Christmas

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year

It took me a while to come up with the design for my Christmas cards and I needed to get them done in a hurry. Here is what I came up with. I had the yellow and blue pulps for some other projects (My cards for the Yabbers, Sabuda cards that I bought in the US and have embellished and invites for a wedding) and used stencils to make the designs in fine recycled pulp.

The full sheets an two variations

Noel on white card

Presents on white card

Stripe tree on white card

Spotty tree on white card

The mould with gaffer tape stencil

Playing with Eco Dye

 It has been so long since I posted, I have been away for about six weeks in the US, I went for the IAPMA Congress that was held in conjunction with Friends of Dard Hunter at the Morgan Conservatory. I spent a couple of week before the conference visiting New York, Boston and Washington, just as well for me that I went there BEFORE rather than after, so sorry to hear about the devastation caused by Sandy. I had a week where I visited Cincinnati and Chicago then flew to San Francisco where I did a class with Karen Hanmer on making a triangle book at the San Francisco Center for the Book. I met lots of papermakers and book artists in the last part of my trip (the first part was with hubby so limited to three visits) and visited many art museums and galleries, saw some fabulous art.

India Flint taught a pre conference workshop on dyeing paper with leaves and rust and I saw what the participants had done in class and many of my local friends have been eco dyeing so in between long bursts at the computer I bundled up a range of leaves and onion skins and cooked them up with a few rusty nails and bits and pieces. Here are a few of the resulting papers, not sure how I'll use them but I did find it addictive.

I arrived home in time to help set up the Papermakers of Victoria exhibition at Open Drawer (it is on until 2 December) and we hosted members of PAGE to a day of papermaking, folding and printmaking at the Bundoora Stables. This week I have started work on putting the IAPMA Bulletin together so needed a bit of a break from the computer, hence the dyeing (and cooking up some montbretia, pond weed, red hot poker leaves and yucca for my next project!) But I'd better get back to the Bulletin!

Dried bluegum leaves and some daphne and mulberry paper that went in the vat too

some of the sheets with gumleaves and onion skin and the thread used to tie all together

onion skin and fern

Earthworks

Papermakers of Victoria has an exhibition coming up at Open Drawer, I delivered my two pieces yesterday and Yabbers worked on putting our piece together for the show, I will post some preliminary pics soon. I am about to head off to the US, my eventual destination being the IAPMA, Friends of Dard Hunter meeting in Cleveland at the Morgan Conservatory but I'll be visiting San Francisco, New York, Boston, Washington, Cleveland, Cincinatti and maybe Chicago and Toledo. It takes a lot of organising but I'm getting there!

Butterflies and keepsakes

Back in late January on return from holidays I noticed that a couple of my daphne bushes were looking very sad, I think they had got wet feet, one had died and the leaves on the other had gone very yellow. What does a papermaker do but steam the stems and cook up the inner bark then stick it in the fridge!

A healthy daphne

The stems in the steamer

The stripped stems

Two hours later the inner bark ready to cook

Sheets of coffee chaff paper. Last year I was sent a big box of coffee chaff,
I cooked some up and washed and made paper without any beating.

The backs of my sheeting couching cloths, the coffee paper shrunk quite a lot.

The third lot of sheets that are part of the keepsake exchange for Watermarks 2012, FDH and IAPMA joint meeting in Cleveland. These sheets are bluebell flower stems courtesy of Beverly Bennett who brought a giant bag of dried stems to the last Papermakers of Victoria meeting laminated with well beaten cardamon stems and leaves from Margaret Mason's garden. Koala, kangaroo and wombat signs were made from gaffer tape to form stencils.

As usual I have gone over the top my keepsakes are taking ages to put together, they have daphne, then coffee chaff then the laminated cardamom and bluebell (scilla), I have done about a third.

I have a bit of a butterfly theme happening at the moment, yabbers are making a range of butterflies for the PoV exhibition that's to be held at Open Drawer in November. I have made these with black card and coloured New Zealand Flax, I liked them so much I decided to frame some. 

Papillon Three, is currently on show at the Contemporary Art Society Members Exhibition at 314 Church Street Richmond until 16 September 2012

I have used butterflies on books and cards

I also made some origami butterflies out of paper I made from recycled teabags, I had asked the T'Arts to save me some teabags then remembered how well teabags work with photocopy transfer using oil of wintergreen. This pic shows the original butterfly and the transfer onto teabag and the paper that was under the teabag.

Lemons on our tree

Lemons again transferred onto a piece of silk that Ruth left under the teabags she was collecting for me.

Pulp Fiction my contribution to Book Art Object Edition Four

Artist books

I have spent quite a bit of time in the last week putting together a couple of books on my artist's books using both lulu and blurb. I have interspersed some of the notes that I use in my classes with images of my books.
I did this because we are considering using print on demand for the catalogue for the members show at the joint IAPMA/Friends of Dard Hunter Conference that will be held in Cleveland in October. The first one I tried was LULU and I used the simplest way of setting up the book. I had a few problems with the templates, I would have liked a few more and the text editing had a few problems like automatically making the whole text bold when I just wanted the title to be bold. Anyway I put the order in on Tuesday evening and my book arrived in the mail on Friday, the quality is fine, glossy paper and the images good colour.


 




The same night I put together a Blurb book, that hasn't arrived yet. I thought I might be able to exactly the same thing but of course the templates are different aren't they? At least I was able to cut and paste the text and I had all the images ready (not all in the same folder, that would have been too sensible! Anyway here is a preview of the Blurb book!

My Artist's Books and Class Notes by Gail Stiffe | Make Your Own Book

Books posted and rust

I have rusted some leaf shapes today that might become a piece of wearable art, I captured these pictures while the paper (Hanji) was drying. I would love for the green to stay but I know it won't so thought I should capture it on film.

My books all packaged up to be sent off to members of my group in Book Art Object, I will keep the books themselves under wraps until all have been received.

Silver at East Gippsland

I am back from Bairnsdale and catching up on computer work, the selected works from the silver exhibition look good in their new setting and attendances at the opening and artist talks were pleasing. The works will be on display at the East Gippsland Art Gallery until 28 August then they will come back to me. I will take what I can fit in my suitcase to Cleveland for the fundraising auction. I would once again like to thank those who supplied work for the exhibition and say how much they were appreciated by the audience. You can see some of the works closer up on the Gallery's website http://eastgippslandartgallery.org.au/ along with works by local East Gippsland artists, members of PAGE.

Exhibitions

I am about to head off to Bairnsdale to install and open the IAPMA Silver exhibition which will be shown alongside an exhibition by the local paper group PAGE (paper arts gippsland east). I intend taking the long way round via Meeniyan so that I can deliver the books of mine that were selected for the artist book competition and exhibition "Liberated Books" that is a celebration for the 40th anniversary of the Leongatha Arts Society. The books of mine that got selected were Atlas and Obsolete. I figured I should work out a good way of transporting it so I spent a couple of days earlier in the week making a box to fit.

I have made a couple of journals this week, the first is using my Japanese name stamp and some practice bamboo on recycled museum board with chunks of pulp fiction (an extra couple of sheets from a project I'm working on for Book Art Object).

 The other has waved sheets and a photograph I took on a recent trip to Magnetic Island of waves crashing on the beach, the binding is Celtic.

The last picture is of samples for the Papermakers of Victoria Occasional Publication which will features recipes that have appeared in the Deckle Edge over the years with a sample for each paper treatment. This is using verdigris wax from Langridge Paints and there is quite a variation between batches but I love the effect.