Wednesday, October 28, 2009

Halloween Challenges - I need your votes!

This week, my halloween books are looking for votes! The Bookbinding Etsy Street Team is having its second halloween challenge for the BEST Zombie Award. I made this tunnel book for the challenge: Trapped Inside a Haunted House. You can vote for this book (or whichever book you like most) over at the BEST Blog. AND - the Trans Canada Etsy Street Team is also having a Halloween challenge this week! Same idea, except that this team consists of a wide range of artisans and crafters, not just book artists. So the collection of halloween items is wonderfully wide-ranging! For this challenge, I submitted my Macbeth journal which has the witches' chant on the back cover, printed onto some of my handmarbled paper - and an illustration from an old storybook on the front cover. So now hop on over to the Trans Canada blog to vote for this book (or whichever item you like best, of course!) If you leave comments on either of those blogs, there are little surprises to be won by some random commenters, so be sure to leave a comment in both places! Happy Halloween...

Wednesday, October 14, 2009

More books

I've been making 2010 planners, getting ready for the new year.


And some Halloween Journals! I picked up an old book of nursury rhymes and stories at a thrift shop, and the book was in rough condition, pages falling out, etc. I used some pictures from this book for the covers of these journals.




Miniature book swap

When I was at PBI this year, a small group of us decided to organize a recurring book swap. We agreed to get the book, "More Making Books by Hand" and work our way through the projects in this book. So for each swap, we are making a small edition so that we can send a book to each person in the group and we'll get a book from each person in return. And they are all miniature books, so nothing larger than 3" in any direction. The first swap was completed a couple months ago and now I'm working on the second project, I need to have the edition done by the end of the month. But here's what the first swap looks like - this is one book from each person - mine is the second from the left, with the green and brown marbled paper on the cover.


They all have content too, since we're giving each project a theme and this time we were supposed to do something that would be a self portrait, without using a picture of ourselves. The results were incredibly wide ranging! Much fun. Can't wait to see the results of the next swap.

Wednesday, October 07, 2009

My favorites

Hardcover pamphlets are one of my favorite things to make. I made a few recently. This one with the rice fields on the cover is my favorite of this batch. This particular book is being sold to raise money for Cancer Research in support of Jay who is raising money for the Weekend2EndCancer event in Ottawa. The rice field picture is a page from Jay's 2008 calendar. Her calendar was full of gorgeous Japanese scenery and she sent the photos to me thinking that I might be able to use them (yes!), so I made this one in support of her fund raising efforts. I used lime green leather on the spine and the pages are a mixture of various colourful papers. Over at the Book Arts Forum we just did a Pamphlet Book Swap so I made another for the swap and sent it off for Jackie. (Still eagerly awaiting my return book, I think it is coming overseas so I must sit patiently!) Jackie's book has two fabrics on the cover and again a mixture of different papers for the pages. Then, just for fun, I made four more in different colours, available on Etsy.

Saturday, October 03, 2009

The Morgan's Paper Anniversary

The Morgan Conservatory ( morganconservatory.org ) in Cleveland, Ohio, is having its paper anniversary this weekend, celebrating its first successful year. Congratulations to them!

In preparation for this anniversary event, handmade papers made at the Morgan were given to artists far and wide, and the artists were asked to do something with it, then send it back to the Morgan for a silent auction this weekend to raise money for the centre.

This is what I did with my sheet of handmade paper from the Morgan. A journal, made with a crossed structure binding, and a matching pair of mini book earrings, and a little book pendant on a chain. They are all stamped with my original "Man and Wife" hand carved rubber stamps. All packaged prettily in a wooden box which I customized a bit to make the little compartments. I hope everyone had a great time at the event!

Thursday, October 01, 2009

The first 4 flag books

These are the first 4 flag books that I made. This effort was prompted by the B.E.S.T Book Swap. Our last swap was all about flag books so I had to make one. But I had never made one before. The very first one: it uses found images for the flags and the accordion, and the cover has some of my paste paper on there. There is a quote about blue skies printed on the back of the flags. The second one: it also uses found images for the flags. There are a few lines from the Frost poem "Birches" printed on the backs of these flags. The book cloth on the cover was hand-painted then backed with paper to make book cloth. I did not do the painting, though, it was a friend with whom I swapped some book cloth several years ago (thank you Leah, if you ever happen by here and see this!). The third one: this was made in preparation of the fourth since I had an idea for the fourth, but wanted to try it first. I used more found images for the flags (somehow I manage to collect a lot of images in triplicate or quadruplicate or quintuplicate and this turns out to be handy when playing with the flag book structure). So I wanted the silly bobkitten (or whatever sort of beast that is) to pop through a frame. After successfully getting that bobkitten to pop through his frame, I was ready to do it again with real flags. So, this very literal flag book is made with Canada flags, obviously. And it worked, the maple leaf pops through nicely. Some of my own marbled paper is on the cover. This is the book that I submitted to the B.E.S.T Book Swap and you can check out all the flag books on the team's blog if you are interested.