Pear Prints

I just noted that it is almost a year since I posted so thought it was time for another. It isn't that I haven't done anything in a year but there have been a few changes around here, the biggest is that my partner has retired. Last year I taught a few workshops and spent quite a bit of time making preparations and samples for these. So far this year I have three workshops scheduled the first was last weekend and it was making paper from denim and making books based on the accordion or concertina structure. In preparation I made quite a lot of denim pulp and a blank accordion that I thought I should add some prints to. I pulled out some old lino and MDF cuts and printed them onto some 300 gsm hahnemuhle that I had left over from another project.

I had a whole set of pear prints but at the same time we had lots of pears on our tree and the lorikeets were really getting stuck into them so we picked them all even though they were very green. I figured I'd try cutting one in half and printing from it and I had a lovely time and was pretty pleased with the results.

Then I made some collages and made some cards with pear prints.

My first accordion I filled with collages and pear prints.

The next two are blank inside and have pear prints and collage on the covers.

More workshop prep

These books are some examples I have put together for my forthcoming workshop in Ballarat, all the paper has been made using the mould and deckle that will be made in class. We will have a theme for the artist book that we will produce and I am thinking along the lines of flight but we will do some brainstorming once the class is underway. There are still a few spots available but it starts in less than three weeks so I had better get back to making pulp!

Rainbow Wings
recycled abaca and mount board, shaped, embossed sheets Coptic binding

Natural
Mixed plant fibre with cotton paper and ginger-lily, nature printing, W binding

Gitan
Recycled mount board and abaca, shaped sheets and hand written text, toji binding

Snappish were having a sale on photo books so I made one of my artist books, I will be selling these in Ballarat along with the more expensive Blurb books that I put together that include my binding instructions. 

The new books, 20 pages hard cover (will be $15 each)

The other book, soft cover 32 pages ($40 each) with instructions for ornament, 2 needle Coptic,  oriental,  W,  piano hinge and long stitch bindings as well as notes on paste and scraper papers.

more workshop samples

The plan is to start the class ( Accordion Play at Meeniyan 24 Feb) with a straight accordion but I worked on this one by adding some popups, the covers are some paste paper on brown paper, Last time I made paste paper I did it on brown paper then at the end of the day spread the paste all over and combed it. It makes really good book covers.

This one isn't for the workshop, it is one of my standard Celtic Bindings, the grey thread is hemp, the black is knitting cotton and the paper is some I made for another project but it's recycled silver paper and black card double dipped.

Another workshop sample, this one is playing with different ways of adding extra paper. I had the straight concertina already, a sample from another workshop, the cover is Kenaf and dyed gingerlily paper pulp painting and the pages are hahnemuhle, the extra bits are cover paper. This one has the coloured bits threaded through vertical slits in the concertina, the two concertinas are the same width.

This one has horizontal slits cut to make popups and the coloured bits fit into the valleys of the popups. This was described in Peter and Donna Thomas' Book More Making Books by Hand, quarry Books 2004