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Handmade book open to center page spread with inked background page of orange and green covered partially by printed autumn leaves.
Tree Specimen Book Update

Tree Specimen Book Update

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If you missed my other posts about this mixed media handmade book you can find post #1 here, post #2 and post #3. It’s a work in progress that I’m taking slowly, adding bits and pieces as I get inspired.

Handmade book open to one page with eco printed background and print of aspen branch with leaves and catkins.

As I was getting ready for my upcoming Level 4 Art and Design class which will involve printmaking, I was going through my stamps and also some previously printed papers that I haven’t used. I thought they would make a good addition to the book. This is a print of an aspen branch with leaves and catkins. I added the black outline with a felt pen. The aspen branch is printed on the back of an eco print.

Handmade book open to one page with brown painted background page and black print of weeping birch on multi colored paper.

I found a print of a weeping birch which I added to this painted brown paper page.

Handmade book showing one page with painted green background and glued cut out of aspen branch from multi colored paper.

While I was looking through my prints, I found a cutout of another aspen branch. I’m not sure what I made it for but thought it was perfect for this green painted page. I might add a few more details into the leaves with colored pencil. I’m not sure yet.

Handmade book open to center page spread with inked background page of orange and green.

The back of the green painted paper above, was white. I added some ink in orange, green and brown around the edges so the white wouldn’t show around the print I planned to add there. This is the center of the book.

Handmade book open to center page spread with inked background page of orange and green covered partially by printed autumn leaves.

Here is is with the print I added. I also finally bought some gesso and added it to all the white pages. Now I can do some painting or sketching on those pages with more ease.

Handmade book open to one page with brown wrinkled paper background and black and gree print of leaves hanging down.

Here’s the last print I added. I have more prints, but for now, I think I have added enough. This book has a lot of pages and I have a long way to go to get it completely filled. I think I will start sketching on the white pages next.

Collage of felted lotus pod created in online class by Glady Paulus.

And for those of you who think I haven’t done any felting for a long time, here’s a felted lotus pod that I created for an online class I took with Gladys Paulus. The class was marvelous and if you get a chance, it’s well worth taking.

Also, registration is open for Helene Dooley’s Hanging Felted Spiral online class. Click on the link and scroll down to the bottom of the page to register. This is a great class to learn more about complex three dimensional felting. You need to be an intermediate felt maker who has worked with resists and three dimensional felting. The class is online and can be accessed throughout the class period at any time. You don’t need to be online at any certain time. So join Helene to create wonderful felted spirals!

 

Mixed media book open to left page painted cracked plaster on the left and torn sketchbook page with 'pine needles' on the right.
Handmade Mixed Media Tree ‘Specimen’ Book

Handmade Mixed Media Tree ‘Specimen’ Book

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I have been continuing to slowly add bits and pieces to my tree ‘specimen’ book. You can see most of the ‘blank’ pages of the book in this post and some pages that have had ‘specimens’ added to them here.

This is definitely a ‘slow’ project that I am working on very intermittently. It’s been fun to pick it up again and just add a few things here and there without pressure to finish it or make it look perfect.

Mixed media book, front page painted watercolor background, machine stitched moss glued to background and definition of mossy torn paper glued down.

I added some more machine stitched moss to the first page and a definition of mossy.

Mixed media book open to left page painted cracked plaster on the left and torn sketchbook page with 'pine needles' on the right.

On this page spread on the left, I had one of my plaster coated pages but it had cracked significantly. I need to get some gesso to paint over these pages but since I haven’t ordered it yet, I decided to try something different. I layered different colors of paint on the cracked surface. You can click on the photo to enlarge it. The page on the right is a torn piece from one of my small sketchbooks. It kind of reminds me of pine needles. It was originally screen printed and I added colored pencil to enhance the look of the pine needles. Torn and messy is the point of this book so I ripped the sketchbook page and glued it down to a lightly painted background page. You can see the dark edges of the next page which is next up.

Mixed media book open to a page spread with an eco print of leaves and buds on the right hand side.

The page on the right is an eco print on paper that my friend Paula created. She has a big stash of these papers and kindly let me use a few.

Mixed media book open to page spread with blank plaster coated page on the right and back of eco print with cut out frame of painted paper and tea bag machine stitched skeleton leaf on the left.

This is the back side of the eco print above. I cut a window out of the painted background so you could see more of the backside of the eco print. I added a machine stitched tea bag leaf as well. The right side is another plaster coated canvas pages that needs to be gessoed and then drawn or painted on.

Mixed media book open to page spread with blank plaster coated page on the left and green painted paper background and stenciled/painted brown pine cone on the right.

This pine cone on the right was stenciled ages ago. I pushed some kind of thicker medium through the stencil to give a relief effect. It didn’t work all that well and got a bunch of bubbles in it. I painted it green at some point but didn’t like that either. I got it out of my paper stash and decided I needed to finish it. I added walnut ink, sepia marker and matte medium to get it to a point that I was satisfied with it looking like a pine cone. It also needed more strategic cutting out than I had done previously. I glued it down to the painted background letting a little bit of the pine cone stick out over the edge of the page. This is a testament to never giving up on a piece of artwork!

Mixed media book open to page spread with orange feathers woven into a gridded hand made paper on the left and an eco print glued to a dictionary page on the right.

Next to the feathers that I had shown you in my last post, I glued another one of Paula’s eco prints down on to the dictionary page. I can’t decide if this page needs something else but I will just leave it for now. I do want to leave more simplified areas where the eye can rest.

Mixed media book open to page spread, blank plaster coated page on the left and painted skeleton leaf on the right.

This one on the right is the last page that I worked on this time. It was originally a deconstructed screen print on paper all in the brighter green. When I was looking through the book, this page caught my eye as I saw a leaf in the middle of the page. I used Inktense pencils and then water on a brush to make the darker leaf appear more strongly on the page. I hope you can tell I am having fun with this. It is a very freeing process not worrying about the final outcome.

 

Handmade book open to page spread with fabric photo of trees in morning light stitched to page and small torn piece of paper below photo with definition of woodland.
Handmade Book Continued

Handmade Book Continued

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About a month ago, I showed you my handmade book that I created at our annual art retreat. I have since then been slowly adding “stuff” to the book. The theme is the forest and I am having fun finding things to add to the book.

Handmade book open to page spread with fabric photo of trees in morning light stitched to page and small torn piece of paper below photo with definition of woodland.

I had this photo of morning light on trees printed on fabric for my class homework but hadn’t used it. I decided to hand stitch it in place on this hand dyed page. I then glued a piece of handmade paper to the page spread and added a definition of woodlands scrap of paper that Paula gave me. She had a bunch of definitions printed out on “old paper” and she kindly gave me the ones relating to the forest. As you can probably tell, I am not starting on page one and working through the book. I am adding things randomly through the book depending on what the page looks like and what I think works best. This way, I’m not stressing about each page being wonderful. I just find something that I like and add it in. So these pages may have more things added as I go along or not.

Handmade book open to inside cover and first page. Specimen label on cover and small piece of handstitched "moss" on first page.

Paula also had some “old” labels and I used the Specimen Book label on the inside cover. And then I took a small piece of machine stitched “moss” that I had made for my moss covered branch and glued it on to the first page.

Handmade book open to page spread with a charcoal sketch of an aspen tree on plaster coated page.

The pages that have been covered with a mixture of plaster and gesso will all end up with some type of drawing or sketch. This Aspen tree sketch was done with a charcoal pencil and then I sprayed the page with a fixative so hopefully the charcoal won’t smear.

Handmade book open to page spread with lattice type handmade paper and feathers woven into paper.

I collect a lot of “stuff” when I walk through the woods around my house. I have a lot of turkey feathers but they were a bit too big so I used these smaller orange veined feathers to weave into the page of hand made paper. I’m not sure what bird these are from but they are much more rare to find on the ground than the turkey feathers.

Handmade book open to page spread with a torn edged photo of chickadee artwork pasted on dictionary page.

 

I wanted to try a photo transfer on some pages. I thought this would work on the regular paper of the old dictionary page. So I tried to transfer a photo of this painting that I did of a chickadee. The transfer did not work out so I ended up printing the chickadee on to regular copy paper, tearing it out and gluing it on to the page.

Handmade book open to page spread with transfer of a photo of a sketch of an Oregon grape leaf.

Here’s another attempt at a photo transfer on to a watercolor paper page. It worked slightly better but came out very lightly. I used a black marker to outline the Oregon grape leaf but decided to just leave the lighter colors as they were from the transfer. I am not trying for “perfection” in this book. It’s about collecting “stuff” about the forest in one book. The rocks on the page in the photo above are just there to hold the page in place so I could take a photo. But perhaps I need a sketch of the rocks added in? I’ll keep that in mind for another page idea.

I’m enjoying this process of working randomly in the book. It’s a storage vessel for all my forest “finds”.

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