Season's greetings...

 ...to you and yours.  See you in 2022!

The baking...

 ...is pretty much done for the Christmas season, so it's back in the studio and some journaling as I lose myself in hearts.

This spread is the inside back cover (what, you expected me to work the pages from front to back in order?  HA!).  I love the blue jean gel print on the left combined with the quote.  It seems very apt, doesn't it?

I was amused to see what a tiny space I was working in this week - see that bit in the bottom right of the photo below? 

It's basically one pencil square in size.  I know that some of you work the same way, so I'm hardly embarrassed at all.  😂

Happy week to you all, and may your seasonal preparations be filled with joy and love.  xo

Winter provides some wonderful...

 ...patterns, 

and we've had our first snowfall to encourage the feel of Christmas.

A friend gifted me with a lovely poinsettia to add to the seasonal ambiance,

John has spent hours adding lights and ornaments to the living room

and dining area

and the frenzy of mini-ornament making has one of the studio tables well occupied.

The oven has been going at a near constant pace,

and the first roaster-full of nuts and bolts is out of the oven (does anybody use Worcestershire sauce at any other time of the year?).

Something tells me that the season is well and truly on the way.  I hope you're in the throes of the  excitement as well, and  your preparations are filled with wonderful smells, delightful makings, love, joy and hope that characterize the season.

'This whole world...

 ...is wild at heart and weird on top.', says David Lynch.  It's one of my favourite quotes, and of course starts off the heart book I'm working on right now.

With sixty spreads in this small book (6" high x 4 1/2" wide), it's going to be some time before it's completed.  My intention is to add a heart quote and a heart (or more) to each spread, and make every attempt to bring those unloved prints to some sort of beauty.  And truthfully, it would be impossible to do otherwise, for who can resist a heart?!!  They're the symbol of love in culture after culture.

Naturally, that's not all that's happening in the studio.  The Christmas cards heading to other countries have been signed and sent (and undoubtedly will be late again this year, arriving in February or March 😉), and the ones for Canada are in the works as I scribble and address away like a madwoman.  

I hope that you've had an entertaining week as well, and that you're much further along the prepare-for-Christmas path than am I.  Hard to imagine that we are in the month of December already.  Wishing you safe and happy days, my friends.

While the muse...

 ...was back in the studio this week, the spatial relationship brain took a holiday.  What was supposed to be an easy book form took a whole lot longer than it 'should have'.

There were a couple of reasons for this.  I decided to use a hodge-podge of gel prints, all of which were decidedly unappealing, so the organization of them took some time.

And my decision to do something different with the Typar cover meant the directions I found on Vintage Page Designs required some finagling.  Well, not some really - a lot.

Of course, I made my usual plethora of mistakes (apparently that's also part of my learning curve).

Eventually, however, I managed to stitch/cut/sort/cover and create this accordion concertina book form.

By the time I finish the inside (and won't that be a challenge with all those unloved pages?!!!) and form a box for it, I'm hoping it will be a lovely repository for a ton of 💓💕💖💗💝💞💟.  For some reason, my collection of these has grown by leaps and bounds these past two years.

And I did mention last week that I had something in mind for the collage of paper strips.  During the week I finished a small painting with it, and enjoyed adding some textural elements.  The background is one I created with a dryer sheet technique some months ago.

'Hwy 340' collage on wood panel 4" x 4" 2021 © Win Dinn

'Hwy 340' collage on wood panel 4" x 4" 2021 © Win Dinn

A quick count tells me that I now have 6 or 7 journals to complete on the inside, one large painting on the go, paper partly completed for another star book, and so much more.  This is really living the creative life, isn't it?!

When the muse...

 ...is fallow/dormant/inert out to lunch, I head back into my black and white journal.  Because it's a small size and I occasionally store some sketchy ideas there, it's a good working ground.  Started sometime in the fall of 2019, I expect it to be finished during the next pandemic if my present rate is any indication.

I have done a few pages, though, and thought I'd share them here.

And of course there is always something (else) on the go in the studio.  

I've been playing with the chopped off ends of papers (yes, I save everything), but judging from the pile, there's a lot to do yet.  I've got a project in mind for the paper above, and right now it's resting under a stack of books while the glue sets.

And of course there is another book form in progress; I still have several thousand styles to test.  These signatures need punching and setting into an accordion file.

All in all, there's more than enough to keep me busy as we wait for the roads to open from the west coast and supply lines to resume.  This is some interesting year, isn't it?  

Stay safe, my friends, and keep in touch.    

Books, books, books...

 ...are really all I can think about right now.  I'd like to shut myself away in the studio and make them until I've tried every possible style.

This particular one is called a piano hinge, using wooden skewers to tie it all together.  

It's been in the works for a couple of weeks, what with the re-writing the directions so that I could understand them, and doing some paper mockups.

It has ten signatures of two sheets each and in five different colours, so that the spine is (quietly) colourful.

I used my own painted paper for the covers, which only leaves me with two or three feet of this one to go.  😂

What was really fun was popping over to visit another artist to purchase some buttons. Andrea Revoy makes the most fabulous clay and porcelain buttons and her wide-ranging interests run from clay to fabric to hand-crafted books.  A visit to her studio is, for me, to get lost in the deliciousness!

One couldn't help finding the perfect button to finish off this book.

Meanwhile, the Christmas cards continue apace and the painting lies languishing from neglect.

Who knows where the muse will strike this week?  I really need to make a box for this book (it will  look terrific hanging like a ledger), and I've got a couple of more book styles lined up as well.  When will I get back to the painting?  Heaven knows!