02.28.2013

More Oldies

I am planning to get back to work today.  The last couple have held interruptions of one sort or another during the day and I'm never quite able to settle into anything productive when that happens.
  

I'm still pondering ideas for the "numbers" book challenge but I will take some steps toward creating something, today.  I'll likely just have to plunge in and get started, let it evolve from there.  I'm doing this personal challenge just because content is so difficult for me in creating handmade books ~ stretching myself is good exercise.

From the Recent Archive

I pulled a few photos from recently completed art journals ~ images that have been sitting in a photo file I call "Blog Photos Not Posted."  I always keep a few photos of my work back, to post later if need be.  (Read: if I don't have anything more current to show!)

Reorganizing keeps me in a state of restlessness, which I'm experiencing at the moment.  Ideas are germinating in my brain but little is manifesting presently, as I walk around the studio, or back and forth between my two rooms, and think about where I want to put things now and what I want to recycle.

I did the first page, though, in my newest art journal last night.  I want this journal to be different somehow, different for me anyway.  I'll see how it develops.

Spring Cleaning

I spontaneously began reorganizing my two-room studio yesterday.  Among other things I went through all my scrap piles and came up with eight new bags of scraps -- mostly hand dyed and printed -- that are now listed here in my Online Shop.   Three are pictured here.

By and large I keep my wet work in the front studio, where the kitchen sink is.  The back studio has been devoted almost entirely to art quilting, and recently book making.  In the last couple days I made a definite decision to end my participation in Fiberactions ~ the online quilt challenge group I was instrumental in founding four years ago ~ after the current round of challenges ends in July.  I'd been on the fence for months.  Coming to closure in my mind, I think, provided the impetus for me to reorganize the studios.  I want to get the bulk of my mixed media and art journaling operation in the bigger back studio.

02.23.2013

02.22.2013

New Prints 5

 These are the last of the most recent prints.  Enjoy!

New Prints 4

Hope you're not getting bored with the prints ~ I'm certainly not getting close to finishing making them any time soon.

But I did get the quilting done on my challenge piece yesterday.  Now I'm beading it.  I hadn't planned for the quilt to be beaded, but once the quilting was done, that's what it called out for.  Hoping to finish up by the end of the week.  The reveal date for this Fiberactions challenge is March 15.

Looks like it will be sunny today on the North Coast, with more light rain moving in over the next days.  It has been cold, though, and there's been snow in the higher elevations not far from Fortuna.  Typically we get most of our rain here in March, April and May, and June is frequently quite cool.  We call it JUNuary in these parts.  But we haven't had much of what I'd call a real winter yet.

New Prints 3

Thanks for all your wonderful wishes on my birthday yesterday.  It was a lovely day.  This is my last year of being a junior senior.  Woohoo.

Back to the recent prints.  No firm ideas yet on how they'll be used, but they are piling up, waiting...

I promised myself I'd finish my Fiberactions "nature's colors" challenge quilt today.  So that's the plan.

Enjoy today, whatever it brings.

So, Do You Still Love Me?

.....because today I'm 64.  That number looks incredibly large -- I'm still just a kid at heart.

A birthday present I made for myself ~ this new Art Journal, which I mentioned on Saturday.  All the cover papers, inside and out, are recent Gelli Plate prints.  And the inner pages are all offprint backgrounds.

The book measures 9-1/4 x 7-1/4 inches.  Since the printed papers were 12 inches long and the maximum open folio size would be 14 inches, I folded the pages so that they're not all equal in width.  Some pages are 6 inches (12 inch folio folded in half), but most were folded not in the middle so that the pages are different widths.  You can see this somewhat in the photo below.

 

Hope you have a great day ~ I know I will!

New Prints 2

More prints from this week.  Most are ghost prints which I strongly favor.  This morning I'm heading in to Eureka ~ the local independent scrapbooking store is having a flea market of sorts, an opportunity for mixed media artists to buy, sell and trade their unused stash.  The sellers have to buy a table for $20 to set up their stuff.  I'm just going to buy.

I made the coolest book yesterday ~ actually it's pretty hot and you'll see why on Monday.  I pulled the innards out of a fairly new book, covered the covers and spine with recently-printed papers, and filled it with 20 folios (80 pages now, in 4 signatures) of offprint backgrounds.  This will be my new art journal.

Incidentally, I have been altering new books as well as old ones.  If the price is right and if the new book is of a size that I'd like to use for a journal, then I'll buy it and dismantle it.  It turns out the book I used yesterday is one I might want to read.  It was perfect bound to begin with, meaning the book block stayed together quite well when I removed it from the covers.  So I cut new covers from scrapbook paper, and covered over the spine with wood grain contact paper, which is another good alternative to book cloth for inner and outer spines.

Hope you have a great weekend.

New Prints

 

I've made lots of new prints this week ~ every time I get back into printing, I don't want to stop.  And I'm not through, this time around.

Among other things I'm playing around with alpha and numeric stencils, making prints for upcoming book projects.  And re: stencils, I've finally decided to buy myself a new batch.  I'm finding the best selection of stencils at these online retailers ~ Artistcellar, Scrapbook dot com, and iStencils.  The latter is especially interesting because they carry a huge selection of stencils not found anywhere else, and each comes in a multitude of sizes.  Additionally, they have stencils of at least 100 different fonts!

I've been experimenting with different sizes of paper, as well.  Some of these are 8 x 10 inches, the size of my Gelli plate.  I like printing off the edge of the paper.

I finished making backgrounds in my big Offprint Journal ~ so I disassembled it and rebound in more 18 x 12 inch sheets.  I even used the original thread again.  The sheets I removed were trimmed slightly at the spine edge and are now awaiting being bound into books to serve as new art journals.