Deer Valley travel journal 2012

Grungepaper cover

I got my travel journal done tonight, much to my great satisfaction.  Putting it together was very much a last-minute affair, and I was sewing the binding in the car on the way to the airport, but it got finished before we arrived at the parking lot.

Ribbon binding of 3 signatures

In desperation I had purchased an Amy Tangerine travel journal at Archiver's in the morning of the day we left, but when I got home & opened it I could already see the stitching coming apart.  Not impressed with that.

Close-up of center bead
and braiding

I ripped the stitches out of the binding and used all the inserts that had been there along with sheets from Archiver's that I had (8.5x11" in colors of something like Polar Ice and Natural Cream).  The recent publication of Pages inspired the binding, although I had to modify it a little to suit my project.  I love the ribbon I used, which I'd gotten to make bookmarks as gifts for those who bought my holiday cards last year, and the bead is a Trinkette from Michaels.

Title page (on kraft
paper in case the Distress
Stains didn't set
completely)

For the cover, I used a sheet of Grungepaper that I colored with Distress Stains and then set with my heat gun.  No time for stamping or other decoration!  I ran the top of a trail map my husband had brought me from an earlier trip this year through my Xyron and adhered it to the cover, then I stapled the acetate cover piece from the aforementioned Amy Tangerine journal over that.  (I had to cut it in half; the back part is on my back cover.)

After coming home, I did
take time to draw the
little vases I bought

I guess it really should have been my "Park City travel journal 2012" since I didn't actually ski this year, but oh well.

Opening page, including
small circular Zentangle
(I think I used the wine
bottle base to draw
the circle)

Using the inserts from the store-bought journal worked out quite well.  I had great places to attach things like lift tickets and menus to, and they provided an eclectic element of fun to the overall look.  That will be a great way to use up further scraps from my paper pile.  And not just in travel journals but for my holiday books as well.  Must remember this.



Plenty of blogs occupy my reading list, and while I do honor the effort that others put into creating a remembrance after the actual event is over, I have come to the conclusion that said approach will just not work for me.  Once it's over, I am ready to move on to a new project.  Tonight I was happy to insert all my ephemera into the journal, and I do still plan to print out a few photos and include them as well, but otherwise I am DONE.  No going back and drawing fancy borders, decorating pages, etc.  If I didn't get to it on the trip, it's not going to be in the journal.

One of my daughter's
contributions to the
trip journal

I love the pictures that my daughter included on the pages (there is another one besides the one pictured here).  In years to come it will be so sweet to page through and see her recording of her trip.

I finished my caterpillar book!

Woo hoo, I finished my caterpillar practice book!  I did the first one last week before going on vacation, and then today (while my 12-year-old recuperated at home from having four adult teeth extracted this morning) I did the other two caterpillars.  It surprises me how simple the stitch is and how quickly it can be done.  Once the head is done, instructions aren't even necessary because everything is so clear.

Now . . . I am not pretending that mine was perfectly executed by any stretch of the imagination.  I just think it's pretty damn good for a first go :-).

Front of caterpillar book, done with 7gypsies covers
and waxed linen cord from WalMart for 99 cents

I used one straight needle and one curved needle (would have used two curved ones but I broke one at the beginning of my first caterpillar and was too impatient to bend two more).  The curved one was nice but not absolutely necessary as when doing a Coptic stitch binding.  If you look closely on the middle caterpillar, you'll see that I managed to break one of its legs by mistakenly gathering into the wrap of the body.  As Rick Perry would say, Oops!  (Can't stand that man and am VERY SORRY he is my state's governor.  I certainly didn't vote for him.)

I think the caterpillar looks good, at least as far as I can tell.  If anyone who knows more about book binding than I do has any comments or things to point out, please do so by all means.

Caterpillar sewing across spine (this is the third--
bottom--caterpillar, so theoretically it's the best
one since I did it last)

Back cover of book showing the caterpillars' tails

Open book showing severe splayage due to too-tight
sewing from covers to signatures

One caterpillar stitch completed!

Front of book with first
caterpillar stitching completed

Well, I must say that I am quite delighted!  I do not know what I thought would be so hard about this.  Maybe I am just getting better at following directions--although this was way easier than following those horrible little diagrams for Coptic stitch.

Spine of book showing signatures
attached with caterpillar stitching

The marvelous person who told me a couple of days ago that you just keep on doing what you were doing on the cover when you get to attaching the signatures couldn't have phrased it more perfectly.  And as the images show, that worked a treat.

Back cover of book showing tail end of caterpillar stitching

Possibly the only issue I am going to have is that, as usual, I may have used too much tension.  That is always my problem, it seems.  Ah well.

Inside front cover showing ladder rung pattern
of caterpillar stitch, just like it's supposed to!

I would like to do this in a different color next time.  Having done it with black thread, it does appear that a long bug has crawled on top of my book :-).

Practicing the caterpillar stitch

Now that I'm done with my girlie glam from Traci Bautista's Strathmore workshop, my attention must return to my caterpillar stitch book that I've set myself to do.  I looked again at Keith Smith's book (Volume III) as well as at the wonderful online tutorial posted by some generous Aussies.  Oh--and I also watched this great video of someone demonstrating the caterpillar.

Yet I was still strangely reluctant to begin.  But I am sick of tiptoeing around this, I want to get the book done and its parts off my dining room table, and I need to get it done pronto so I can make a quick trip journal for our long-weekend-vacation that we leave on in one week exactly.  So, no more delaying.

But . . . I still wasn't ready to poke holes and blaze forth.  I have decided to be an adult about this and actually do a prototype.  In general I never do those--waste of time and materials--but if I screw up my nice book covers, I will be disappointed, so I thought some practice might actually be in order here.  I grabbed a piece of scrap kraft card stock and some linen thread I picked up from WalMart for 99 cents, intending it for just such an occasion as this (i.e., one not to waste the good supplies on).  I used a candle flame to bend myself a second curved needle, and I used a black Copic marker to color half of the thread black in order to replicate using two different colors of thread.  (In reality, I just cut one long piece of thread and put needles on each end.)

Much to my great surprise, this was pretty simple.  I think watching the video and understanding that the back of the caterpillar looks like ladder rungs helped a lot.  And now I get it that one just continues onto the signatures from the front board (thanks, Risi).  Doing the practice was good because I realized that I need to poke my holes a little wider to allow the legs to be longer.  I am still not sure how one turns around to attach the back board, but I will go back to Keith's book and figure that out--although I guess I do have to do that before I start because I need to punch the holes for it.  Hmm.

I am encouraged by this!

My girlie glam!

Well, I still haven't touched my caterpillar stitch book, but after a few dry days I did get marvelously back into creating things.

I took a day off on Monday this week and did something totally new--a Scratchbord kit that I picked up at Jerry's.  It was interesting following the steps through and seeing what emerged.  I do like to follow someone else's instructions the first time when doing something new--it's a great shortcut to becoming familiar with something.  I still need to go back and scrape away some more from the area around the window and then reapply the ink, and I will also go back and redefine the tablecloth areas.  It was fun to do but I did have to remember to keep good posture and not hunch up.



Some of my time was also spent on the annual reorganization of my studio area (two walls of the dining room).  I realized that drawers just work really well for me at this stage, and they are a great way to put a lot of stuff in a pretty small space.  But I do think I need just one more cart out here (this is by no means addressing all the stuff I have crammed away in our utility room) . . .







Yesterday while going through stuff on my desk, I put some scrap papers my mom had done last August whilst working on a birthday card for a friend together with a quick 5-hole pamphlet stitch for a little journal.  Can't believe it took me six months to do that!!










I also spent some time (hanging out in the community center while kids had taekwondo doodling on a tag made from one of the earlier projects of Traci Bautista's free Strathmore online workshop.  The last six weeks plus Traci's workshop has made me much freer and more confident.  I think those two go hand-in-hand anyway, I suppose.

Finally, I have finished the final project of Traci's--the Girlie Glam.  I had absolutely oodles and oodles of fun doing this, and the end result blows me away.  Not with the quality of drawing, mind you, but how it really does get to somewhere amazing the more layers one adds.  I followed Traci's color palette pretty closely for this one, so not too many of my own choices there, but what fun!

I have never done a freehand drawing of anything that I expected to be recognized before, so I am quite glad one can see that it is a female.  With an eye.  And a mouth.

The doodling was so much fun, and I loved the way her hair turned out--it's got watercolor pencils, acrylic paint, markers, Prismacolor pencils, Sharpie paint pens, and Stickles, and it just looks cool.  I'm so pleased!  (For my own records, I used the following paints, all Golden Fluids unless otherwise specified:  Quin Magenta, Naphthol Red Light, Hansa Yellow Med, Perm Green Light, Quin Red, Pyrrole Red, Turquois, Ultramarine Blue, Quin Violet, Cobalt Teal, maybe some Green Gold, Quin Crimson, and Titanium White, and finally Derivan Matisse Southern Ocean Blue (Flow)).  Stickles were Waterfall, Crystal, and Silver.

Stagnation, then inspiration

 

So I did not seem to get too much done this week.  I ended up spending one entire evening helping my son with his algebra homework, and I also battled the Evil Fairy that says what in the hell are you thinking, why are you bothering, how can you think this is contributing anything positive, and furthermore you are Wasting Your Time and should be doing Something Else. 

Towards the end of the week, in preparation for a birthday lunch for a good friend, I did get inspired to make this bookmark.  In doing so, I remembered how much I truly love stitching on paper.  I hope to explore that a little more in the next few months.  It is time-consuming . . . but what a sense of accomplishment!

Detail of center of bookmark

In making this, I used an ornare stencil I had gotten in England a few years ago.  I poked the design using my parchment craft tools into a strip of sticky-back canvas, and after doing so realized I could see the design only on the back and not through the canvas.  Oh well, it was still enough to do the job; I just had to make sure that I went up through the new hole on the wrong side and went back in through the previous stitch on the canvas side.  (Before doing the stitching, I had sprayed the canvas with Stamp Zia spray watercolors & heat-set them with a heat gun.)  When I was done, it was difficult to remove the backing, as expected.  I ended up cutting away the backing with small scissors, and that seemed to do the trick.  

Detail of bottom of bookmark

I layered the canvas onto green Colorbok pearlescent paper, then onto a special glittery paper (again acquired in England a few years ago) that picked up the glitter in the embroidery thread I'd used, and finally onto another piece of Colorbok pearlescent paper that I'd punched the corners with the Deco punch from We R Memory Keepers.

I enjoyed doing the stitching and found that as I went along I was more willing to poke my needle in the right place to achieve the look I wanted rather than sticking to the pre-poked holes.  That was kind of new for me, and it produced a surprising confidence.  I liked that.

Now the picture to the left is where my week 3 of the Traci Bautista Strathmore course is at the moment.  I tell you what, in my crunchy town of Austin, it is impossible to find a plastic vegetable basket anywhere!  The only place I haven't checked is Fiesta, but everywhere else has had their produce department scrutinized by me in the last week.  I ended up acquiring some new stencils from the wall stenciling section at Michael's, and I am pretty happy with them.  The next step with this is to add a head + shoulders, and I think I need to practice that a bit before doing anything I am committed to here.  Plus I noticed in the video that Traci used the Low Viscosity Gesso by Matisse Derivan, which I am sure is available at my local Jerry's Artarama, and so now course I feel I must have that or nothing else will do.  Part of Traci's entire theme was that you use what's at hand, but I am afraid that just goes in one ear and out the other with me.  The materials you use make a difference to the outcome of the finished product--and I learned that the hard way.

Something I did today on a lovely but kind of cool Sunday afternoon was to try some journaling lines out of Quinn MacDonald's book Raw Art Journaling.  First I did them in the Long Tall Sally book that I made from Julie Prichard's Super Nova Art Journaling online class.  I decided that I did not like the thickness of the marker tip I had used, I did not like the way some of my lines had too much amplitude, and I also did not like the way the GellyRoll and Souffle pens worked over the paint and the marker.  

Moving on, I used a different--thinner--pen and did lines on only part of a spread out of another journal made from the Super Nova Art Journaling class.  I liked these a lot better.  Next time I would do the "confetti" at the line intersections with brighter colors, I think but this has its own subdued beauty.

So . . . what am I doing to do in the coming week?  I have a couple of days that are busy with things, so I won't have too much extended free time then, plus our housekeeper comes another day and I try to stay out of her way (plus I am kind of uncomfortable working with anyone else around).  

But I think one of my highest priorities is completing the damn caterpillar stitch that I avoided last week and also finish my Traci piece.  Strathmore starts up the next workshop in March, so I need to get this one under my belt before the next one commences.  I loved Traci's videos and advice and workshop, because it was simply not possible to recreate what she did--you *had* to do your own thing.  No one else has done that as effectively as she did.  

I would like to do a quick encaustic mixed media piece from an article on the Daniel Smith site.  Seems I could get it done in a day if I were focused.

Finally, I need to start planning and executing my travel journal for our Presidents' Day ski trip.  It's not very far away, and I would really like to do something special this year.

So it's good to have documented what I did this week and also put down my starting thoughts for the upcoming week.  It helps me get focused once the morning responsibilities are taken care of (kids off to school and myself fed and coffee-d), and it sure helps me get going.  One of the hardest things to do is not check on blogs or news sites, and having a clear objective makes that a lot easier to put off until lunchtime/breaktime/etc.

Week 3 with Traci Bautista

Imagination
The journey matters
Morning (originally meant to be "morning comes" but no room)

All words from Ursula K. Le Guin quotes at robertgenn.com.

Pens were Sharpie chisel tip (orange), Sharpie fine point (purple), and a giant Magnum 44 (red).

With the first additions of paint, I used (Golden Fluid Acrylics) Permanent Green Light, Jenkins Green, and Hansa Yellow Medium.  I ended up with areas that are too dark, but now I am learning that just provides an opportunity in later layers to add white or light paint to brighten up those areas--and that in fact, it is GOOD to make areas like that in the beginning stages in order to have something interesting to work on in later stages.

I did get further than this . . . but not much.  Completion will come in later posts.  But it was a good beginning.

A good week

Well, it has been a good week.  Fun, creative, and productive.  I am proud of myself for doing what I said I would do--got "in the studio" by 8:30 a.m., which also stopped me from going back to bed and wasting the day.  I also managed to avoid floundering about what I wanted to do, thanks to all the thinking I did in the last couple of weeks about what I hope to achieve this year.  I've got goals!  :-)  

These first pics are of the little book I cut pages for last week, mentioned in my last blog post.  I made covers for it from white presentation board.  So far I have decorated only the front of the front cover, but I was pleased with it.  The tree is from a KaiserCraft wood piece (used as a mask), and the rest of the materials used include Adirondack Color Washes, thin Prismacolor markers,  Distress Ink pads, and Sharpie poster paint markers.

I love trees, with or without leaves

Last night while occupying myself in the lobby of the Brushy Creek Community Center during the kids' taekwondo classes, I put myself to work using some of the doodle ideas from Traci's Strathmore workshop on one of the inside pages.  It was fun!  I mainly used a Micron pen, but there are a few bits of a blue Sharpie poster paint marker as well.  Adding the border transformed the page, and also I noticed again how extremely useful Zentangling has been for helping me doodle.  I do remember that I used to *love* to doodle when I was in high school and would draw loads and loads of different sizes of circles on pages . . . need to get back to that.

Doodle close-up

Another thing I am really quite pleased with is that I did something new this week:  carved my own stamp!  Traci Bautista's Strathmore workshop had me thinking about this yet again, as I have many times before, and then when I was wandering around Jerry's Artarama early last week I noticed that they had a new kit by Speedball for stamp carving.  Clearly a sign that I was meant to get it and do it!  It is one more way for me to make my art my own.  The kit came with a small piece of pink rubber block, a knife handle and two tips, and tracing paper.  I searched my drawers of stuff for a suitable image and ended up using the top of the palm tree from the Mexican loteria cards (#51).  Traced, transferred, and carved.  It was so much easier than I expected it would be!  I added the lines within the design myself.  It may not look like much to anyone else, but I love it.

On Friday I finally made a decision about what kind of book to make. One of my goals this year is to become much more familiar and practiced with different book structures. Often I get bogged down in aspects of that which I think I "should" do . . . so this time I decided that my goal was simply to practice the book form, and thus I wasn't going to add pressure to myself to embellish or create the perfect cover at the same time.   Voila--unblocked.

I measured and cut boards, sanded the edges, and cut paper from a beautiful sheet I'd gotten from Hollander's a couple of years ago.  I have found that I have an unsettling & probably unhealthy urge to hoard supplies for the "perfect" use, but I am coming to realize there is no such thing.  So with nary a qualm I pulled out the paper and cut it up for this project.  (With some of the scraps I even made a smaller book.)  I did not yet get to the point of punching holes in the signatures or the covers; that will come this week.

Small boards (3-1/2" square) covered
with scrap from the big notebook

My plan is to do my first caterpillar stitch.  It's not exactly clear to me how one attaches the signatures, since normally one works up from the back cover and this caterpillar appears to go the opposite way, but it did occur to me yesterday that I can do the cover stitching, and when I get to the signatures, I can just turn the whole thing 180 degrees so that I feel I am adding signatures from the back cover to the front.  Hopefully that will work.

The little book came out quite cute.  As the covers are 3-1/2" square, I cut the pages to be 3-1/4" square.  I used many different shades of Archiver's card stock that I thought would look good with the book cover:  kraft, cabernet, pomegranate splash, pastel yellow, carob cream, neutral tan, pear crush, natural, cream white, sugar cream, and fudge cover.  The point was for this to be quick and easy (and not lay around half-finished for weeks or months), so I used my new Cinch 2 that I got in a great post-Thanksgiving Day sale.  Worked great!

Finally, at the weekend I came across the site of Marilyn Scott-Waters, and from it I did the following little cover for a 5x8" ruled pad.  It was easy and took all of about 10 minutes to do, and it gave me some great ideas for making my own.  Plus it is something my daughter will like and also something she can help me do.

Front cover, added to a 5x8"
lined notepad from Office Depot

The inside has a pocket;
I covered up the Office Depot logo
as best I could with lace tape

So upcoming this week I seem to have lots of social engagements and not that many days of uninterrupted creative time.  Thus I am setting goals that I think I can accomplish without pressurizing myself:  do the last week of Traci Bautista's workshop, and complete the caterpillar book.  Ought to be able to get my head around that!

Week 2 of Traci Bautista's Strathmore workshop

This time I did my first go in the Strathmore Visual Journal (9x12", Bristol) before moving on to the 18x24" Strathmore Mixed Media paper.

For both pieces I used the following:
tube watercolors--Royal Talens ArtCreation (Cobalt Blue, Violet, Scarlet, and Vermilion)
watercolor crayons--Caran d'Ache (Sapphire Blue, Turquoise)
watercolor pencils--Derwent (Ultramarine)
liquid watercolor spray--StampZia Chroma Spray (Cherry)
acrylic ink--Daler Rowney FW (Process Magenta)
acrylic paint--Golden Fluid Acrylics (Titanium White)
gel sticks--Faber-Castell

When I did the second side of the Mixed Media paper, I switched to the new SoHo tube watercolors from Jerry's Artarama: alizarin crimson, permanent rose, cobalt blue, and then I tried to make a violet by mixing some cadmium red into the cobalt blue. Actually that did not work so well! I ended up using ultramarine blue with cadmium red. Also used a bit of New Gamboge Yellow.

Of course, I was so excited to have some time to myself this afternoon (on a Sunday when the family is home!!) that I cut up the 18x24" mixed media sheet before taking pictures of the second side.  Duh.  But I don't think that matters, now that I write about it, because the whole point of the exercise was to decorate a whole sheet at once that was going to get cut up into smaller pieces.  Well I tell you, what I got out of this single sheet was amazing.  Got the Vagabond up & running and cut the following:








four baroque shapes for a mini-book (later cut covers out of white presentation board) attached with book rings . . .












some large tags . . .



















some regular rectangles that I can use as either card panels or book pages . . .



















and with the leftovers I also cut a small tag, a couple of reinforcements, a little picture tab, and many, many inchies!