And while we're talking about books...

Here's a book I made for Fibrecircle recently, as part of a challenge I created for them.

Running challenges for that group is always interesting. We all work in very different ways and we pretty much know how we want to work, so there's no good setting a challenge that requires people to work in a specific way. Experimenting is one thing; making work is another.

The challenge was a Scavenger Hunt. Each person had to bring along:
a second-hand piece of paper - i.e. paper that has been used for something else, by someone else (not you). It can be newsprint, advertising, an envelope from a letter, a page from a magazine... whatever you like.

2. something from a plant - leaves, flowers, roots, twigs, fruit, tea leaves.... use your imagination! It has to have come fairly directly from a plant, without much processing - mulberry leaves are fine, mulberry paper isn't. You don't necessarily have to incorporate it into your work, but you do need to use it in making the work.

3. words - three words from your life during these three weeks, i.e a book title you've read during the time, a sign you've seen, a headline... anything from these three weeks. Be prepared to explain!

4. something, anything, blue

5. three embellishments: beads, buttons, metallic elements, small samples or embroidery, stamping ... to become part of your work. It doesn't have to be three of the same thing.

6. an insect. Any insect. (No, spiders are not insects.) This can be a picture, a fabric, an embroidery, a three-D model, a stamp, a real insect....

7. something long and thin. Yarn, ribbon, braid, paper strips, embroidery thread.....

The idea was to make something from your elements on the day, in whatever way you like to work. A finished item or a part of something else...

I brought along used envelopes, a twig, the words "dancing in silence", blue card, dragonfly and gold brads, a dragonfly punch and some wire. I also grabbed some net yarn that Helen was trying to rehome.

The cover was a monoprint from a glass board, using acrylic paints and drying retarder. I marked the paper size and painted quickly on the plate in blue, black and white paint, mixing the colours a little on the plate. Then I printed, burnishing with my fingers and a spoon. I touched up a couple of areas on the print while the paint was still wet.

I made the envelopes into book covers, with the patterned side out. I added a layer of gesso, which, I was told, can make the blue stand out more. 

I'm not sure it did, but it was an interesting effect, especially once I added a layer of folded blue card inside them. I made some signatures and used more blue card as a concertina spine. Helen, who had nothing to do, sewed the booklets into the spine with a simple pamphlet stitch.

 I also made an envelope as a place for more private things.

 I added some words from a song by Leonard Cohen that seemed particularly resonant.

I'm really happy with how this one turned out, which is unusual, since I'm usually not happy with things until a little time has passed!

Day 3 - finished!

Apologies for the delay - I was struck low by a Very Friendly Coughing Bug, who leapt from son to husband to me in as many days. I've been keeping myself to myself since it arrived, hoping not to let it leap to anyone else.

I have finally finished my little treasure, though I think it may need a little dab with the hot glue gun, as a couple of spots are determined not to stay glued. Me and glue... sigh.

First, the inspiration... this gorgeous little High Renaissance objet from the collection of the Walters Art Museum.

The manuscript dates from about 1550 A.D. and, at 1in x 7/8in (2.2 x 1.67cm), is so small that it's been mounted with a chain for wearing as a pendant.

It's made of gold sheet and an enamelling technique called champlevé. The stones are rubies or spinels. The artisan who made the book is unknown but it's "in the style of Giulio Romano", Italian, probably made in the years 1499-1546. The tiny manuscript inside (identity unknown but I assume a religions text of some kind, perhaps a Book of Hours or a missal) was created by Jacobus Romanus, (1515 and 1560). Sadly, this item isn't on regular display at the museum, though it has featured in several exhibitions.

Mine isn't that tiny, I hasten to add! Mine is roughly double size, 5cm x 4.67cm or about 2in x 1 3/4in and that was quite fiddly enough, thank you. And needless to say, mine isn't actually made from gold and precious jewels.

I photographed it with the catches open, so you can see that they actually exist and do work. That was the hardest part. Sadly, my "jewels" are the wrong colour, since the available options were a wishy-washy purple, this red or hot pink!

 

The hinges are actually brass. I was going to make piano hinges from paper when I found these ones, designed for jewellery boxes, at the hardware store. I even found tiny 12mm ones for the catches, although this meant that the catch shape couldn't be curved like the original.

The tangs for the catch are square brads, larger than I wanted but I couldn't find anything else small enough to suit.


I painted cartridge paper with a pale brown watercolour wash and cut it into signatures. Because of the size, I could only put three signatures into a pamphlet, so the book is made of 12 individual pamphlets, sewn together with pamphlet stitch. I attached the book block by adhering the front and back pages to the inside covers as end papers.

I painted the page edges with gold paint, as there seemed to be some traces of gold paint on the leading edges, perhaps from illumination on the pages. But no, I haven't yet illuminated my pages.

I like my little book, although it offered me quite a few challenges to make.



Day 2 - painting

OK, clearer now, I think? For such tiny things, they sure took a lot of painting... and drawing... and Treasure Gold... and Rub 'n' Buff!

What did I make today?

Well, guess....

What do you think these are for?

The dimensions of the larger pieces are 5mm x 4.7mm - that's about 2in x 1 3/4in. It actually took me most of the afternoon to make them. The base is mat board, with glued string and then a paper overlay, to give the moulded shape.

Tomorrow, I'm hoping to paint them. Maybe things will be a bit clearer then?

More about the book

Once I'd painted the cover picture, it was April 1 and I started work on the pages. April 3 was the first quarter of the moon in April, with the full moon on Apr 10, and the last quarter on April 17. The new moon fell on April 25. I won't show all the pages here, partly because that would be tedious to look at, but also because, when you are working quickly on the final sheet, not all pages turn out as you imagined! Here are some of my favourites:
The first page I did -

April 6, a Fibrecircle meeting day - paper tissue collage
April 11 - undeciphered scripts This page shows a page of the undeciphered script of the Indus Valley civilisation, with the letters of UNDECIPHERED SCRIPTS hidden among it. On this day, I was thinking about the parts of everyone that are hidden from view, that appear unexpectedly.
The next two are pair of pages about limitations, associated with the changing season, the waning moon and my life at the time.


Tissue poppies for Anzac Day, for those dead in war and the new moon, with the words of the poem that begins "in Flanders Fields the poppies blow", written at Ypres by Dr John McCrae, who himself did not survive that terrible war.
A fantasy landscape, just playing around with colours. Painted with Setacolor paints over the original blue background.

It actually took me until mid June to assemble the book in its final form. I added colour with Prismacolor pencils to the end papers, and added text.

This was a brilliant project to do, I really had a ball. It was structured enough that I wasn't trying to find things to make each day, but free enough to let me follow whatever elusive thread captured my attention. I learnt a huge amount by doing it, although I now see ways I could have done things better (of course!). I think I got way more out of it than I would have done making a quilt (or a bag) for the challenge. If you want to see the other challenge pieces, they're on the Kambra Challenge blog.

Lots of new stuff to share

I've been quiet here lately because so much of what I've done lately has been secret. Finally I can share one thing that took up a lot of my life back in April. I belong to a group that does a challenge every year. This year, the challenge was to make something with these fabrics, a pack of 40, 7in squares of 20 Hoffman 1895 Bali Watercolors, blue-green color roll.

I was away for some of the challenge period so I wanted to make a small project, that I had a good chance of finishing in the time frame. I thought about making a bag, or using the square to embellish a garment. But when I looked at the fabrics, they reminded me of phases of the moon, so I decided to make a book that referenced the moon phases over one month. The moon in astrology relates to emotions, and receptiveness to change, since the phases of the moon mean it is in constant change. In the past, I've made diary-style year quilts, which were about what was happening in my life during that year, but I wanted to make something that focused on my inner life, what I was thinking and learning, rather than what I was doing. So I made April Moon. (I worked through lots of possible fancy titles, but in the end, simple seemed best!)

I decided I needed to keep the pages separate until after I had done whatever I was going to do, so I was free to stitch them if I wanted. Then, as I went, I could assemble flat sheets into signatures, and stitch the signatures to the spine tape, so final assembly wouldn't be too time-consuming. (I'm never really motivated by those final fiddly bits!) The Bali fabrics would be used to edge each page, so the colours would show the moon phase. I also wanted the book to be able to stand up, but each page to lie flat when it was opened, which influenced me towards a more standard book binding, with a spine tape attached to a cover, with end papers.

First I made the cover and the base pages. I didn't want to be daunted by cream quilters' muslin pages, so I painted all the pages in shades of blue. I used the same paints to make monotypes for the end papers and the cover. The end papers were printed from a glass plate with rubber bands scattered on it. The cover monotype was pulled from paint on the glass plate. (The overlay shows where the spine was going to be) Then I began to sketch in paint details of my imagined moon garden. It was utterly absorbing, as the more I added, the more areas I could see needed more work. Eventually I stopped, and this was my moon garden cover:

Other things I've been working on

So much of what I've been doing lately can't be shown for a while yet, but I thought I'd put up these two things. The first is something I was working on throughout April, off and on. I wanted it to be a scene by moonlight. It started out with a monoprint, pulled off a glass plate: I really like monoprints, because they are so uncontrolled. They're a useful fabric to have around, because they look less obviously painted. I often use monoprinted fabrics as the basis for something else, but I also use them when I want a small amount of fabric of a specific colour, with some texture in it. So I often use up the leftover fabric paints from other projects by pulling a few monoprints off my glass cutting board, which is about A3 size, onto quilter's muslin. The fabrics go into my 'special fabrics' cupboard, along with all my samples and other play stuff.

I already had a rough idea of where I wanted to go, so this one didn't make it to the cupboard. With some painting it became this: A lot of the elements are roughed in here. It's very dark at this stage, because I hadn't added any light tones, except what was there as the pale blue background. After a couple more sessions of painting, it now looks like this: It was slow work because I was blending colours all the time on the leaves. It was a great exercise in tonal values. Often, the same paint reads dark in one place and light in another. It has a huge number of shades in it, because I was blending paints on the palette and often on the fabric as I went, to bring a shade up a little or darken it down. Heaps of fun! I think it's done now. The challenge for me with this piece was to make it look like a moonlit path, without making the garden look dark and scary and basically uninviting! I wanted it to look like a path you might actually go down, if you wanted a little adventure.

A second fun piece is this one: I was just playing around with paints, because I had them out anyway. I wanted to make a surreal landscape that didn't use traditional colours. I love the way it turned out. It's not anything earth-shattering, just a fun piece!