We spent a day at Yabbers a while ago making this rainbow paper. Beverley had prepared about 20 icecream tubs of recycled archival board that she had dyed different colours and we had three vats going at once. One started yellow and ended up blue, one started pink and ended up yellow and one started blue and ended up pink.
We are going to put the books, which are miniature (7 cm cubed), in the Valda Quick Biennial Paper Arts exhibition which will be held at the end of the year in Bundoora. Each of us will be doing a different binding.
Last week at Yabbers we worked through Keith Smith's instructions for Greek Binding, I chose to use five different coloured threads to go with the rainbow look. Most of the thread is some hemp that I bought at Victoria Market a couple of months ago. It is described as beading thread but it is really too thick for most sewing. I have found that it splits quite easily and for this small book I used four strands which I waxed so that they held together well. This is such a clear photo of the stitches you can see that I got a little lost with some of the overlapping stitches in the middle.
Since last week I have been doing some preparation for the class that I'm teaching at the Geelong Textile event Fibres Geelong. The class is called Brazen Breastplates and the subtitle is Colour and Texture in Handmade Paper.
I have made a whole lot of textured samples and have started some of the treatments on them.
Graphite and Shellac first coat
wax crayon and shellac
irridescent medium
watercolour (will get irridescent medium)
first stage of verdigris wax (acrylic paint)
untreated
Collage Paste Paper
I used some of the red paste paper to cover my sample for the bookbinding class tomorrow, a W Binding or binding onto a concertina.
I start another class at St Steven's in Ringwood next Saturday 24 July, this time we are doing Coptic/Celtic, W binding, piano hinge and sewing onto tapes.
These are the books I made with the rusted papers I talked about in my last post, I already had the handmade paper I used for the covers. I had couched a doily onto recycled paper then rusted and splashed with a little indigo. I coated the covers with shellac to seal the paper and make the covers more resilient.
This one I made with the silk I attached to shoji paper some time ago. The lining is a photocopy of the silk onto handmade recycled paper.
These are some paper I made in a workshop with Amanda Degener using walnut dye and indigo on flax paper.
The paper in this one is a sample of solar printing and once again the lining is a photocopy of the cover. All of these are variations on two needle Coptic and Celtic binding, many with hemp thread and apart from the rusted books the paper inside is Hannemuhle, they are now all for sale at Tussock in Point Lonsdale.
I have been working on a few other things since my last post, most notably a custom made box for a Nick Mount perfume bottle, the perfume is called tarantella and is made by Tommi Sooni.
This is it nearly finished, I needed to change the closing mechanism for the doors but it is now in its new home.
The other things I've been working on are a book for the Atlas exhibition at Artisan Books and an exquisite palette for a show at St Luke's. I have used well beaten ginger lily for both pieces and for the palette piece I dyed it red, yellow and blue and worked from one colour to the next. These are the left over sheets from the first batch, I love the way they sit together. I have plans for the sheets but I don't like separating them they look so good in a stack. I used the uncoloured ginger lily paper in my piece for Atlas and I was finally able to use an A2 pulp painting that I dropped on the ground.
The artist statement had to be 20 words so here is mine The god Atlas stands in the landscape holding up a world made from an atlas.
