MAKING SKETCHBOOKS Chapter 10

Another very addictive past time! It was good to be using the many many papers that I have made over the last few weeks and perhaps realising which were suitable for some particular purposes.
2.10.1
I started off by making four Folded Stitch Books, with different themes. One was pages of lettering, another painted and woven sheets, a third left over printed words in different fonts and lastly one that was really rather too small, and I used for just putting a stamp on each page. Sometimes when they come in the post, they are too interesting/pretty to throw away. This last one needed a lot of clamping to make it stay shut so 8 pages is probably maximum for that size.
Next I made the Stab Stitch Books. as before with different pages inside. Since I had taken a photocopy of my Klimt motifs, I used this for a very small book.

2.10.2

My theme for the main Stab Stitch Book was the nursery rhyme about magpies. I must have changed my mind about what I was going to do dozens of times. Anyway I think a Stab Stitch book is probably easier to organise as far as the page order goes.

It was probably not necessary to show the individual pages, but at least as they are only A5, they don't take up quite so much space. The first four were straightforward.

I had the idea of making the 'bird' stamps from Fab Foam when I was making my letters and copied them freehand from a bird book. When I came to use them for Silver and Gold, I used a couple of ink pads. Big mistake, the next day they were still not dry, I suppose because the paper was no longer porous. So -  design opportunity - I wiped them off and changed what I had been doing. But the original birds are still lurking under there somewhere.

Back to the birds. I realised page '10' was not long enough, but it was quite easy to extend it at the stitched side and this bit is hidden when it is all put together.

The book cover I glued onto card both sides of the front cover and back.  It wasn't too bad drilling the holes because I have a (?) pink Japanese hole punch with six different size heads, which is very neat but the two sheets of card and more than 10 pages (because some of them were several layers) was as much as it could take I think.

I have enjoyed getting to grips with the stitching on the second sort and am looking forward to some more variations in the next module.

LETTERS & PATTERNS Chapter 9

I had managed to get a very large book on Gustav Klimt out of the library and looking through it, I noticed that many of his motifs are used again and again. His paintings must have been very time consuming as the tiny details seem quite obsessional.  It was very interesting to make a note of some of the most used ones.
2.9.1

The colours for this piece started off based on his picture 'The Virgin', but I think the yellow is just a bit too bright, it would have looked better in a slightly softer colour I think.  I find it a bit tricky not going into 'zentangle' mode when doing these.

2.9.2
I started off my letter exercise by painting the background with blue Brusho. Of course when I got glue on it the colour was not fast. Oh well.  I ended up cutting most of the pieces of paper and foil by hand individually. The red triangles are from foil that was round an Easter Egg, so it was good to use it at last. The round gold spots I punched out with a hole punch, but this foil was from the top of (I think) baby food, so it was much more substantial, as were the silver spirals. The black and gold flowers, plus the tiny pink and gold rectangles are from wrapping paper. The green around the gold spots is glue pen with foil rubbed down on it.  When looked at in close up, it is very broken up and bitty. I was disappointed with the gold paper from a greeting card envelope as I think it looks a bit like brown paper. The G was painted with gold acrylic with some foiling on top. I'm not sure about the balance of the design. Is it lop sided?  Anyway fun to do over several days.

I love the example in the Extra Activity section, the colours are so elegant. It is something I may well go back to do sometime.