Still Here

   It's been such a long time since I posted.  Almost a year.   

  Wanted to share a bit of what I've been up to.

 

        I am diving into a few calls for fiber art & my local Holiday Show.

 

 

I have lots of smaller vessels of all sorts, on display for sale at

Crooked Tree Art Center.

I will be at the kick off party tomorrow, Friday Nov. 10th. Hope you can stop by. 

There will be wine!

Sneak peek of my offerings.

Other things I've been up to in the studio & beyond:  

A little book binding repair. My 1975 copy of The Joy of Cooking.

 

 She was in rough shape.
Broke out the book binding skills.

Made a new cover.

 

Created a stencil of the original title font. 

Used book cloth & marbled paper from my stash.

 

 Did some foraging of ramps on North Fox Island this spring. Pickled ramps & ramp pesto from the leaves. YUM!!! 

 

 I can't go camp on North Fox without a hand stitching project. 

 

There is a blueberry U pick farm just up the road. We make sure we have 20-30 lbs. in the freezer to get us through the year. Plus we discovered a mulberry tree in the park we walk in almost daily. Beautiful.

 

We have been to some wonderful places over the past year. My go to place to post what I've been up to is Instagram. Follow me there & you can see more day to day goings on.

Close to the Bone Day 2 A to Z Challenge

B is for Bone. A wonderful medium for tools used in book binding as well as other paper arts. Silky, translucent, hard, durable. They are a joy to hold.

 Bone folders are indispensable. I have 3, so far, & this little guy is my favorite! The tip is perfect for scoring paper for folding. The curve just right for creasing or smoothing down glued items.

Made by Jim Croft. A masterful book binder, tool maker, throw back to an earlier time. If you are curious take a cruise around their site. Off the grid, use of raw materials, talk about building an artful life, this couple has done it to the extreme.

 Another rock star in the bone implement arena is Shanna Leino. As it happens she moved to a town very close to mine recently, I want to learn to make these tools from her! Both Shanna & Jim sell their folders at Talas

 Another fabulous bookbinder, tool maker is Brien Beidler.I had the opportunity to meet him & get a tour of his work a couple years back. If you have time check out his work on his site.

 

 I have had these two for about 17 years, since I began book binding. They go everywhere with me if I think any art will be involved.

Tacket Book Reveal

 Done!  Now I've gotten my feet wet again with this structure there will be a series of them as I enjoy the process & it's a good way to put the new Gelli prints to good use. More pictures of the book process next time.


I took a Gelli Plate printing class with the Pendragons 2 weeks ago. The Pendragons are a fantastic group of calligraphers. I'm a member, but I'm an infant compared to them in the lettering arts. The link above is to our Facebook page. About 6 posts down there are a bunch of pictures from our play day with the Gelli Plates.
Lorrie Granger Adbo  was our instructor. A very fun spontaneous messy day.

A few examples of the results.

Old book pages end up being a great substrate for the prints.

                                               

Me posing for a photo op for the Facebook page.while unpacking for the day. 

Tacket Book in the Works

 Got a bug to make a Tacket bound book. Very old structure from the 2nd century. The threads on the spine can be snipped to change or replace the pages. Still has practical use.

This is a little Tacket book that was my first, learned in a class a few years back. All hand made paper. About 5" X 6" finished size closed.

 Each signature (Signatures are two or more sheets of paper stacked and folded as a group.)  is sewn into the spine separately, which creates the interesting exterior look.

The little support piece on the inside where each signature is attached is another nice visual element.

                         
For the cover I'm using 2 papers I made using my Gelli Plate. More on that in a later post. Fused them together with EZ Steam fusible web.  Gotta say I love the stuff, Works great for paper as well as fabric.

                       Lots of measuring, templates, cutting of pages, labeling, hole punching ensued.
 

                                

 Here are the 3 signatures, 5 folios each, making 20 pages to a signature in my book.

                  Plus a little practice on wrapping the thread that attaches the signatures to the cover.  It's  wrapped pulled snug then knotted at both ends. An extra layer of paper is added to the spine for added support of the stitching. 

The cover cut, spine folded, waiting for the support piece to be glued.

By the way I love my hand made weights. They come in handy for so many book binding tasks. I'll post pictures of the finished book when completed. 

Happy Monday!

15 Minutes of Fame

Two items have me on the media radar at the moment.  I am giving a talk at our local Crooked Tree Art Center on July 21st about paper making and book binding. Under the coffee cups I'm listed in the
Coffee @ 10-Traverse City heading. Kinda blurry but it's there, trust me.

In a totally unrelated discovery, this picture from the Wine Fest two years ago made it into the Delta in flight magazine last month. Two different friends happened to see it during travels.  

Front and off center stage left, scrutinizing my wine selection I'm sure. 

Yellow purse over my shoulder.  Why are my lips puckered?

You never know when some one else is going to put you out there is the take away. 

PBI 2015 Continued

During my final class we learned a few amazing ways to construct multi level accordion structures.
Kevin Steele is an amazing graphic designer and paper engineer. He brought his book The Deep
I encourage you to go to his site and scroll down to the video of The Deep to see it unfold.

 

             The mock ups we started with to get the sewing procedure cemented in our brains.

             Kevin made this wonderful little book for the auction that is held on the final day. 

Show & tell is one of my favorite things at PBI as there is so much inspiration and fodder for talking with other participants about their art. Every evening you can wander into other class rooms to see what they've been up to.

  I could go on & on about my time at PBI. If you care to know more please comment or send an email.

PBI Inspiration

It's time to share some of my experiences and thoughts on PBI 2015, short for Paper & Book Intensive,

 Held each year at Ox-Bow,  just outside Saugatuck MI. The grounds are a beautiful natural setting. The Kalamazoo river as it dumps into Lake Michigan is the backdrop.

Over a total of 11 days participants take 3 classes. This year I chose clam shell box construction, digital book content & creation, and accordion craziness. My title not the instructor's.


Of about 70 total attendees we had several countries and many states represented. Everyone gets to the studios early and stays til late at night. I loved this schedule for day 3, sums up the pace.

There were several newbies to book binding as well as seasoned veterans in the world of books & paper.

Mary Uthuppuru taught the box class. It was VERY time intensive and loads of fun. Making a clam shell box is something I've wanted to learn for some time, and we got so much more in this class.

 

In the book content class we did several writing exercises and played with loads of images we all brought to help generate ideas. Tate Shaw, our instructor, shared his great personal book collection with us.

 I will share more over a couple more posts. So stay tuned and please comment!