eyes". I immediately thought of one of my favorite quotes from Paul Gauguin, "I close my eyes in order to see". I needed some images to work with so I went to the Wikipedia entry on Paul Gauguin. The photograph is one of Gauguin attributed to 1891. The hand with the orange rose is from one of his paintings, "Woman with a Flower", also from 1891.

I was originally going to to do an ATC but there was too much to squeeze on to it so I went with a 4x4 for a change. To really try to keep the total time under an hour I used scrapbooking paper for the background. While that was drying I printed and cut out the images and the quote. I mounted both the photograph and part of the painting on thin black card. Then I glued the photo and the quotes to background. Gauguin's eyes are sort of half closed but I glued a black bar over them for emphasis. By then the finishing touch, the woman's hand with the flower, was just about dry so I cut it out anyways. I was anxious to see it all come together! I used those little double stick foam mounting squares on the back of the cutout and positioned it so that the hand is reaching into the photograph.

I hope the finished piece conveys that perhaps Gauguin is daydreaming about both the woman and the painting...

Spring Has Sprung

Thursday's theme over at One Powerful Hour is Spring. It's about time! I can't speak for everyone in New England but to me this past winter was incredibly l o n g. We're all jumping for joy here in Maine. With that said I decided to be different and go with the literal meaning of the word spring rather than the season Spring. The total time I spent on this ATC was an hour, or less, including the mistake I made! However that's not taking into consideration drying time. First I did the standard quick gesso background: a couple of coats making sure the brush strokes went every which way and then a oouple of green and then blue acrylic washes wiped over with a baby wipe. You know the drill. When that dried I lettered "Spring" with a calligraphy marker. Then I glued down the spring with a glop of gel medium. The parts didn't seem to make the whole so I put in the comic book style action lines to pull it together. Because of the gel the whole thing had to dry for hours.

Remember I said I made a mistake? At first I wanted to do just a plain white gesso background and the calligraphy right on top of that for that minimalist look. Add the spring. Done. Post it on the blog. Well I thought I lettered "Spring". I took a second look and it was really "Sprig". Stupid. So I slapped on more gesso. I let that dry but I could still see a shadow of "Sprig" so then I did the washes of color. Overall it probably came out better than it would of with my original idea.

Switching to Blogger

I switched from my free Wordpress blog to Blogger with the help of Wordpress2Blogger. I also started using ScribeFire.

Inspire Me Thursday: "Fold"

The challenge theme for Thursday February 5, 2009 over at Inspire Me Thursday is "Fold". These bookmarks are also for a swap over at Swap-bot. They are made from scrapbooking paper backed with gold tissue paper by gluing it on with matte medium. Then I pressed the paper in a big old dictionary I use for collage. I used a free template over at book artist/calligrapher Cheryl Moote's site for the cutting and folding. The tips of the triangles are glued down with more matte medium. The idea is similar to one found in Paper Folding Fun by Robert Harbin published in 1961 by Branford. It's probably out of print.

Soul Journaling II Prompt 2: Permission Slip

(Click images for a larger view) I love backgrounds! I color copied a basket lid and glued it down with matte medium then gessoed the page around it leaving some of the image exposed. I let that dry while I straightened up my studio space after Christmas gift making madness. I mixed some craft acrylic with the matte medium, to give it a satin finish, and slathered that around the page again leaving some of the image and gesso exposed. I quickly wiped it down with a paper towel. I prefer to use a baby wipe but must have run out! I made an envelope with scrapbooking paper from a template at Mirkwood Designs, clipped the corners that showed with a punch and glued it down with matte medium. (I use matte medium for everything!) Then I let the whole thing dry some before I wrote "I give myself permission...". I pressed the journal under some dictionaries overnight. I resisted the urge to add anything else. Less is more.



For the card front I ripped some more of the scrapbooking paper and glued it with matte medium on to blue mat board slightly smaller than the envelope (this is important!). Then I sealed it with more matte medium and trimmed it with an craft knife. I didn't want to gesso or paint over it because I chose a mat board that contrasted with the paper and I wanted to leave well enough alone.



For the card back I gessoed the mat board, let it dry, and aged it a bit. I did the writing with a black gel pen and stamped the date. I love old school date stamps, you can still get them at Staples.

The Soul Journaling II prompts by Collage Diva.

Soul Journaling II Prompt 1: Instant Gratification

This is a continuation of Sarah Whitmire's Soul Journaling through a relatively new Yahoo Group. This is the first prompt... I started at the beginning so I'm already way behind! All that was needed for this prompt was one picture and some very basic art stuff. My studio is elsewhere so all I had at home was office supplies! I didn't even have any glue! I taped down my picture. For the stencils I cut out some block letters. The smudging I did with a black ink pad and a cotton cosmetic pad. I did have a black gel pen and some fine line Sharpies or it would have been very plain indeed using only a black ballpoint pen! It was fun to see how much you could do with so few materials! You can find the full instructions for all the prompts at Collage Diva's Soul Journal blog

Soul Journaling Days 3 and 4: Soul Armor

Soul Journaling Days 3 and 4 over at Caspiana was about creating our own "Soul Armor" to protect ourselves from "our critics both from the "inside" and the "outside"". To illustrate the theme she suggested using a Medieval suit of armor from a clip art site and filling it with words and phrases. I used this armor from a Dover Medieval Illustration CD I have.



I cut out the image and glued it on the page with matte medium. I used Gesso to paint over a small area on the chest and then let the whole thing dry overnight. I tinted it with watercolor and used acrylics to make that blue mass representing creative spirit and the top of the hill the knight is standing on. (Or if you want, look at it as a tiny planet like in The Little Prince.) When I got done it looked like it was sitting on top of the page rather than being part of it. Originally I was going to use black acrylic and give it a solid matte background then I realized the knight would still be on the surface of the page so I watercolored the background and stamped silver stars. This gave it the depth it needed. Then I did the words in calligraphy: Open Mind, Creative Spirit, Perseverence, Community. I made a few mistakes and covered them up but I was pleased with the overall effect of the page when I got done.

Soul Journaling Day 2

I could not bear to go over my Day 1 page with gesso so I layered a new page with black and white scrapbooking paper left from a bookbinding project. (One of my favorite projects so the paper "means" something to me, for what that's worth. I do not scrapbook. Yuck.) I really did have the forsight to leave a blank first page to do some kind of title page much later. Then I gessoed that and wiped the excess with toilet paper. Yes, toilet paper. I was too lazy to go downstairs to the kitchen and get a paper towel. I also didn't want to use a baby wipe because that would take too much gesso off. I let that dry overnight and of course the page curled. So I pressed the journal under the two heavy dictionaries I bought from a Goodwill store just to use for collage. When I got home from work it was now a flat page so I doodled a color border and stamped "this journal belongs to" in black. Then I did my first name in red Italic calligraphy. It was off center, kind of like me, so I stamped a black heart. I would say that represents me fair enough. I stamped a calligraphy style flourish at the bottom of the page and called it good. I know we were supposed to use our full name and then fill the whole page with our name in various styles... but you know... I liked it exactly the way it was. No more and no less. And yet again I forgot to date it so I did so after the scan.

Soul Journaling Day 1

I turn 50 a month from tomorrow and I am getting a jump on reinventing myself. You can't do it all in one day. It takes time! An ambitious task but I have already lost 20 pounds and am maintaining a tanning salon tan. Next up I'm trying to get enough courage to go apartment hunting. Shush! That's a secret! That's why it's a secret journal!



But I digress... this blog is about the little bits of artwork I do, also in secret, to keep my sanity as a fishmonger. All artwork will be based on prompts from blogs that feature art challenges. This first piece is Day 1 in a Soul Journaling series at Caspiana. It is a simple collage of only dictionary pages. They are glued down and sealed with Matte Medium. This makes absorbant paper easier to write on.  We were supposed to do 3 pages but my journal format is large so I only did one page. I'm not one for following rules. The writing prompt was " Today I feel..." and if applicable use words and phrases from the dictionary pages themselves. I didn't do anything extra, just used a few Sharpies to write with. I like the over all visual appeal and it came out looking like I spent more time than I did. I noticed after I scanned the page I forgot to date it, so I went back and did that by hand. I want to get a good old fashioned date stamp. I hope they still have such a thing at Staples or Wally World.