Wednesday Post #12: A New Book Structure, the Cube Book

Today's post is all about a lesson: never throw anything away. I made the parts of today's artist's book several years ago after taking a workshop from Laura Wait. In the workshop we painted large sheets of textwove paper with paste paints then folded, cut and bound books using the Drum Leaf binding, invented by Tim Ely. I loved the class and the surprise nature of how images, cut and rearranged, could look different once the final book was assembled. We learned how to write text in several interesting ways and to use this as imagery not words. I took the class to learn the Drum Leaf binding, but really enjoyed the embellishment aspects more.

Fast forward to my painted 24 by 18 sheet of textwove that I decided to cut and fold into a form I learned way back in 2005 from Karen Thomas. I have adapted her technique to folding one long strip of paper into a 4 page accordion book. I made the paneled long strip you see below in triplicate and then put it away in my bottom drawer and there it languished until a few weeks ago. I was looking through my origami models to see what I wanted to take to the origami group meeting and I found the painted, folded strips of paper and decided to rework the pieces. I kept one long strip and cut the others into squares, refolded them and inserted them into the available openings. I created a triangular tab to hold it all closed and realized that I could make the book cube shaped by flexing some of the folds. Voila! a new book was created from the cast-offs of an almost forgotten project. So, always keep interesting pieces of paper and paw through them once in a while and see if you can't come up with something new and different to do with them.

I hope you enjoy the results of my paper play.

Here is the book closed and in cube form.

This is what the book looks like open.

Looking straight down into the closed book.

Here is the book showing its parts. The four twist folded inserts at the top and the long paneled strip below. Notice the way the folds look when you make this book from a long strip of paper.

The back of the book showing the paste colors.

Folding directions for one panel of the accordion book.

Crease pattern for the twist insert "pages."

Wednesday Post #11: The Paper Folding Holidays

Today's post is all about paper holiday decorations and our special Doctor Who Christmas Tree. As you will see in the photos below, we have to make our own snow in San Diego. We also like to deck our tree with weeping angels, nightingales, sparrows, and a few paper ornaments to celebrate the season and our love for all things DW. Enjoy the pictures and as always comments are most welcome.

-Gina

Doctor Who Tree with german bells, cranes and folded boxes (in addition to the weeping angels, of course).

Traditional paper snowflakes on our windows to make 70 degree weather feel like winter.

San Diego Origami Group

I went to Solana Beach Library yesterday to a meeting of the San Diego Origami Group. I had a wonderful time meeting all the other members who attended. I even met a former San Diego Book Arts member and reconnected. If you are interested in origami, learning to fold new models, or just want to meet a nice group of people; I encourage you to check out this group.

Here are some of the models we folded in our two hours together:

John and Kathy showed us how to fold this star.

Marti shared this cute stocking that can hold a mini candy cane.

John taught me how to make this hexagon bowl. Thanks.

I shared the German Bell.

Wednesday Post # 10: The Little Prince altered book

I have been working on altering some classic children's books this week. I have an idea for Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, by Lewis Carroll, but am letting it stew for now. In the meantime, I have been drawing, measuring, and cutting into a student copy of Le Petit Prince, by Antoine de Saint-Exupery. I wanted to make it look like there was a staircase leading the prince from his asteroid home down to Earth. There are things I would do differently if I did it again, but all in all I am happy with the results. Let me know what you think and come back soon to see how I transform Alice...

The book before I started to cut.

I wanted the stairs to spiral, so I drew one using the Fibonacci sequence. It works well, if you need a quick, accurate spiral.

I also wanted the stairs to be evenly spaced and radiate out from a center point. To do this I divided a circle into 1/6ths and subdivided this twice more to create the above drawing. I made all the drawings on tracing paper so I could overlay the designs for the final one below.

Here is the piece of tracing paper I used to make the cuts in the book. I first traced the outline of the boy and asteroid that I wanted to keep, then I added the spiral and the radiating lines from the drawings above.

This picture illustrates how I cut each section of the stairs starting at the back of the book and cutting larger wedges as I went.

Here are the tools of the trade that I used during the process: a thin cutting mat, two exacto knives (one for straight lines and one for curves), a 1/4" spacer for the page edges, and a pencil to trace the lines from the tracing paper onto the book pages.

Voila!!