Sculptural Books Workshop, shaped book and cover

I am teaching a workshop in making sculptural books next week and thought that participants might be interested in making and coving a book with shaped pages. I also decided to set up the pages for sketching by pre treating with some coffee and dilute acrylic paint. I cut the pages from 130gsm cartridge paper, here they are laid out ready for painting.

I dipped some cotton thread in the paints to get a different effect on some of the pages and I used the threads to bind the book.

Here are the pages drying.

And the covers, covered with some scraper paper (another example for the class).

I made pockets inside the covers for bibs and bobs (and leftover scraps of decorated paper)

Then sewed with double needle Coptic stitch using the acrylic coloured threads that I waxed by pulling through a slab of beeswax.

Bugs and Books

This coming Tuesday I am heading to Clunes for a Bug Blitz Day. The whole of Clunes Primary School will be participating in various nature activities like biodiversity assessment, honey tasting, bird watching, aboriginal knowledge and papermaking. Since the theme is bugs I decided to make some new buggy stencils for pulp painting, I hope they're not too freaked out by centipedes and spiders!!!

Last week I picked up some papers for recycling and discovered lots of envelopes and matching paper for cards and since I'm right out of cards I decided it was time to get a few made. I already had lots of cast squares that I'd decorated in different ways (workshop samples from a couple of years ago!), so I combined then with some squares of hanji and here are a few.

Box Hill Community Arts Centre has its annual discarded exhibition starting in a week or two and since the sub theme this year is Paper Cuts I felt I should participate. I traipsed around the suburbs taking photos of hard and garden rubbish noticing just how many televisions were on nature strips so I decided to make a tunnel book, I made the paper from mixed plant fibre (garden waste!) and printed the photos and text on. Here are a few pics. I called the book 'Obsolete'.