An exhibit and a swap

The Exhibit:
I have a couple of items in an exhibit at Abecedarian Gallery in Denver, Colorado. The exhibit is called "Boxy Books". There are two of my items in the exhibit and both are made with papers that were painted and scribbled on by my son when he was two and three years old. One is an origami cube full of origami cubes and the other is a book inside a box. This exhibit runs until July 3rd. If you happen to be in Denver, be sure to check out the show.

The Swap:
Over at the Book Arts Forum, we are having another book swap. This time we were supposed to incorporate a material that we had never used. I decided to get some FIMO clay and see if I could incorporate it into a book since I've never worked with any clay products before. This clay is shaped and then baked (shape-n-bake, heheh); a rather simple process. In the end, I decided to go with a few FIMO "inlays" on the front cover. And there are a couple matching beads attached to the fore edge ties. I sent this book to Kiley. It is covered with purple leather and the clay stars are embedded into the front. There are two signatures sewn through the spine with an X stitch. The pages are a mix of purple and green papers, cardstock, mulberry paper, etc.

The texture book

This theme for this week's challenge was "texture." So I set out with a couple of things in mind. I wanted to create a paste paper using texture, and have various textures inside the book as well.


I haven't done paste papers much, so I had to play with it a bit to get something I liked. The resulting paste paper was made using a handful of crumpled paper to make the marks in the paste.


Inside the book, I used several different materials for the pages so there would be layers of texture. There are various types of handmade paper, a piece of leather, some corrugated cardboard, eska board, a couple sections of drawing paper, a piece of vinyl, some various sheets of cardstock, and some more paste paper too.

It is bound using one of Keith Smith's chain stitch sewings for binding single sheets.

You can check out the other books that have been done for these challenges by visiting the TJBookArts group on Flickr.

Weaving my book

Thanks to Jackie, TJBookarts, I tried weaving some leather. She is having a weekly challenge and this week the theme was "scraps." So when I investigated my leather scrap boxes, I discovered that I had a lot of long narrow strips of leather in there. So, I thought maybe I could weave them.

My experience with weaving is limited to the little paper baskets we made in grade one for Easter. So that is all the knowledge I had to work with here. Initially I thought perhaps it would make a nice placemat.


I secured and trimmed the edges.


I didn't do anything else to it, most of the leather that I used was a bit thick. So I just sewed directly through the cover to attach the signatures. I think a woven mat like this could be used to cover a hardcover book if it was made with much thinner leather strips. I'm not very good at paring so I'm going to start saving thinner strips. I've added that idea to my list of future projects to do as soon as I have some time.

TJBookarts Weekly Challenge

Over at the TJBookArts blog, Jackie has started a weekly book challenge. There will be a new concept each time. This week she has proposed the idea of making a book with "scraps." So sometime over the next week, I'm going to try to fit that into my schedule. Check out Jackie's blog if you're also interested in playing: www.tjbookarts.com.