I'm A Bookie

Sort of. Actually I'm taking a class to learn how to make my own sketchbooks. That makes me a Bookmaker!  The white one is a strap book, the straps can come off and the cover lifts off and you can replace the block of white pages with fresh ones. The leather book is very manly. That's politely saying it looks like a Guy book.

We were in Houston recently and got some good shots of the building next to the Contemporary Craft Museum.

While we were there, Susan defied death once more by stopping in the middle of an intersection to take a picture of a Graffiti Man she spotted.  Her technique is to stop suddenly and yell at me "Tell me when the traffic starts up!" and then ignore me while she takes her picture. 

If you use Google Earth she said you can go here to see where she took the picture:
Latitude 29°43'32.55"N and  Longitude 95°23'22.84"W
I have no idea how to figure these out but I've been watching The Bridge on FX (pretty good but not as good as The Americans) and some brainy young kid knew exactly what numbers like that meant.

Black-n-Red Book

Susan speaks:

This book was made in a class taught by Albie Smith. In the morning we made paste papers, in the afternoon we put the book together.  I like making paste papers and I like even better combining the technique with sgrafitto (scratch marks) and some printing. I also used both white, black and cream papers as a base. As usual, my stuff had lots of black and dark colors, which makes me happy.  The two pictures below show the front and back end pieces with the first and last page of the first and last signature. Got that?

The book has 4 signatures of 5 folded papers, the first/last page of each signature is slightly larger and is also paste paper. I made a few random blops on some of the other signature pages.

 I definitely liked Albie's design of having each signature "read" as a separate entity with the added benefit of more pages to display your art on. Pictures below show first/last pages of the other signatures.

One thing I've learned over the years is that you should not choose to deviate from the instructor's handout during the classtime. If you do, you wind up having the instructor think you don't understand it and then you waste time trying to explain what you are doing and that you do know what you are doing and that you'd rather do it your way, even though you paid to learn it their way.  And you confuse the hell out of the people at your worktable who might be looking at your work.

In this class I deviated from the handout when I did the spine stitching. Even though I am not big on matchy-matchy stuff I do like the stitching to be balanced on the inside of the signatures. I figured out a way to make this happen so I finished up the stitching of the book back in my room.  That's why my book isn't in the pictures of the class books. One of my partners in crime, Diane, made a really beautiful book -- in the class picture it's the one with the pale blue spine and diamond pattern.  Diane spent 20 years in the Air Force as a navigator so she and Don have a special bond.

Into The Age of Darkness

For the record, it's not always about me.

Susan speaks:

I took a class from Jill Berry called "Into The Age of Darkness".  I love dark colors so this class was a match made in heaven for me.

The focus was to experiment with many different paints and tools on black paper, specifically Arches Text Wove. She brought a lot of supplies so we could test all sorts of stuff and do plenty of what-if with everything.

When we were finished we made a continuous four-part pamphlet book of our papers, with painted Tyvek for each part's signature cover.

A bonus was using one of our papers for a slipcase for our book.

Brrrrr

How come I haven't heard much about global warming lately?

For those of you struggling with too much snow: Put down your shovel and step away from the snow. Make some cocoa. Or a stiff drink. If you just wait a month or two the snow might disappear all by itself.

For your entertainment:

Renner Books

Susan and I took Lisa Renner's A Waxed and Painterly Book class at Art Unraveled. Any class Lisa teaches is a sure thing - she provides everything you need, runs the class at a fast pace and troubleshoots continually. We've both taken her classes before and we've yet to see her flummoxed by anything. It doesn't make any difference to me that I don't care about making a book, it's the creative environment Lisa sets up that makes the difference.

Susan and I sat next to each other in this class, not because we were insecure and are joined at the hip, but because we were sharing our wax block and had an extra heat gun at our table, just in case. We work well together by staying focused on our own work and then asking each other's advice. Susan's advice is always something concrete, as in "Trying using this piece of red", while my advice usually is "Hmmm. Needs.... something."

Our books look similar because we didn't bother to switch away from Lisa's offered face print and we both used the same stamps, which we didn't realize until we were almost finished. After all, it's the process, not the final product, that's important. Which book is Susan's and which book is mine? What do you think?



Susan speaks: I'm starting to hate my new camera. Yes, the resolution is better due to lots more mega-whatevers, but the camera gives excessive "barrel" distortion to any shots closer than 6', regardless of the setting (see photos above). Even Photoshop tweaking doesn't get rid of it all. Aaarrrgh!

One World One Heart Giveaway

One World One Heart is an annual event when bloggers all over the world get together and visit each other and give a door prize to one of their guests. Sort of like an Open House but you don't have to get dressed up for it. If you click on the logo above or here you will be taken to the One World One Heart blog where down the right side are links for all the participating blogs. Click on any (or all!) of the links and leave a Comment to be eligible to win the giveaway described on each blog. You don't have to have a blog yourself to be eligible to enter, just comment and be sure your email address is included. Note: The deadline for 2009 entry has passed

Why? Here's part of what the sponsor of this Giveaway said:

". . . .the connections. The whole idea behind doing this and trying to get as many as possible to join in, was and is to meet new and wonderful people."

What You Need To Do To Win My Giveaway (Two Winners were selected, will be notified by email): The deadline has passed and Comments are closed. Check OWOH for future giveaways.

Please take a look at the blogs of the winners that were randomly chosen:

Nicky Linzey

Carol Stocker

What Was Won in My Giveaway: One of the small books (small as in the size of a credit card) shown below. First winner randomly selected (Nicky) got the rust book, the second winner (Carol) got the green book. Front and backs are ceramic clay with acrylic paint. Center is accordian folded paper. The book pages have bits collaged on them.

Secret Belgians and Baby Dremels

Saturday was a busy day for us. Susan went to a workshop sponsored by the Capital City Scribes where she learned how to make a book with a Mongolian Binding. She said was sturdy enough it could have been carried around by Genghis Khan (no picture of it, sorry). These pictures are of the 2nd book she made with the Secret Belgian Binding. She said the secret was that it was hard as hell to do. The covers are Arches Text Wove paper, with washes and stamping (large foam stamps) with acrylic paint mixed with gesso. The thread is waxed linen.

While she was in that workshop I was busy shopping at one of my favorite stores, Harbor Freight. (And it's one of EJ's favorites, too.) If you haven't signed up for their mailing list, do it! That's how I found out this great tool was on sale for only $6.99. This Baby Dremel will be perfect for drilling little holes in stuff like leather and cardboard where normally I'd have to work with a screw punch and wind up with a big hole. When Susan saw it she made me go back and buy her one. She calls it her Sissy Dremel.

Book Arts

The Austin Book Arts people don't just do books, they do lots of other stuff. For example, zines, Calligraphy, conservation, paper arts, bookmaking, book binding, etc. Jerome is currently in charge and this is just one example of his artistic talents, you can see more in the "Books" photostream here. (If you are in the Austin area, think about going to one of their meetings.

Susan

Baby Books

These little ceramic books are a diversion I made at Susan's request. The template for the cover piece was an old credit card. Their color comes from paints of various types that Susan painted on and most have been rubbed with wax. The backs are similar, some have a color variation.

Susan taught me how to make an accordion folded piece of paper that I glued inside two ceramic covers to make the book, one book has some paper she had painted up. They are being sold today at the Austin Community College Student Art Show. She has about 10 more covers to paint for me and I may be making even more covers because they are fun to do. We are experimenting with different surface treatments, as glazing them is not a good thing -- takes up too much kiln space because they have to lie flat.

A Little Hot Air Pocket

Susan, The Blog Wrangler, speaks:

I'm back! Life, Don, Google, and the blog will all start behaving again. Well, I can hope, can't I?

I was at the International Quilt Festival in Houston, taking classes, trying to help vendors survive our economic meltdown and looking at way too many quilts. A whole lot of inspiration and information came thundering into my head via Katie Kendrick and Maggie Weiss. More later but in the meantime you can check out Katie's blog.

A few years ago I took a basic 6-session bookbinding class from Wendy Hale Davis. Amazingly enough I came out of the class with 6 books of varying styles. Now I'm taking it again, but this time, as I told Wendy, I'm trying to pay attention. But I'm still not into the measuring perfection stuff. If the book doesn't fall apart when I open it (and if it does open) then I count it as a success.

Here's the nifty thing I learned from her when she taught us to make this leather book: Air pockets.

She gave us 36 sheets of paper, to be folded in half to make 6 signatures ("sets") with 6 sheets of folded paper in each one. Should you fold 6 in half together at one time? Or fold each sheet separately and then group them into 6 signatures? The answer is: It depends on what the book will be for.

If you will be pasting things in and making the pages thicker, fold 6 sheets together at once because it will make a sort of "air pocket" in the middle. You can see this in one of the signatures in the top view pictures. When you bind the signatures to make the book, it will be a fatter book but you will have room ("air pockets") to expand when you add things like pictures, receipts, ticket stubs, etc.

If you will be just writing, fold the sheets one at a time because then the book will be very neat and flatter.

What did I do? One air pocket, the rest flat. I'm not big on decision making or commitment on things like this so I just hedged my bets, so to speak. Regardless, Don got a new sketchbook out of the deal.

5 More Books

Susan talks again:

Jill Berry's 5 Books in One Day was a blur of paper folding, creasing, and trying to make sure I knew which side was "up" at all times! Yes, I did make all 5 books and the proof is in the picture. The little one with the blue bow is sized so that ATCs will fit in the pocket pages. Jill worked hard to make sure we all kept up with her instructions and constantly moved around the room to work with us. It was fun to be in her classes and there was the added bonus of her generous supply kit.

Still pending but worth the wait: Pictures from her Sumptuous Sumi class.

A Textured Journal

Susan again (with some help from Don):

Wednesday night was Jacqueline Sullivan's Stenciled, Textured Journal. Jacqueline always has a good class kit and excellent instruction sheets and booklets prepared for her classes. Her supplies included a generous amount and choice of Golden paints. I've had several classes with her and she always has some new twist or way of doing things. If you can't make a class with her you might check her website for her instructional DVD.

In this class we had her husband, Victor, working as her assistant so there was plenty of help available if you needed it. I was punching holes in the papers prior to stitching and found that my awl had a burr at the end. This was making the job much harder to do than it needed to be. I asked for a file or rasp to get the burr off and Victor said, "Just run outside and rub it across the sidewalk to sharpen it." Worked like a charm!

Some artists don't like making books that just have plain paper pages in them, they prefer to have painted papers or content in their books. I pretty much agree but I've found that showing a handmade book with blank pages to an amateur (i.e., non-artist) is less confusing to them. They find it easier to "get" and when you transition to showing them somewhat abstract content in the other books you've made they don't have that deer-in-the-headlights look. You know, the look just before they say, "Oh, how.................. nice."

So both plain paper and content-loaded books have a place on my bookshelf.

The close-up pictures below show more of the dimension and depth of the texure of the cover. Most people picked brown or natural tones to go with their stencils so of course I had to be contrary and aimed for a techno-grunge look.

A Flag Book

Susan again:

On Monday night it was Mabel Dean's Fabulous Flags - Books with Movement and Dimension. I had a class last year with Mabel so I knew she would be very generous with her supplies and have a lot of ideas, good handouts, and really useful tips and tricks.

The photo is one she shot on a trip to Africa and we all hacked it up to make our flag books. I was supposed to cut off the excess green cover paper on the right side but I just folded it around to make a protective cover.

The best part was the grid she printed for us so that we can easily (well, sort of) make a flag book with our own pictures. Below is a picture of Mabel's flag book she made using a photo her husband took.

A Copper Book

Susan finally gets her turn:
On Tuesday night (yes, I know I'm goofing up the chronological order) I took Jill Berry's Copper Piano Hinge Book. It was a lot of fun to make and easier than it looks and liver of sulphur is really stinky. When I showed the book to Don he was pretty flummoxed (Ha!) that I had been able to do a piano hinge that really worked. If he begs hard enough I'll teach him how.

Jill is a very easy-going teacher and I enjoyed immensely all the classes I had with her (more later). Unfortunately, these pictures are not decent quality but we were all hurrying to get the books laid out and take a picture as fast as possible. I don't think anyone else took pictures. The nicely done little pictures at the bottom are Jill's pictures from the ArtUnraveled workshop site. Amazingly, we all seemed to have made something that looked like it was supposed to. At my table, just to thoroughly intimidate me, Lynda Abare, a phenomenally talented artist, was cool enough to write a poem during the class for her book.

My camera is a 5-year old 3-megapixel point-and-shoot so there weren't many options available. Several people were trying to help with the camera as the glare off the copper books was making things wonky. Somehow I changed a setting between the 2 pictures but I have no idea what. Flash on? Off? Macro setting? Party Mode? (Yes!) Who knows? I also find it almost impossible to tell if a picture is focused by looking at that tiny screen.

Susan's Bookmaking, The Finale

Susan calls this book Pompeii. They remind me of the colors of the Egyptian tiles and artifacts on the wall by the Temple of Dendur at The Metropolitan Museum. Albie was surprised at the light color choices and told Susan, "I wasn't sure you could do it." Susan privately told me it was easy, this time she had just shoved her way to the front of the supply table crowd and grabbed the "best" colors first.

Susan's Bookmaking, Part 2

Second day, more feeding frenzy for the "good colors". Susan is still happy with her dark colors and Albie is growing more distressed. Tomorrow, the resolution.