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Tag: book making

Table covered with a variety of hand made paper and book making supplies.
Book Folding Party

Book Folding Party

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My local group of artists has started back onto our regular schedule of monthly meetings. This month, we folded books. In the past we have created lots of paper with various methods of surface design, so one of our goals this year is to use paper from our stash.

Supplies laid out for bookmaking

We have been working through this book to learn more about folded book techniques. This shows the supplies and tools that we used to create the books.

Thanks Paula for hosting and here we are getting ready to start. We have our cups of tea and snacks too! And we have already chatted and had show and tell before we start our project for the month.

This time, we were folding a set of “tree fold” pages with a “diagonal pocket” cover.

Four Books Created at our Art Group Meeting

Here are the four books that we made. There are a couple of pieces of double stick tape on the tree fold pages but the cover holds together with just the folds. We then used pamphlet stitch to attach the pages to the cover.

Here is a little closer look at the books.

Top View of Hand Folded Book Showing Inside "Tree" Pages

And an inside view from the top of my book. The pages form a tree shape with graduated branch pages. My book was made from paper given to me by my friend Nanci. She has had this paper for over 30 years and she said it was probably closer to 40. So I used vintage hand made paper to create my book.

Selfie of four friends on a walk after our art group meeting.

After our book making session, we went for a short walk. Here’s the group in front of a small pond.

I have really been enjoying creating different book forms. It’s interesting to see how each book comes together. It’s similar to origami but with a variety of sizes of sheets of paper to create different books. I’m sure we will be creating more books this year as there are quite a few in the book that we haven’t tried yet.

Row of handmade cane baskets sitting on deck bench with water view.
Salt Spring Island Retreat

Salt Spring Island Retreat

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I recently went on a trip to Salt Spring Island, BC, Canada with a group of my friends from my Level 3 Stitch Class. What an enjoyable visit we had!

We drove up from Anacortes, WA to the Vancouver Tsawwassen ferry and then ferried over to Salt Spring Island.

We stayed at Catherine’s sister Fran’s, who kindly hosted us at her house/farm. It was a gorgeous property on the water, with a working farm/orchard.

The first day we went to the farmers and craft market. I took a bunch of photos of colorful produce as you can see above. We also visited the town of Ganges and went to a few galleries and shops.

Next up was a walk on the beach which was rocky but Edgar had a blast. There were four dogs during our stay and I think Edgar thought he was in heaven. He played and explored and had an absolutely wonderful time.

Then we started making baskets. Fran is a wonderful basket maker who supplied us with everything we needed and taught us how to make a simple basket. We thought it would take two days but it actually took three. I haven’t made a basket before and I think this will be my last one.

Here we are working away on our baskets. You can tell by my face that I am having a great time – ha ha! We also made a basket for one of our classmates who could not come to the retreat. That’s the basket I am working on in the bottom right photo.

Here is the result of our basket making. We all have a finished basket and they are pretty colorful too. Group of women sitting at dining table folding small books.

We also had a short session of folding small books with pockets.

Sunset over the water from deck.

We had a wonderful time together, great meals and Fran was so welcoming! Thanks for everything Fran and Catherine!

 

 

Handmade Book

Handmade Book

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I told you in my last post that I had created a handmade book from deconstructed screen printed fabric and paper at our retreat. We followed this free tutorial by Jeanne Oliver. She has lots of free content on her site and some wonderful online classes. This is the book I created.

Here’s the book from the front. I used hemp canvas fabric that I had screen printed. The cover was constructed from the hemp canvas, book board and deconstructed screen printed paper.

 

The book was bound with pamphlet stitch and copper wire. I have created many books with pamphlet stitch but had never used wire. It was a bit tricky but I like the result, plus it’s very sturdy.

Here are the inside front cover (L) and inside back cover (R). I really love the organic feel of the screen printing. I made three signatures and used plaster on canvas pages plus additional pages of various papers and a bit of fabric. The main pages were created with canvas, plaster and gesso.

I didn’t take photos of all the page spreads but wanted to show a range of what was included in the book. The brown paper on the left is a “faux rice paper” that I made with tissue paper, walnut ink and matte medium. The photo on the right shows the inside of the copper wire binding.

These next photos shows a variety of papers that I used in addition to the plaster and canvas pages. Some were painted, some eco printed and I used some specialty rice papers as well.

Here are a few more page spreads. Besides paper, I also added in some hand dyed canvas as well. The book is fun in itself and could probably be left as is. But I want to make it into a book about the forest with sketches, additional ephemera related to trees and whatever else reminds me of the forest. So I will be working on this slowly and adding bits and pieces to it over time.

These are a few of the types of things that I might add. Paula kindly gave me the pieces with definitions and the labels. She has loads of ephemera and is very generous. Thanks Paula! You could easily make this type of book with felt as the cover fabric. I would love to see your results if you give it a try. You can submit photos of your work here and we will post them.