monday

Lovely relaxing weekend away. A chance to catch up, a walk on the beach...

And a few examples of single sheet bindings. All the ways I could think of today (and not including Keith Smith's single sheet coptics, too complicated for the first lesson tomorrow, a bit too complicated for me!)

Various Japanese style bindings, with a few cover variations...

A stiff leaf binding (or, to put it more simply: using a hinge to stick the pages together, in various ways)

A kind of concertina pamphlet stitch combination, with pages sandwiched between the concertina folds (I like this one!)

And my favorite, an origami fold into which pages can slot...

Tomorrow I'm going to try a stab binding onto a stick, a perfect binding and a box/portfolio type thing. 

Have I missed any? 

ho ho ho

I'm off to deliver the last of my Christmas presents this weekend...

To 3 of my best friends. And as they all live in different cities, it doesn't really matter that I made them all the same thing... 

Have a lovely weekend!

erm

I'm making this bag for a present. My question is: is it very very wrong to want to keep it?

 

I won't, of course, but I'm tempted... Will show you when its done :)

sunday

Today has seen a bit of this...

Finally finishing this...

A little walk...

Later, a bit of this...

And eating lots of buttery homemade scotch pancakes (the little fat puffy ones, yum!) 

I reduced the amount of sugar in the recipe (new year health kick an all that) and as I was eating them they occasionally reminded me of a concoction I used to make in the kitchen when I was little. My mum would give me free reign on the baking cupboard and I would measure out (mostly random) amounts of flour and butter and raisins and really what ever I fancied... I would then bake it in the oven in a cup (I think I misunderstood the reason for the name of 'cup cake' my mum used to bake; a cup of each, not baked in a cup :) ) I would feed the cupcake to my dad for his tea. 

And he always ate it too! (thats love for you isn't it)

you probably know this already but...

My favourite thing to do with a bit of paper is to fold it into a concertina. There's something so very satisfying about matching up edges and creasing, folding and creasing and ending up with a little paper caterpillar that can squash and open and flex. And its so versatile as a book structure...

I'm trying to make a book that shows this versatility. Some plans...

blurr

Ahhh. Friday.

After a busy week I almost don't know what to do with myself, I feel like I shouldn't stop. I feel like if I loose my momentum I'll never get going again...

But I've made myself stop. Do nothing. Catch up with sitting still. You see three days off is great for really relaxing, its just getting going again on Monday that's the problem! Anyway, thats enough of that.

I went to the opticians yesterday. I've been getting headaches and fuzzy tired eyes and it turns out I need to start wearing glasses. I wouldn't mind but when I had my eyes tested two years ago my vision was perfect, so it's almost definitely working in an office and staring at a screen 37 hours a week thats done me in. Grrr. The thought of loosing my vision terrifies me, so I'm hoping the glasses, and the fact I work with computers a lot less now, will stop my eyes decline (and I know I'm being melodramatic, but how I would hate all your lovely blogs to go irrecoverably blurry...) 

I pick the glasses up next week, it did feel funny trying them all on in the shop, there were about 300 different pairs to choose from, and I don't have a clue how to choose glasses, where to start? It all felt a bit surreal...

 

Perhaps when I have the glasses I will be able to fold even tinier concertinas!!

an odd pair

As part of the induction to my new job I've been making a print using each of the processes available to students in the print room. I think it's a really good way of double checking I know what I'm doing before I show someone else, and of course every print room is slightly different so its good to go through everything systematically and learn the quirks...

So, this is a lino print. I used the reduction (or suicide) method, which means that the first colour is cut from the lino, then printed, then more lino is cut away and the plate printed again over the top of the previous image. This process is repeated until the print is complete, all from one piece of lino which leaves very little room for mistakes. A wrong cut towards the end can ruin the entire run of prints, hence the name suicide method!

This print uses two colours; first dark blue (with just the eyes and suckers cut out to reveal the white paper beneath) and then lighter blue over the top (with the background cut away to leave the dark blue). I enjoyed this reduction method as it forced me to think about how colour layering works, a kind of backwards way of thinking for me (I think my brain naturally works in lines) so I'm still always surprised by the results! This print was also printed using an hydraulic nipping press, just in case you're interested...

And then this...

An etching and aquatint, (sorry the photos are a bit rubbish, I took these on my camera phone at work, they do enlarge a bit though, if you click) with a background rollover and (egg shaped) stencil... I love the delicacy and subtlety of tone that aquatint allows, so different to the lino above. 

On the first aquatint I did last week I messed up all the tones, it takes a few goes to get a feel for the strength of the acid, but this birdie turned out better I think. And that's what I need to keep telling myself; that I shouldn't expect to get things right first time, to always try again.  

And then that makes me think... even if I do think I'm doing ok I should still keep pushing myself, because it might be rubbish and I haven't even realised (or at least I probably could still do better :) ) 

So, tomorrow...

knitting is fun

I like knitting. For ages I could only knit and purl; scarves and bags (and bandages?) were about my limit. But then one day (just like that) I learnt to increase and decrease, and suddenly a whole new world appeared before me; a world of hats and mittens and cardigans and...

...rabbits! Hurray!

 

tutu-tastic

I've been having far too much fun tonight. Shamelessly eating the chocolates I got for my birthday instead of cooking tea, and making THIS...

Whooo hooo! Its for the 3 year old daughter of my friend who gave birth yesterday. A kind of congratulations on becoming a big sister present, I hope she likes it. Surely any little girl would like a tutu (me! me!) Oh if only I had had one of these when I was little (or at least littler, because I must admit I did try to get it on, but there was seam ripping potential and I had to stop myself...) its so puffy and swirly and bouncy and (can you tell I want one?!) 

If you think you might like to make one for yourself the tutorial is here. Go on... you know you want to :)

eeek!

Today one of my best friends gave birth to a beautiful baby boy. So far I've only seen a picture of him (oh the wonders of technology!) so I really can't wait to meet him. I'm very excited!

Oh, and I made some books (for a change)

This is the stitching on the text block, I always feel like its a shame to cover it up...

Buttonhole binding (from one of Keith Smith's books). One with a hard cover and one with a soft(ish) cover...

And the sewing creates end bands, which I really like.

Perhaps tomorrow I will try and make a book for the baby (do babies need books?) I hope he had a lovely first day in the world :)

more books

I had a post in my head yesterday. All neatly written and articulate and to the point; a perfect post. But I fell asleep on the sofa and now its tomorrow (today). Oh well.

A few more books. The last few are experiments in binding onto cords as on Thursday a student is coming in to make a book using leaves, and as this is the method she wants to use to bind them together I need to make sure I know how to do it... This is my job?! I love it :)

a day older

Well, yesterday I was my 25th birthday, which was a nice surprise! I always forget about my birthday, what with Christmas and New Year, and this year I seem to have been especially busy, so it kind of crept up on me.

I went on nice (very windy) walk with some of my friends and family then to the pub for lunch (and sticky toffee pudding for pud, happy birthday to me!) 

I feel happy to be 25. I don't normally feel much different after my birthday, not taller or older or wiser, but this year I feel quite good. A quarter of a century, that's a long time to be alive! And I feel like I'm at a good place in my life; lots behind (oh how time flies!) but lots to look forward to too. Lots.

Anyway, this is a book I made on Friday. A bit of an experiment to see if I could make a hard back book with pages that fold out. The spine ended up a bit loose and floppy as I couldn't glue it (because of the fold out bits) but it seemed to work ok...

Something to develop I think...

off cuts

I think I may have a hoarding problem... Yesterday, whist trying to put away my new Christmas things, I found not one more thing could possibly fit in my cupboard and I suddenly realised I didn't know what was taking up the space, what was lurking at the back of my wardrobe? (A common problem I'm sure!) I decided to investigate...

I found, amongst other things; 1 bag of used envelopes, 2 large carrier bags full of toilet roll middles, 3 boxes of guillotine off cuts and all of last years Christmas wrapping paper neatly folded and forgotten about for ever more.

Why do I feel the need to keep all this stuff? Hmmm.

Anyway, today I made this book from some of the off cuts and other junk I found stashed in an alternative cupboard at work...

The cover is slightly faded black buckram (although the silly light in my living room had made it look all brown) with black and white end bands...

The endpapers are cut from a mono print I made a while back; an experiment with ink and oil and degreaser. I was trying to recreate the patterns that form when these three things mix, here most of the ink was repelled by the degreaser and the roller left a shadow of where I'd cleaned the plate with a cloth...

Its 5x4 inches, palm size. A few cutting mistakes (when will I learn that if I don't cut something square at the start that it still won't be square at the end? And when will I learn not to use the stanley knife free hand?!) but it could have been a lot worse. Now I just need to think of something to write in it (perhaps a list of the new things I've stashed at the back of my wardrobe...)