By the Ocean, a circle accordion book

I have had a lot of fun doing a circle accordion book, although at the very end (it figures!) I am running into some unexpected issues, but I'm sure I'll come up with something, right?

To start with, I applied Daler Rowney FW acrylic inks to a 22x30" sheet of Arches 140-lb. watercolor paper using brushes. Towards the end I switched to a stencil brush and was happier with the results. I went a little darker overall than my original intention but managed to lighten it up & unify everything at the end by putting a layer of Silver Moss over all. For the most part, I used pearlescent inks but did use a bit of two regular ones for some contrast and increased interest. They mostly got covered over with the pearlescents but still served their purpose.

I then cut the strips up to make a cover and four strips of internal pages (finished book measures 6" tall by 5-1/2" wide). Took a little bit to work out some lines about how the ocean makes me feel--nothing to change the world but meaningful to me. Practiced my handwriting in a journal and then made moves to put the words in the book.

Here is where I have gone astray a bit! I did the responsible thing and put light pencil guidelines on the paper so my writing would be straight, and then I wrote with a Pigma Callipen, but it is NOT permanent ink. So when I went in to erase my pencil guidelines, the ink is disappearing too! Right now I'm deciding whether to go in and cover up the pencil lines with charcoal pencil, which actually might look pretty nice to ground the words, or go with the erasing effect and have it look like the tide coming in and erasing marks left on the sand.

Later . . .

I tried using a charcoal pencil on some of the scraps of paper and was not taken with the result, plus the thought of having to mess around with a fixative and even then I'd probably get facing pages rubbing onto each other . . . no, I think not. Plan B went into the effect with the eraser, and I LOVE IT! The ink looks better not being so black, but since I did it bottoms up on the words, it really does look like the sand and the sea breeze have been there working their magic on the scribblings. I know that the whole thing would probably be even better if I did add something to ground the words with, but I'm not confident I can do that without messing it up, and right now I like the overall effect of the words floating in the sea. So there.



All I need is some self-adhesive linen hinging tape to attach the pages together. Once that's done, I'll take pictures and post them up.

Instant Book: "There is a Pleasure . . . "

When the Muse visits, she blows in, makes herself at home, and refuses to leave until she has said what she's got to say. Goodness!

Yesterday I followed Esther K. Smith's instructions for making an instant book; I used a sheet of 8-1/2 x 11" brown kraft paper. So cool! I realized that the acrylic skin weaving I did (that was not at all to my liking) actually looked great on the front cover, so I glued that down with Matte Accents. Then I thought that the skeleton leaf that came packaged with wood-grained chopsticks that I put in my stocking this Xmas (I'm pretty much responsible for my own stocking stuffers and table presents) would be the perfect thing to put over the weaving, and that turned out to be the case. I put a very thin streak of Matte Accents along the spine of the leaf and adhered it to the weaving.

Then I searched for a nature quote and found part of a Lord Byron poem: "There is a pleasure in the pathless woods, there is a rapture on the lonely shore . . . " I quickly decided where to put the words on the pages and wrote them in with a white Bruynzeel pencil. I'm happy with the writing, surprisingly enough. I wanted it to look rustic and as though someone had written with something they'd found on the forest floor.

Then I used the set of leaf stamps by Hero Arts that I so miserably failed at using last night with the Jacquard Castaway stamp pad (don't use Castaway on brown kraft paper) and stamped using Archival Ink Sepia. I had no problems or doubts about which image to put where. I am very pleased with the result.