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.

India books and cyanotypes

A few weeks ago when we were tidying up for my daughter's return from the US I found some letters that I had written home from India more than 30 years ago. Coincidentally I'd also found a book of Dover mehindi designs which were copyright free (up to 10 of the designs). I printed some of these onto acetate and used them for cyanotypes and I also made some cyanotypes of photos I took in India when I was there. I scanned the letters intending to use them with cyanotype but later decided to print them direct onto my papers. I have glued some of the letters and some plain papers onto canvas as a background for the two cyanotyped photos (the one with the two children is on a pulp painting of the same image made with denim and white cotton.)


I used the mehindi designs in a flag book where the hands wave backwards and forwards as the book is opened up and I've used the letters on the back of the hands and for the covers of the book.

Books for Noosa exhibition

These are the books I'm sending to Noosa for the 'Imagining the Impossible' exhibition. I made them initially for a show about Pattern at Lumina earlier in the year and have just sold the companion framed piece through the Contemporary Art Society. I've decided on the strength of that sale that I probably should apply for membership to the Contemporaries.

The real thing - Japanese books

I picked up these books at Kazari today. The bookworms have had a real go at the account book.

Oriental Binding

I'm running a couple of classes at home this Sunday and Monday on Oriental Binding. The two bindings we'll do are an account book and a toji binding (Stab).


Account book binding with indigo dyed paper and thread.


The pages prepared for the toji binding.





The finished binding with a double stitch variation.





Inside!





The white book has a single thread variation of the toji binding.