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

new year wishes

Season's Greetings dear viewers!
And here we find ourselves on the next precipice. If it isn't festive, please let it be peaceful, a time of eternal transcendent presence with what IS.

We've been lucky to have a pleasant holiday.  I hope, whatever it is you do or do not celebrate, that you are finding joy in the every day humble aspects of life. We have so much to be grateful for.

Here are a few of the things we've been up to over the last week.

Babu gives Muji a Christmas Morning Kiss

while Wally made me the most delicious Christmas omelet

Two nights earlier, Wally wanted to see the paper hat I'd made, hence the door ajar on a cold night where I went to fetch it from the recycle bag.

Then he wanted me to model it, hence the blurry shot as I hammed it up.

We spent Wally's 3 1/2 days off  - Making

Wally put a leaf in our living room oak table so that we could be near the Christmas tree,

the holiday music and snacks.

We have become quite enamoured over the past few months with simple book making

and as is our wont, we researched and gathered, planning to use Wally's holiday time

for this very purpose. Here Wally sizes up placement of these clear stamps on the distressed and collaged cover of his little travel notebook that is already sewn up.

While I contemplated whether or not to do a post today, Babu's cuddling

convinced me as I took these fun shots of him

So here is a shot of my work in progress, the centre of my sewn book showing the glued and sewn pockets I made from both ends of a brown paper bag, and the many tags I relished making -

stamping and distressing them like the one I hold here, as well as collage from various found papers

and decorative paper pads on others.

I wonder if you, who visit my blog, enjoy making too.  I hope that you find the pleasant mix of solace and stimulation that I do in creating something from your own two hands- remembering that creativity comes in all forms and that we would do well to take comfort from all forms of work, including the choice of conscious presence.

Please go into this new year with a solid sense of yourself, your worth and the courage to release attachment to pain, treating all relationships, most especially the one with ourselves, with compassion, acceptance and patience.

Peace on Earth

a little book for mom



Maybe it's because it's Monday, but after a sad week of loss last week, I am in need of turning the page.

So I made a little book. It's for my mother who has trouble accessing the internet to see what I'm up to.  I did up a  photo collection of this year's highlights, and put an original on the cover.

 

 

If you live in Canada, you may recognize the spine cut out from a tissue box. The turquoise with pink roses is washi tape, and the other paper is wrapping from a nice bar of soap. The watercolour is mine, of a wooden doll that debuted on my blog earlier this month.

Because the photos of my watercolours measure 4"x 6", my mixed media sketchbook (in which I did the originals) worked perfectly to make the folios as the paper measures 7"x10". Folded in half each page  would measure 7"x5" which would allow for a 1/2" border around each photo. (Oh yes, I must add an "r" on the end of November.)

Of course, that meant I had to turn some photos sideways.

 

It can be a precarious time of the year. Expectations of others and/or ourselves is a set up.

We're always better off with a sense of gratitude. 

 

Let us bring sweetness into our lives in the little things we do and the kind thoughts we think.

 

 peace

 

Whisper...a handmade book

Here are some pages from my handmade book as promised:

 Here is the brown paper bag wrapped front cover, brushed with random strokes of gesso and acrylic paint and adorned with a torn strip of poetry

"Whisper"

pencil drawings of owls adorn most pages, a few bits of evocative text left from the book page used to make this one signature (folded papers) book composed of three folios (a folded piece of paper)

"graceful and... splendid old garden"

pages 2 and 3

"Before the evening...every scrap which could be found"

 pages 4 and 5

here I added some torn bits of text on each side of  the preserved one

"so delightfully small...more curious than beautiful...caused you to smile"

pages 6 and 7

"cottage upon the island"

 pages 8 and 9

"you did come from home...the vacant spaces left...so the story runs"

pages 10 and 11

"and the gathering together...they began to be"

page 12

"I have never seen"

As you can see the book is, as yet, unfinished. There's more I'd like to add.

You can also see that 3 folded pages (folios) that make up this one signature book

amount to 12 pages on which to work, not including the inside covers (which add 2 more)

This was a fun little project, something I've been wanting to do longer than I care to mention.

When one thinks of the little things one could do in a lifetime to create an expression of the self, without measuring these efforts against anyone else's, it boggles the imagination. We are a sentient people who learn, both about ourselves and the world at large, through our feelings though we may cloud this direct avenue with the intellect through beliefs and adherence to form.  Creativity in its many forms is an avenue to the feelings through thoughtful expression that can be more transcendent for the maker than the viewer.

 I once saw a shelf of pipecleaner and found bits of paper and tissue figures made by a concentration camp survivor who invited me to see, or perhaps witness this fragile expression of her experience. I was profoundly moved by this personal expression of the self. I have since forgotten her name or how I came to meet her, but I will never forget the feeling it stamped on my sense of what is true in the realm of creative expression.

I encourage you to look with renewed eyes at the bits of detritus one finds around the home. Artists are notorious for stuffing pockets with "treasures" found along the way, filling boxes and windowsills with this raw material. What could you do with a bit of string and paper, some glue and a threaded needle, colourful plastic bottlecaps or some discarded cardboard? I'd love to hear your ideas.

constructing a book

Hi again. I certainly didn't mean to be away so long. So much to take me away from here, including the hurricane damage we incurred after Arthur passed through with winds much higher than forecast- in fact 100kmh higher. Luckily we only lost electric power for 6 hours and then a couple of shorter periods during the course of the day compared to some folks who had to endure many days of outage.

the morning before the storm

the morning after: a huge branch fallen from one of our ash trees

 Between the heat that followed and the days spent cleaning up after the storm, another week went by before I made it back into the studio.  All the while I was thinking about a book I've been wanting to make. What materials would I use? How big would it be? What would its theme be? Would there be words? A story? How does one make a cover? Finally the day came. It was a Tuesday afternoon:

I chose a piece of encyclopedia endpaper and wrapped it around 3 pages of an old book that I folded to make a signature, my one signature book. I sewed it up.

I had previously torn the page edges; that's the look I was going for.

Then I cut the covers and spine from a pizza box and masking taped them together

I have since learned that I didn't leave enough room between the spine and the covers to allow for closing the book properly. Ah, well, a beginner's project.

I cut some vintage ledger paper to wrap the covers and spine in,

 mitered the edges of the paper and glued it onto my cover

whoops! It was see-through. Not the look I was going for.

and how did this happen? The endpapers don't cover the inside of the cardboard covers.

I cut them down

I refitted the book covers with a new (old) brown opaque paper,

using the bone folder to crisp up the edges that I was about to glue.

This paper was not so obedient to stay put, so I clamped the edges down while the glue dried.

I occupied myself during this drying stage by gessoing my pages,

 picking out phrases that appealed to me.

 I also began to draw the owls that I intended to glue into the book.

Now it was time to glue the signature into the book 

by attaching the back of the endpapers to the inside covers. 

Oh darn. Short again. I cut a new strip of endpaper to add to the right edge. Hopefully it won't be too noticeable. (Maybe I shouldn't have told you, Ha ha) 

The fact is I don't really mind as I'm going for a deconstructed look. I love the look of old things. 

(How convenient for me that it is the natural course of a beginner's work.)

In my next post, I will give you a progress report- with pictures- of how the book is coming along.

I hope you are having a pleasant summer (or winter for that matter) and that you will join me next time.

peace