Back from Vacation

Today the kids and I got back into town from a wonderful couple of weeks spent at my parents' place in rural Kansas. It is always a restorative trip for me and the children too. I never do get much time to actually do things of my own, so I have learned not to lug along a whole lot of stuff thinking I'm going to get to play more than at home, but I think the enforced break is a good thing. There is also usually a visit to either the Utrecht store or Creative Coldsnow's Westport location, both in Kansas City. I was quite pleased this visit to find the Golden Van Dyck Brown in fluid acrylics there, which I have been looking for--I know I could order it online, but it's just so much more fun to pick it up in a store and walk out with it.



As I said, I didn't get to play with actual materials much, but I did manage to find some time here and there to do some of the projects in Susan Tuttle's book Digital Expressions; the images with this blog post are a couple of the results. The building is the one-room schoolhouse that my grandfather attended as a boy; it's just down the road from my parents' farm. The other abstract image was lots of fun to play with, and there were no brushes to wash up afterwards!



I did spend some time thinking about what I want to do over the next few months and realized that I don't have any free time if I do everything. One decision I need to make is whether to sell any holiday cards this year. If I do, I need to get cracking on those, get them posted up on my shop site, and fulfill the orders pronto. I also have to decide if I'm really going to offer an after-school book arts class at my son's school in the fall. (I offered it halfway through the spring but it didn't make.) That's going to take some work to pull together as well.

Other projects in my pipeline are doing something with the painted papers I did before leaving on vacation and finishing the Renaissance triptych book that's been lurking for some time now. I also saw something in the latest Cloth Paper Scissors (I think) that I would like to send in an entry for--a book limited to no more than 6x6", if I remember correctly.

I was also contemplating what to do with the 7gypsies printer's tray I got recently (shame to let those Archiver's coupons go to waste, even if I don't know what I'm going to do with something yet), and I thought it might be fun to do some of the ideas from Mixed Media Self-Portraits and do one in each tray. That's a pretty large undertaking--unless I purposely made myself do it in time limitations. Guess it depends on why I decide to do the project--practice doing instead of thinking, or really delve into the self-portrait concept . . .

And on top of all those things, I forgot to mention that I wish to finish the projects in the online Complex Collage class that Julie Prichard & Chris Cozen are offering . . .

Much to think about, and much to do!

House book--folded accordion with pockets and sewn signatures

I started with a leftover strip of paper from making an Inventor's Journal for my son. When I had folded it into an accordion, it seemed a bit tall, so I decided to fold it up from the bottom to make pockets. Got to have something to put in the pockets, so I tore another strip of leftover paper (Strathmore 400 drawing paper for all of this) into variously sized panels and put two in each pocket. Then I tore some longer strips and folded them into two 2-sheet signatures.


Using Tea Dye Distress Ink and the ink applicator Tim Holtz likes to use with it, I applied the ink all over the accordion and the panels. I wasn't sure yet what I wanted to do with the signatures so left them alone.






I used the General's Classic Sketching & Drawing Kit that I had with me to make three circles on the front cover, using a pale pink, a dusty rose, and a hint of blue. I grabbed a paper napkin (all this so far done in a coffeeshop) and smudged it. Then I used charcoal to draw a house outline on the front. (I did practice on some scrap first.) It looked a bit plain and clearly needed something on the front. As I experimented with adding a door, it was immediately clear that I needed to draw an open door. Very pleased that I could figure out how to do such a thing, I did it and then added some marks to the roof. It ended up looking like a thatched roof. The only way in is through the door, which stands invitingly open.


When I got home, I glued the edges of the accordion pocket shut with a very fine application of Matte Accents (it was easy and to hand). I had thought about sewing them shut but decided that is for another book--I didn't want to add the stitches on the front cover.

I added some yellow and white with the pastel chalk pencils to the house, then I added some Dried Marigold and Tattered Rose to the inside pages of the accordion. I left the loose panels and the back of the accordion with just the Tea Dye.

Some content was called for--I couldn't put it off any longer. I decided that this was going to be a book just for me, rather than something on the level of a gift. Reading The Architecture of Happiness, by Alain de Botton, had such an impact on me that before I returned it to the person who'd loaned it to me, I had to go through the whole book and write down the sentences that moved me the most. There were a lot of them! Also this summer one of my goals was to learn to use Photoshop Elements. Combining these things into a book seemed just right, somehow.


So I imported photos, some from royalty-free web sites and others that I or my mom had taken, fiddled around with layers and such in PSE, and then overlaid the image with a quote from the book. I guess this has really turned out as a contemplative or meditative book for me, because I love to pick it up, thumb through the little pages, and read the quotes. My thought for the slips of paper in the pockets is that I can use those to write down notes about things I'd want in my fantasy house. The end result is pretty simple, and if I were going to turn it into a gift book it would need some things added to it, but for myself, I love it.