Last post for 2010, sneaking in under the wire

Tonight my son is spending the night at a friend's and my husband is playing a gig an hour away, so my daughter and I stayed home and painted papers (she helped me a little bit).

Last night I tried to settle and do something but was just not able to do that, so instead I made some notes in the new little Moleskines I got for Xmas, did my first read-through of my first Mary Oliver book of poetry, and looked through some of 1000 Artist Journal Pages.  While I read I made notes about many things and ended up having a great & fulfilling evening even though it wasn't what I had thought I was going to do at the beginning of it.

I got a great idea about keeping lists so that I can keep up with my life instead of it getting away from me.  I also think this will help keep my list-making side in check and not let it get out of hand so that I end up just feeling bad about the things that aren't getting crossed off my list--because this book won't have things to cross off!  Right now I don't want to say much more about it, but I hope to complete it within a week and will do a full post/explanation then.

Tonight in preparation for making the book, I painted pages from a Dale Rowney acrylic pad (115lb paper, canvas style on one side and smooth on the other) with Golden Acrylic paints--begain with Cerulean Blue Deep, then some Turquoise (Phthalo) followed by Cobalt Teal and finally Phthalo Green (Yellow Shade) mixed with Acrylic Glazing Liquid (AGL henceforth).  I moved the paint around with various items--brayer, my fingers (in gloves!), a palette knife, a paper towel, or a paintbrush.  Over all that I put a layer of Titan Buff mixed with AGL to tone everything down.  The pages aren't finished yet--I'll still add some circles and patterns, probably with acrylic ink in hopes of reducing the sticky page factor.

I would like to thank everyone who has been kind enough to leave a comment on my blog this year.  There are so many wonderful blogs and artists out there, and it's impossible to comment on everything, so I really appreciate the effort made when someone stopping by does leave a note.

Happy New Year to everyone!

Acrylic Skins for Weaving

Tonight I prepared some acrylic skins to use in demonstrations for my upcoming Book Arts Introductory at my son's school (if it makes!). I made a fiber skin (using Liquitex Blended Fibers; Jerry's Artarama didn't have the Golden version in stock) as well as three fluid acrylics skins (Raw Sienna, Burnt Sienna, and Burnt Umber Light, all Golden). My plan is to cut up the colored skins and weave them together as a cover ornamentation, which is an idea I got from the Woven Ticket book in Re-bound.

All the skins are done on sheets of glass that I got at the local hardware store.

So these can dry until Monday morning, as I don't think I'll get a chance to do anything again until then. It will be interesting to see if I can, in fact, weave them together. I'm not entirely sure what I'll do with the fiber paste skin. Might turn it into a small book, as I bet I could get a decent signature out of them, and use them as pages, or use as a front cover for a larger book.