25 Days of Fibre Paper

 At the start of December Helen Hiebert started a project where she posted on her blog something paper related for each of the December days until Christmas. She called the project 25 Days of Paper and every second day provided instructions for projects and the other days information about different paper businesses.
I managed to keep up with the projects for the first week and a bit but then went to Tasmania for a week and although I took a paper tool kit with me I didn't touch it and when I got home I got too busy. However last night and this morning I was able to complete the rest of the projects.
Here are my 13 pieces all made from plant fibre paper.

Window Star, mixed plant fibre

Abaca Lantern without abaca, left kangaroo paw right mulberry bast fibre

Cut out tree card, NZ flax card with fibre behind cut out

Tyvek accordion lantern, New Zealand flax and kangaroo paw fibre

Ball Ornament large; bluebell flower stem and small; mixed fibre

Gift Tag outer; mixed fibre, inner; Kangaroo Paw fibre 

Luminaria cotton and denim

Luminaria watermarked kozo

Pop Up Card New Zealand Flax and Kangaroo Paw fibre

Peace Tree Card New Zealand Flax

Cut and Punched Lantern Bluebell flower stems

Origami Snowflake Mixed plant fibre (with out the tree bases! forgot to cut them out)

Origami envelope Cordyline fibre

Thank you Helen, it has been fun.

Happy New Year

It has been so long since I posted and even longer since I updated my website. I have done a bit of an update tonight although there is heaps more to do and somehow it isn't working quite how I'd like it.
I have no idea where 2014 went but here we are in 2015.
After cogitating for nearly six months I made a book in the last week in December. The inspiration was a visit to the Tilburg Textile Museum. While we were there an attendant demonstrated making a glove on a knitting machine, it took less than a minute to make a bright pink glove. An what do you do with one pink glove, incorporate it into a book of course! I made two concertinas, a tiny one with a picture of my partner holding up the glove that fits into the glove and another larger one that spells out Tilly Textile hidden in photos from around the museum. It seemed appropriate to include some fabric and I was lucky enough to find some gingham that was almost the same colour as the glove so I used that to back the images and had enough left over to make a bag to hold the book. The paper I printed on was made from recycled mount board, recycled hanji and cotton linter with fine silver glitter (left over from the books I made for Papermakers of Victoria Christmas book swap.

Christmas book when closed reads 25 Ornament book

Tilly Textile 2014

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

Christmas and blogging

Christmas day at my brother's, the two tables are set, he did a great job of feeding the masses, well twenty of us for the day.

The first table, my 14 yr old niece made the place names.

The second table - the outdoor table was replaced on the deck by the lounge suite. It was lovely sitting out there when we first arrived, but the day served us up the widest range of weather, probably the first ever white Christmas for Melbourne. Not snow but hail. We had to rush around with sheets of black plastic to rescue the lounge suite.

Then the path to the road turned into a swimming pool, just added a bit of excitement to the day, it was lovely to catch up with family and friends.

After fairly limited blogging this year and no catching up with other people's blogs I've had a couple of very relaxing days catching up on blogs. I read a few that I had links from here and realised I hadn't updated my list since I started blogging, today I've done a little of updating but need to do some more. I caught up a bit on Impact 7 which I was sorry to miss out on but was just back from Korea and had lots to catch up on. I have also joined in an exchange with bookartobject organised by Sara Bowen where we make an edition of books based on titles of the 100 short stories in the book 'An Exercise for Kurt Johannessen' written and buried by Sarah Bodman. My group is group four and so far is seven artists from around the world, I have chosen to work with pulp fiction, it seemed the obvious choice for a paper nut! Not sure what I'll do but it will be something with pulp.

Christmas Book and card swap

We had our Yabbers breakup on Wednesday and exchanged Christmas cards so here they are.

This one is mine, I was lazy this year and bought a punch and am using up lots of coloured papers that I made for the books I put in 'Opus', the decorative paper (purple and gold) is some scraper paper I made as a sample for my Tassie workshop.

Tricia's star card

Jan's

Antje's using some of the silver star shapes we got from Reverse art a few years ago.

Ursula

Marie white paper with geranium petals

Beverley

Dorothy

The Collection

Last Saturday was the final Papermakers of Victoria meeting for the year and those who participated received their five books that were part of the book swap, there were 17 participants this year who each submitted six Christmas books (this year we were requested to avoid using red and green). One of each book goes to Papermakers archives and each participant receives five books by other people. Here is my collection. I don't know all the artists but will label those I do know.

Jan

Beverly

Tania

Chris

?

The collection.

Christmas and Silver

Yesterday I was heading out the back door with a bucket of pristine white pulp, a few moulds and deckles and some other stuff to take up to my shed and I dropped the bucket, it broke into pieces and pulp went everywhere, I managed to scrape up most of it and the chooks took care of the rest, they loved it, the picture shows when they had eaten half of it, when I came back later there was nothing left, I hope it doesn't do anything strange to their digestive system or the eggs! They seem fine this morning though no eggs yet.

  

I managed to finish off the paper for the wedding programs yesterday along with some plain paper for cards. Next year I am organising an exhibition celebrating IAPMA's 25th birthday and it will be a silver show. All IAPMA members were sent a piece of silver paper to use to create something for the show. The silver I used is made in Italy by Quill and I came across it because MJ wanted it for her wedding invites and because I printed off one set of slips with the wrong information, I had lots to recycle. I just used a blender to pulp down the silver and combined it with some recycled black mountboard to make my Christmas cards and a book for the Silver Show. For once I am way ahead of the game, closing date for entries is 1 August 2011, mind you I haven't bound it yet, I'm still deciding how to go about it. I printed on the silver for my Christmas cards and used the same punch I bought for the wedding invites.

Front of Christmas Card

Inside

All the sections of the anniversary book

 

Inside one of the sections

detail of cover silver on black

Detail of inner cover black on silver

I realised the other day that I had nothing left in my etsy shop so it is time to make some more books. So far I have only arranged one and haven't even bound it, I'm still deciding on the thread. That is today's challenge once I get off this computer. I recently took a range of my journals and a few artist books down to Open Drawer a textile shop, gallery and workshop space in Hartwell, very close to where I live.

 Last month I taught a cyanotype workshop for 69 Smith Street Gallery and when I came home I exposed some organza using a peacock feather as the mask, they are beautiful pieces but I am not sure what I will end up using them for, I was a little surprised that they worked so well because I had kept the mixed chemicals for a couple of weeks before I coated the fabric, then I left one sitting in the dark for a couple of days and the other for a couple of weeks awaiting time and sunshine. I bought the chemicals from Gold Street Studios and their service was fabulous and the chemicals were beautifully packaged.