Graphic 45 Mini Albums

Wednesday came and went in a flurry of laundry, art salon get together and child care. So I am doing a Thursday post instead. I have been very busy making two "mini" albums and the results are pictured below. The first album is inspired by Anne's Paper Creations. She creates astounding albums, cards and other paper creations and then makes videos so us mere mortals can follow along. I made some changes to her album, but used four of her pages that I really loved from the Graphic 45 Eerie Tales collection. I left lots of blank space for my kids 18 years of Halloween pictures.

The second album I finished was based on Kathy Orta's Foto Folios 2 collection. This one is style 3, the genealogy folio. I used Graphic 45 papers from Raining Cats and Dogs, Communique, Transatlantique, and ABC Primer. I plan to put travel, pet, and school pictures in this album. I think the different collections work well together. How about you?

Eerie Tales Album

Foto Folio 2 Style 3

Wednesday Post #13 part 2: Glove Books

I thought I would share some of my other glove books. Yes, I have made more than one glove book in my career. I love collecting vintage gloves and some of them just want to become book covers while others want to be the book. I hope you like the selection.

Clasped Hands is a book made entirely of gloves.

A is for Other, an ASL ABC was juried into the San Diego Book Arts National Juried Show in 2010. It also won entry into the Cannon Art Gallery 2011 Juried Biennial.

Woven pages of Graphic 45 paper adorn these lovely pink gloves.

These long gloves were perfect for a wedding guest book. Somerset Weddings Magazine agreed and showed this book in their 2007 edition.

Three glove books I made for a Graphic 45 Design Team tryout in 2014.

Grecian Fragments was juried into the Athenaeum's 6th Juried Artist's Book Biennial.

Inside Grecian Fragments, a poem about falling apart and remaining strong at the core.

Wednesday Post #13: San Diego Book Arts Member Show Entry

I am finally posting something on a Wednesday, hurray!! Happy New Year and welcome to another blog post about saving ideas and letting them ferment until they become something interesting. I have tried many, many times to create a book using the pair of pink gloves pictured below. I even had the signatures sewn in at one point, only to remove them and start again. I tried watercolor, cut paper, dried flowers, having paper poke through from one page to another and nothing felt or looked right. Last night I was thinking about the theme for this year's San Diego Book Arts Member Show (Cerchez la Femme) and thought of this book again. I think the egg in the center of the cupped hands works as a nod to fertility and the paper butterfly emerging speaks to new life. I am finally happy with the pink glove book. I may refine the look over the next few months, or even add something to the pages, but for now I am just happy to be on the right track with a book that has been sitting in a drawer for years; waiting to be used.

Enjoy!

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!!