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.

Halfway through the Complex Collage Designated Shape lessons

After taking about 3 months to complete a single collage (a funeral, end-of-school activities, and then summer trips have considerably slowed me down), I am finally moving on to the second one in the wonderful & amazing online workshop by Julie Prichard and Chris Cozen called Complex Collage.

This is on an 8x8 gallery-wrapped canvas. First I added the 3 architectural blueprints (from a sheet bought from Finchley Paper Arts) with soft gel gloss medium. I knew that I wanted the background color to be Van Dyck Brown, but I was concerned that it would be too dark. So I have come up with a two-part solution to counteract that: dilute it considerably with Acrylic Glazing Liquid, and also lay down some gold gesso before painting on the Van Dyck Brown. That did such a wonderful job underneath the acrylic inks, and I am hoping for the same results here.

Later . . .



In the middle of the lesson, I added a drawing of a Green Man onto my canvas and then painted it (shown in attached image before painting, obviously). At this point, I'm not too happy with what I've got. Too much opaque paint (the red oxide, I think), and I want the man to be coming out of the shadows, and that is definitely not what is going on--there's no transition between the background and the image. I may have to post it where it is and ask for help.

Life as Geometry: Shorts Book with Origami Pocket Envelope

Too much fun! While my son had his fencing lesson next door, I sat in an empty classroom and made a little book. Following Alisa Golden's excellent instructions in Expressive Handmade Books, I made a little Shorts Book out of notebook paper and colored a rainbow spiral on it (I could definitely see that making this with double-sided paper would be very attractive indeed).

Then at home this evening while watching the Tour de France (taped from this morning), I quickly wrote a few silly lines about circles and got enough for the four pages of the book. Took just a few minutes to write them in, and then about another five to cut a strip of paper from an oversized art calendar that my aunt Margaret gave me and fold an easy pocket to hold the book. I love it! Ms. Golden's folding instructions and accompanying diagrams never got me lost, and as I am quite spatially challenged, that's a feat worth mentioning.

The book style is preferable to the instant book I did earlier; the page thickness doesn't get in the way. Or perhaps that's because I was using such thin paper? I'll have to double-check that with thicker paper when I do one with more thought.



Running up a quick prototype--as that's what I viewed this as--was extremely useful. It will be a great example to show one's students why one needs guidelines on the paper for writing, it helped me decide which style of writing worked best within the book and with the words chosen, and I realized that I really needed to treat the facing pages as one long spread rather than separate pages (which would be my preference).

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!

Complex Collage class progress

I enrolled in my first ever online class last month--Complex Collage, taught by Julie Prichard and Chris Cozen. Did great keeping up with things until life intervened, as it does. Had to make arrangements to go out of town for two days for a funeral (with two kids, that takes a lot of arranging!), then out of town again for a school event, then allergies descended . . . but the great thing about the class is that there are no time constraints on the lessons or access to the videos. What a wonderful thing, to have something in my life that is fun and also is no added stress!

Right now I'm working on the middle stages of completing my first collage for the class. I am gaining some confidence. I know how to do some things now that I didn't before. That's good. Now I have more information to analyze placement of items with, and to at least recognize when something isn't quite there. With reading all the comments and responses to other students in the class, that gives me a great deal to pull on when trying to turn that objective eye on my own stuff.

On the one hand, I feel like a child trying to learn cursive, but on the other I feel brave and am proud of myself for attempting something hard.

Evening with Friends

Tonight I spent a few hours in the company of two women who also share an interest in creating things and discussing this process and the results of making art, and while not quite as fulfilling as some of our other evenings have been, I did leave with an image in my mind. This is unusual for me, since I don't consider myself to be a visually oriented person, but this one I have. It's more impressionistic, almost but not quite abstract, in style, and it would be three friends sitting at a table with light coming from an overhead, old chandelier, not something shiny but old, and maybe in a square with a light at each corner, and shadows everywhere especially in all the corners. Colors would include deep, dark reds, the light from the chandelier a rich buttery yellow.

"Bathtime" is completed

So pleased that I finished "Bathtime"! Got it done in time for my private showing :-) with two friends on Wednesday last week, who came over to have wine by candlelight and talk about what we are working on.

The background began with a layer of Daniel Smith's gold gesso, then a layer of Mars Black Heavy Body acrylic (using bottle caps to protect the areas that were to be bubbles), then clear granular gel. After that I started painting with interference blue, violet, and a touch of red. I used gel medium to get the iridescent glass balls to stick initially and then dropped Crystal Lacquer onto them to make sure they stayed. I finished it off with layers of gel medium, including one tinted with Phthalo Blue (Red Shade) that really helped to unify everything.

The inset panel is aquabord, image stamped with dye ink, background originally chroma jewel watercolor sprays from Stamp Zia, then gel medium on top, acrylic paint on top of that, and finally 4-5 layers of clear tar gel. I am pleased with the result even though I originally envisioned this as a much darker piece. But I did lots of fun things (using the gold gesso for one) and got to play with neat textures and interference paints. Love those!

My friends liked it a lot--said the different textures all worked, loved the effect of the interference paints under the layers of gel medium and clear tar gel, liked the brushstrokes, loved the way it looked different under different levels of lighting . . . all in all a good reaction.

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Separate revelation: I realized that I don't really think visually, so what I am doing messing around with all this stuff??? Sigh.

Ongoing Projects

I have so many things to do I thought I'd better make a list:

1. Finish "Bathtime" piece
This requires continued messing around with it. I think I am on the right track--this evening I painted interference violet and blue paints over both the clear granular gel and the black background, and it ended up reminding me of wisps of steam rising up in a hot bathroom. The rivulets of clear granular gel remind me of the condensation that forms on the mirrors and drips down. I think the "bubbles" are going to work out all right with the glass balls over them, but I'm not sure yet. Should I put some kind of border around the circles--and if so, what in the world would it be? And how to adhere the balls to the piece is yet to be decided. I am going to need to paint some overall covering over everything too, and I need to decide what that will be (soft gel, heavy gel, gloss/matte/satin, etc.). Finally I have to decide how to integrate the nude woman panel into the whole thing. Using glass mosaic pieces at the corner of both the small panel and the large one does a good job, but I need to decide if I should add some blue & purple swirls into the fog at the bottom of the inset panel, or if I should add just a few streaks of interference red paint to the larger background panel. Or what the heck--maybe both!

2. Finish two fairy canvases
I have the idea of wrapping each with wire and having crystals strung on the wire. That's also how I could attach the bottle with glass shards inside to the piece. Also need to put a couple of layers of gel medium over them.

3. Complete house accordion book
The cover is done and the signatures are sewn in, but I need to add text to them. I think I'm going to put stuff in from Alain de Botton's The Architecture of Happiness. I need to decide what the test is, lay it out on the page, and execute it.

4. Complete Renaissance women's triptych
The triptych itself is done, but I need to make a final decision on the paper for the signatures, choose the embroidery thread for sewing the signatures, create and add text & illustrations to the signatures, and sew them in (must also choose beads to cover the spine sewings). I think I'm going to use the Katherine Phillips poems, because its weirdness is useful to demonstrate the small box that women used to beat their wings against, some more successfully than others.

5. Finish off the little blizzard books I made a few weeks ago. They need covers (or to be incorporated into something larger) and text on the pages. I haven't thought about these much so am not sure where I'm going to go with them.

I'd really like to wrap up these projects so I can think about the new book styles I want to try and also figure out some different ways to use the beautiful chiyogami papers I received for my birthday last week. I am now a proud members of those in their forties! And happy to be there.

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.

Paint-Sample Album

Tonight I made one of the books out of Re-bound--the paint-sample album--with an eye towards doing it in the book arts workshop I might teach at my son's school (if anyone signs up for it!). It took me about an hour and a half from beginning to end, so if I want to do the whole thing in one session for the workshop, I am going to have to prepare some of the materials ahead of time--probably cutting the paint samples and sheets would be the obvious thing to do. I wanted to use this as an opportunity to get them familiar with using a paper trimmer though; maybe I'll figure out where I can fit that into an earlier class and just save them until we are ready to assemble the book. That's a good idea . . .

I didn't have the right hardware for the top so had to use brads until I can make a list to get the right stuff. It looks pretty cute and I think everyone will like the hinge on the top cover. I made some mistakes and judgment errors, which is good--I'll be able to point them out in class and use them to demonstrate certain things.

It was fun to go start-to-finish on something. Having the possibility of leading this workshop in front of me is doing wonders for my activity in the studio. I always did work better with deadlines!