New Books

Sorry it has been so long between posts, I guess I've been too busy with this and that. I've nearly finished putting together the Women's Art Register Bulletin and should be working on the IAPMA newsletter at the moment. Instead I am writing this and playing scrabulous, GRRR.

I have made a couple of books lately and intend making another one for the Noosa show, the theme is Back to Basics and at first I wasn't going to enter but now I have decided on a book similar to the one I've made for the Southern Cross Uni book show. The book is called 'Sand Stories' and is based on a simple star book with a few extra folds. On our recent holiday I took lots of photos of the bubbles in the sand made by a small crab Scopimera inflata. I felt that they could be interpreted as text. Here are some pictures of the completed book.




The next book I'm going to make will be the same format but will feature a picture of this apple pie I made for the purpose of the book, What we do for art eh!

My copy of 500 Handmade Books arrived yesterday, what a treat. I have flipped through it and then studied about half, I was very pleased to see that many of the books featured had some handmade paper. Last week I received my copy of Beater Finesse for the Paper Artist put together by Catherine Nash, what a great resource that is going to be. My Handpapermaking magazine also arrived in the last week and I'm in that too, what a week!
We had Yabbers last week too and here are the popup postcards that were sent. Mine is the one made from magazine on the left , it was my mockup for sand stories and I hadn't sent it through the mail but the one I sent didn't arrive so we included it in the exchange.

Webpage and Alcove

We had the opening of 'More Spin on Textiles' on Thursday night at the Alcove Art Shop. I was very pleased that three of my scarves sold that night. Might have to make more! I've got plenty on my plate at the moment so I guess I won't be making any more probably until next year. I sent off my application form for 'Into the Fold' yesterday, the exhibition will be held at Artisan Books from the 2nd to 30th August. I also sent off my contribution for 4 words 4 paper on Friday and have been working towards workshop and exhibitions in July, October and March next year.
I have finally updated my webpage for 2008 and have included a page with exhibition opportunities.
Today I have cut up the raw hemp and some hemp fabric so I'll be able to cook up the raw and beat the fabric next week.
One other bit of news is that 500 Artist Books is out, I haven't seen it yet but a friend has and two of my books are in it. I'm hoping I'll get a copy sent to me.

Blurb, Libris and Yabbers

I was on Channel 31 the other week in the program Blurb http://www.blurbtvshow.com/#home. I haven't seen it yet but I'm hoping my brother has taped it for me. A friend of a friend saw it and contacted my friend, so I know it's been on.


I finally found out the other day that my book has been shortlisted for the Libris Awards, I hadn't heard anything and figured I'd missed out but when I saw a listing the other day my name was there. I suspect there might be something wrong with my info@gailstiffe.info email. A while ago I also heard that a couple of my books were accepted into the Lark Books production 500 Handmade Books.

In the last month I have made a few things and I got the rest of the vessels back from the Basket exhibition at Artisan Books. Here are the ones that were in that show. Only the large one has any weaving as such so they can barely be called baskets but Daniel was quite happy to have them in the show. They are made from a range of plant fibre papers all of them natural colours except for the red which has been dyed with Cartesol dyes.

I also made some more simple sketch books for St Lukes Art Supplies. This time I used recycled board that I dyed black and leather thonging to hold it all together.


For our next Yabbers session we are planning to do some solar printing. I thought I'd better do some practise samples to make sure my dyes would work. I made a couple of long strips and some rectangles on 150 gsm Cartridge paper, the same paper I used in the sketch books. The process is to wet the paper well then drop the dyes on, spray with a bit of metallic acrylic paint, then drop flat things on to the surface and cover with glad wrap and put in the sun to dry.

Some of the things I used were some young tree fern and geranium leaves and some of my flat plastic shapes that I have for embossing. I'm always checking out $2 shops and the like for glow in the dark shapes, you can get quite a range but they only appear for a short time then something else takes their place. The fern and the plastic shapes worked best but I did get some nice effects from the glad wrap with the geranium leaves. I photocopied one of the sheets onto some handmade paper and used it for the covers of the two demo models I made for my book class on Friday. We did a straight concertina then a concertina with pockets. I used the strip I'd made for the straight concertina and plain Cartridge for the pockets.

I'm considering I might make a set of the pocket books for the Christmas book exchange V is organising for Papermakers. At an earlier Yabbers gathering we made things from paperclay using B's moulds and I made six of each thing thinking I'd use them for the Christmas books. Now I just need to come up with a way to link Christmas with cupids, wings, masks, columns and fish????????? My thinking cap is ON.