July Recap and August Meeting Reminder

The July meeting was mostly a working meeting.  Just a reminder that everyone should plan on creating a canvas for our show at the end of October.  The canvas should be 12" x 12" gallery wrapped.  The depth should be between 1 3/8" to 1 1/2.  And the subject is "Storytelling".

Also, just a reminder that our next meeting is this Saturday, August 9th, from 10am to Noon at Artist and Display.  It worked out very well last time and its a great space to meet.  

Our Summer Page to the "Seasons" book is due.  Please bring 15 copies to share.  The page should be 8 1/2" x 11", with both sides and horizontal (for hamburger fold).  If you were not able to start with the Spring Page but still would like to participate, no problem.  Just bring a Summer Page this time and when our Fall Page is due, you can catch up with the Spring Page.  (We will be binding this book some time after the new year, so it will not be in the show.)

Unfortunately, I will not be able to attend (My kids Karate school has there annual picnic that day.  I will try to stop in and drop my pages off and say hi before we leave.), but I will see everyone in September.

June Meeting Recap

Hello Everyone,

Here's a recap of our last meeting on June 14th:

The meeting turned out to be a great Show-and-Tell day for the curiosity boxes, thanks to Betsy Rasmussen and Kathleen Kelly who both brought in wonderful finished pieces. 

Betsy Rasmussen

Kathleen Kelly

Here is some of the other work that was shared.  

Betsy Rasmussen

                                                     ABC Book

Nancy Lohmiller

Diane Judd

We also had an opportunity to look at the curiosity boxes that have been pinned to our Pinterest board. 

Nancy lead a great discussion with some helpful advice on creating your own Artist Statement about your work.  Starting with find three specific words that you or other people would use to describe your style and then building your story of why you create what you create.  You want to let people know what the ideas are behind your work, as well as, your motivation for making art.

We also reminded ourselves the importance of taking several photos of each piece we create.  

To that end, please remember our show is coming up soon (end of October).  We would like everyone to submit

1.  An ABC Book  

2.  A Curiosity Box and  

3. The 12" x 12" Canvas Piece.

Nancy is checking to see if it would be cost effective to buy the canvases in bulk and how much it will cost.

Just to review, our canvas piece will be a 12" x 12" gallery wrapped canvas.  The theme is "story-telling", but there are no limitations on materials or techniques.

Our next meeting is July 12th.

The "summer" page to our Seasons book will be due at the August meeting, August 9th.

Quote of the Week:  "Sometime, in a summer morning, having taken my accustomed bath, I sat in my sunny doorway from sunrise till noon, rapt in reverie." - Henry David Thoreau

Tab and Slot Book Demo

Hello Everyone,

I am finally able to catch up on our blog.  So sorry for the delay.

Here are the instructions for the Tab and Slot Book Demo that Dina was gracious enough to demonstrate at our April 12th meeting.

Tab and Slot Book

Materials

6 pieces of paper (the paper we used was 8 1/2" x 11" sheets, 3 were decorative paper, 3 solid color)

Paper Knife

Ruler

Pencil

Fold each paper in half, hamburger fold.  For 3 of the sheets, mark and cut approximately an inch from the top and bottom of the center fold.  For 3 of the sheets, mark an inch from the top and bottom of the center fold and cut a slot in between the two marks.

                                                       Slot cut 3                        Tab cut 3

Then insert a tab pages into a slot pages to the fold.

After that you can join the signatures together by inserting a tab page into a slot page until they are all joined.

And that's it!


Kathleen did a variation of this book at the May meeting.

Same technique but instead to make just slots the slots were made into shapes.

May Meeting Recap

A wonderful opportunity from Nancy:  the Door County Book Show.  Everyone is invited to contribute.  There is no fee to enter.  You can enter as many books as you would like.  The only requirement is that all work must be sellable.  You will also need to provide an artist bio-statment and contact information. Nancy has graciously volunteered to send the books the up north.  The drop off time is June 7th from 11 to 1pm in our meeting room, 4th floor NDH, Mount Mary University.  The pieces will be in Door County till about October/November, you should bring any older books or any books that you will not need for our show.  This is a wonderful opportunity to clear some inventory and make a little money.

For our June 14th meeting we will be working on our Curiosity Box projects.  We will also be doing a gallery walk-through to help plan for our show in October/November.  It is coming up quickly, so it will be nice to see the space and talk about what we will need to do for the show.

For the summer, we will continue to meet the second Saturday of the month.  So are meetings will be June 14th, July 12th and August 9th.

For the August 9th meeting, we will hold a Completion and Critique Workshop.  It will run a bit longer 10am-3pm.  It will be a chance for you to complete some of the books you've started or get feed back on books already done.  (It is not mandatory to stay the whole time.  Stay for as long as you can.)

Also for the August 9th meeting, the next page for our Seasons book will be due.  It is the Summer page.  8 1/2" x 11", both sides.  (Just a reminder, this book will be bound after the new year, it will not be in the show.)

April 12th Meeting Recap

Hello Everyone,

Hopefully you had a wonderful Easter holiday.  I am especially grateful for the warmer weather and no snow.

Just a quick recap of our April 12^th meeting.

Our group project, the “Seasons” book, got off to a great start.  Thanks everyone for bring in your Spring page.  :D   You will want to keep your traded pages secure.  Once we have all the pages for seasons traded, we will discuss how to assemble them into a bound book.  The Summer page will be due at our August or September meeting.

A big THANK YOU to Dina Leib for demonstrating the Tab and Slot and the Tea Bag book forms and providing the materials.  It was very inspirational.  I have posted photos of my finished books  and will be putting the demos of them up later this month.

Tab and Slot

Tea Bag

Dianna Reiter brought in her example of the Secret Belgium Binding Book.

It’s a beautiful sewn book binding but a bit tricky.  Or anyone whose interested in giving it a try on their own, I have posted a tutorial of the binding (from Erin Fletcher at herringbonebindery.com) on our Pinterest board.  (Pinterest board link:  Binders Guild Pinterest Board)

Chris Klein also shared with us another set of instructions for Hedi Kyle's Diagonal Pocket Book form.  This set of instructions came from the magazine Bound & Lettered, Fall 2013.  The article "Making a Paper Wallet" by Carol Bubosch has great instructions and very clear photos of what to do.

Our next meeting is May 10^th  from 10am to Noon at Mt. Mary.  Chris Klein has volunteered to demonstrate the Secret Victorian Purse Fold.  For this you will need to bring a 9” x 9” text weight paper.  It can be printed on one side and white on the other.  This will make you a purse that is 3” square.  If you would like to make a 4” purse, the paper size should be 12” x 12”.

You will also need to bring a bone folder and just the regular supplies (pencil, ruler, scissors, etc.)

Happy Spring!

See everyone on the 10^th.

Sheila

March Meeting Book Demo

For our meeting last March, I demonstrated how to make a kind of reverse painting technique and then turn that painting into a simple one-page folded book.  It's a very simple but complete book.

In the meeting we did a sun book:

But for my blog demo I thought I would make a star book using the same technique that we did for the sun book.

The Painting:

You start with just an ordinary piece of printer/copier paper.  (The paper should be light weight.)  

On the paper you will want to trace randomly about 5 to 7 medium circles.

For our sun book we left the circles white, but for this star book I decided to color in the circles a yellow.

Then I mixed a light blue acrylic paint with glazing medium, at about a 1part paint/2 parts medium ratio.  (Because every paint is different, you will want to test a sample on a scrap piece of paper before adding it to the actual work.  The paint should be translucent.  The color should be vibrant but you should be able to see through it.)

Paint around the circles.

You'll notice that you can see your brushstrokes.  That's part of the beauty of this technique.

The paint needs to dry before moving to the next step.

Next, I  traced randomly about 9 to 12 smaller circles, going inside and outside the yellow circles.  

I then took a darker blue acrylic paint and added to the glazing medium.  (Once again, you will want to check on a scrap piece of paper to make sure the mixture isn't too transparent or opaque.)

Then I painted around the smaller cirlces, ignoring what I had previously painted.  

You will have to wait again for the paint to dry before moving to the next step.

Next, using a template I made of a star shape, I traced several stars randomly around in pencil first and then went over it with silver marker.

As you can see the paper is rolling up on the ends slightly.  That's ok.  It will straighten out once it's weighted down after folding it into a book.

Wait for the paper to fully dry before folding it into the book form.

Making the Book:

For anyone who isn't familiar with making a simple one-page folded book, here are the instructions:

The hardest part about making this book is to make sure you fold everything evenly.  If your paper or folding is uneven, your book will be uneven.


Adding Your Text:

For me this makes the book complete, and treat it like poetry. 

I wrote 6 words about stars, printed them out on the computer and cut them out individually.

Then I glued them, one to each page of the inside of the book, leaving the first outer page for the title and the last outer page blank.

You will want to think about where you place each word and the overall design of the page.

For our sun books, some people wrote directly on the page.

After your book is complete and dry, make sure to put it under weights for about a week or so,  so that it flattens out.

Just a reminder our next meeting is on April 12th.  Dina will be demonstrating two book forms.  She will provide all the materials for the books, you will only need to bring the basics, ruler, pencil, Exact-o knife, glue, etc.

Also, please do not forget the Spring page is due for our group book.  The page should be 8 1/2" x 11", hamburger folded and you should make about 15 copies or so to share.

Quote of the Week:  "But I know somehow, that only when it is dark enough, can you see the stars." _ Martin Luther King Jr.

Curiosity Box Project

Hello Everyone,

Just a reminder that we should all be continuing our work on our curiosity boxes.

For anyone having trouble getting started, Nancy recommends looking at Jim Frazer's website - 

http://jimfrazer.shawnrossiter.com/curiosity.html

   He has a lot of interesting pieces and a great description of his boxes.

The other is Pinterest's Treasure Boxes and Cabinets of Curiosity - 

http://www.pinterest.com/search/pins/q=cabinets%20of%20curiosity


Quote of the week:  "Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do.  So throw off the bowlines.  Sail away from the safe harbor.  Catch the trade winds in your sails.  Explore.  Dream.  Discover." - Mark Twain