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.

Moonah workshop Tasmania

Next week I am heading over to Tassie to teach a three day workshop on sculptural books, here are a few images of the type of books and decorative techniques we'll be making to whet my students appetites.

Credit card technique

Sons of Wallace - Piano Hinge Binding

Collage Paste Paper

Nest Book - Two Needle Coptic Binding

Torn - Sections in a Concertina


Greetings from India - Flag Book Variation

Two Needle Coptic and Celtic Binding

W binding

Roses Flag book

IAPMA Flag book

Childs Play - Piano Hinge Binding

Childs Play - Piano Hinge Binding

Knit book resolved

Knit
Now I am happy with Knit. I made the sheets by knitting triangles of fluffy yarn and leaving a long thread with which I spelt out knitting text like knit, purl, slip, psso, k2tog. I made one sheet of well beaten dyed ginger lily then positioned the triangle at the end of the sheet, spelt out the word then couched another sheet on top. I let it dry so that it shrunk as it dried. My first attempt at the book had the pages joined together with the knitting but I wasn't happy with the result so pulled that out, cut out all but a little bit of the knitting, damped down the sheets and pressed them. I then folded the sheets at the edge of the text and joined them together with knitting needles. I had little pockets where the knitting was originally and I ended up knitting little strips and sewing them back in there, maybe I should have left them there in the first place and just cast off. All very well in hindsight! I knitted the letters for the title but had to trim the fluff off to make them readable.

Not Happy Jan!

I have been wanting to make a piano hinge book held together with knitting needles for several years and still haven't come up with the solution. I've previously made a book of Granny squares held together with crochet needles and a book of cast bricks held together with carpenter's pencils, a rainbow book held together with coloured pencils, a book of children's games held together with pop sticks but the knitting book has so far alluded me.

Here is my first attempt!

Lots of knitting but the joining not resolved.

Second attempt, the joining was resolved but the result was big and floppy and ugly!

I have an idea on how to resolve it, let's hope the result is an improvement on this one. I do like the red and purple gingerlily paper and the red and purple yarn but just not together as they are. I knitted seven triangles and left long strings at the start that I used to spell out some knitting language between two laminated sheets of paper.

Let's see maybe it will be third time lucky!

books for Bundoora

I have been working on a series of books for the Bundoora Exhibition. The brief for the exhibition is that the works explore the house and it's history. I'm doing two series one is a combination of casting or pulp painting with cyanotype and these will be glued to canvas stretchers.

The books are from recycled paper and I started with concertinas which incorporated the words Bundoora Homestead interspersed with objects from the history of the house like the house itself, a horse to represent the early history, a bed to represent the time the house was used as a mental hospital and easels to represent the current use as an art gallery.

I've made the books from recycled cotton card and joined the pages with glue, then I've coated with rabbit skin glue to give added strength then sprayed through stencils with metallic acrylic paint then sprayed with paper dyes and coated with satin glaze.

I have made two concertinas with the symbols and words and one with the symbols and the house.







I then decided to do two concertinas representing then and now. One has the house in the middle of bush and the other the house stuck in suburbia as it is now.





Then!


Now!

Then I decided to move to a different format and make a piano hinge book using the sticks left over from Child's Play firstly to show the house through it's history and then



The horses. And then



The house itself!

Child's Play

At last I have finished the first in an edition of three books which I've called Child's Play. I have been thinking about this book for several months. It started with the book I just called 'Piano' which was made as part of a series of piano hinge bindings and used some wide coloured icypole sticks with holes which came with other sticks that fitted into the holes. The pages were various examples of antiqued paper that I'd prepared as part of the class I taught last year at the Geelong Forum. I found the recipe on the web here http://members.optusnet.com.au/vanviola/paper.html

Here is a picture of mark 1 'Piano'

My intention had been to use the same type of sticks for the new books but I wasn't able to find them again so I had to settle for narrower longer coloured sticks. I won't run out of those since I bought a giant packet from Zart Art. Since I had decided to make an alphabet book I needed 14 sheets for each book. I made thick A3 sheets and used up lots of pulps that I had around including some the remains of the white paper with seeds and flowers that I'd made for wedding bonbonerie, denim and some green cotton that I made from the remnants of faded, rotting curtain lining which Katy had dyed. The sheets ranged from white through green to blue. I then painted them all with rabbit skin glue and instead of using wax as a resist I sprayed on some bronze acrylic paint and once that was dry sprayed with a range of paper dyes. I did half the sheets warm colours, red, yellow, orange and the other half blue and green. I then gave each sheet a coat of thin shellac. The sheets in the pictured book were not treated any further but one third of the sheets I rubbed brown shoe polish on and gave a further coat of stronger shellac. It took me ages to come up with children's games/toys for each letter of the alphabet but I got there eventually with a little help from my daughters. Then came punching all the holes. I arranged the chosen words in publisher and printed them out so that I had half an A4 for each game. I then used my Japanese punch to punch out all the words, it took me nearly a week because I could only do a few pages before my arm started to ache and I've still got 2 books to go.

crochet and preparing for class

It's morning and we had an extra hour last night so I have some time b4 I head off to my class. I've covered a full set of boards for one demo model and have one set for the other partly covered so that I can demonstrate my method of covering boards. I did a bit of a panic last night about whether the books would take the whole day so I prepared enough boards so that they could do a second 2 page flipper if we finish too early. I still need to prepare some lunch to take with me so can only spend another 5 mins here, at least it is stopping me from playing patience. Bonus 1!

I'm in the process of making a series of piano hinge books with different things for the hinges, I've done, pencils, crochet hooks, icypole sticks, skewers and am now working on knitting needles. I decided that I should knit some samples to press into paper and I started using some wool I got from the op shop but it was 5 ply and has taken me ages to get a piece big enough for 1 page. Last night I came up with the brilliant idea of going to the op shop again and buying some handknitted jumpers with different patterns thus saving lots of knitting.