ice storm and handmade book

January. It's been a month of re-setting.
It's always like that after the holidays

Muji watches Wally take down the Christmas lights.

(Yes, our books are over-flowing.)

The ice storm  on Tuesday was so beautiful, making this end cap on our deck post bedazzled.

I carefully wended my way onto the icy lawn that was so slippery I was sliding on the grass!

Here is the sage plant done up like popsicles.

the sparkling hydrangea

a crystaline mantle

I regretted not video taping the sound of tinkling branches

but I was getting covered in icy rain and had to make my way back in.

The next morning was mild, almost 10C, but foggy

which made my little boys schleepy.

With Muji's paw on Babu's throat, I don't know how Babu can sleep like that.

Last night, Wally couldn't see the eyebrow hair hanging over his eye so I took a picture to prove

what I have to look at. We laughed at the preposterousness of him letting me do this to him.

He is so good humoured about himself,

bless his heart.

This morning the sun shone so bright it woke me, but now it is another dreary day.

A lone seagull wends its way south.

Babu keeps me company, curious about what I might see.

I debated with myself about showing you my handmade book started over Christmas.

It's not my practice to share reproduced images as I like to share my own work here.

But who doesn't love to play with stamps and collage? It's what hooked Wally as he saw the possibilities.

This book measures 5 1/4 in. x 8 1/2  in.

Coffee stained and distress inked papers and sewn pockets.

The page on the right is rough cardboard stripped of its plastic coating from a coffee can, distress ink stained to match the coffee stained envelope that I handstitched into pockets. A little folded paper book sits in the lower pocket, a piece of beautiful folded cardstock in the upper.

coffee stained baking paper that I tried to emboss

with some stamping, "Near to my Heart"

The centre of the book with handstitched coffee stained pockets. The tags are an assortment of bought and punched tags. We went nuts for tags pre-Christmas, scouting office supply and craft stores,  distressing them and adding stamping and collaged book and scrapbook papers and cardstock.

Such fun.

Post Christmas we found a lovely paper punch, drastically reduced, which Wally showed me how to line up to get a repeat pattern. I stamped this coffee stained paper and...

tipped it in, an expression for adding a page after the book is sewn.

I used some washi tape, a kind of printed masking tape, on each side to attach this paper to the last page of the book and then to the back cover.

The back cover of the book. This is the first time I saw the black ink splotches on it and I love the serendipity of the distressing, done without intention, adding to the "found" look I was going for.

and so we find ourselves wrapping up January, another day above freezing,

but it ain't over yet!

I think I can squeeze one more post in before it's over.

holding this moment in our breath,

present for all it's magic