last minute card and libris

Tonight we are going to a homecoming celebration for a couple who just got married, our friends daughter married a Sri Lankan and I believe this is a Sri Lankan custom. I bought a gift before Christmas but this morning decided I should make a card to go with it, so I dusted off the vat and grabbed the pulp that was left over from my Christmas cards from the fridge and made some sheets for the basis of the card. Luckily I had some cast pieces from another project so I painted them with irridescent medium this morning and am just waiting for the paper to dry before putting the card together. I have a choice of three symbols, the Maori fish hook or is it a spiral? The fish hook symbolizes prosperity and the spiral new beginnings. Both appropriate for a wedding greeting.

The Hindi prana which means life force.

And the endless knot which according to a book I have called The Secret Language of Symbols means continuity, longevity and eternity also appropriate for a wedding card although I'm not 100% happy with the original carving of this one so I think I'll go with the Maori one.

The paper I made before today's batch was for samples for the Deckle Edge (Papermakers of Victoria magazine) and I made red watermarked banana fibre paper since the next edition is going to be dedicated to banana and I had some in my freezer. Here are the removable watermark templates, blutac on fibreglass flyscreen and the stacks of samples.

The wider strips of blutack showed me where to tear the paper to get five strips per sheet, I tore the strips in half so that 15 sheets gave me the required 150 samples.

I was very disappointed that my book was not accepted into the Libris Awards and my proposal to talk about artists who use handmade paper in their work has been ignored even though I both emailed and posted a copy in good time for the deadline for proposals I haven't even had a response. I was hoping to improve the status of papermaking but I guess that is not going to happen it seems that printmakers do rule! in the Aussie artist book scene anyway.

Here are some pics of my book which is not quite finished but the impetus is gone now, I am waiting for a Japanese translation of the haiku I wrote to go in the book.

Here is the cover of the slipcase made from hemp paper with hemp string embedded inside, the catch is a bone piece with hemp string.

The slipcase is lined with a digital print of ferns on hemp paper and the book is kozo with fern bound with hemp string in a toji or stab binding.

Endpapers have ferns embedded.

Text and images are printed on hemp paper and woven into the kozo pages.

postcard and flu

I have been laid low with the flu for the last week so have felt OK about spending hours on the computer playing lots of games of lexulous and eucre. I did update my webpage for 2009, it's only half way through the year, maybe I should have made allowance for 2010 while I was at it. It probably needs a complete overhaul but I'm not sure I've got that much energy. Yesterday I felt like death warmed up so just sat around watching videos but the day before I finished off a couple of books and made my postcard for the Yabbers exchange. The theme this time was 'Icons' and there had to be some sort of construction. I have done a few things with icons in the past so already had images on my computer and I had the moulds for the decorative framing that I'd carved in plaster. It was just a matter of casting four copies of the frame then joining them together with some strips of calico and painting them. I used black gesso for the base then rubbed over some metallic oilstick and gold acrylic. I then painted everything with shellac and rubbed again with the gold since the shellac dissolved the oilstick. Now to test the mail and see if it gets to its destination.



The books I made were concertinas for the exhibition at Artisan Books called Between the Lines. I haven't decided yet which one to submit, the first one has the text watermarked between the strings and both pieces of paper had the text watermarked, they don't quite match up but the text is still visible, I am pleased that the text is quite subtle, says something about reading between the lines!


For the second book in the series I lightly coloured some pulp so that there would be a slight contrast, making the text less of a watermark, more a stencil.

The cream paper in the two books is cotton sheeting beaten in Papermakers of Victoria's lab Valley beater for three hours, the blue is archival mount board processed in an old non automatic washing machine and with a blender dyed with cartesol dyes.

What a Congress!

This post will be mostly pictures because I've got too many other things to do but I've been wanting to get this up for a week now. The IAPMA Congress was held in Burnie this year and I went over for a week. I arrived a little early and was able to sit in on a class Helen Heibert gave on making lampshades to locals and also one given by Therese Uguen to school students on making paper kites.

Helen demonstrating and one of the kites I made.

Helen was opening the exhibition 'Switch' by Tracy Luff so we met for a chat the day before. In the photo from the left me, Tracy, Helen and Jenny (Events manager, City of Burnie)

Tour of Creative Paper One of the beaters and their super press.


The backs of some of their large moulds and the drying room.

A memorial to Charles Turner who was intrumental in getting Creative Paper started.



Some pics from our trip to Cradle Mountain Park.

I did a mini workshop with Wendy Cain from Canada on Contemporary watermarks.

Some of her watermarking sheets, fine plastic mesh with puff paint. The couching bed with wet/dry vacuum

A piece of polystyrene, a chopping board, open plastic mesh, 3 sheets fly mesh the chux, worked a treat as a small vacuum table.

The string makers

Barb moulding some plant fibre on fabric dipped in plaster.

A few shots of the farewell dinner


The auction items!

I scored the Maple leaf in the bottom right hand corner of the bottom right picture.


We tried to get the PoV members together for a group photo but we missed a few, I was meant to photoshop these two in but it was beyond my capability so here they are and sorry to any who missed out on being in the pic.


My case, I just squeezed in the 400 sheets for the next IAPMA Bulletin covers, then a thin layer of clothes.

The bottom of the case was full of catalogues and books.


I also did a workshop with the Women from Euraba, these are the very ordinary sheets I made, they had much better control over the pulp.

Some of the things I brought back.

The invitation from Wonju, South Korea to the next Congress.

The goodies we got in our congress kit





The Cavalcade (designed and made by Jan Marinos and Creative Paper) and some of the contents