While this post is...

...short on artwork photos, it's not because the week has been lax in any manner.

The big news, for me, is that I've finished my tenure as President on our condo association .  The last months have truly felt like years, and I'm doing so much happy dancing and singing I'm sure you could hear it all from where you are.  This means I will actually have some time to spend in the studio and I fully intend to get crazy experimental with it,

starting with some abstract colour play in the mini journal, and using a piece of canvas as a palette.

I've been ironing snowflakes (every time I use that phrase, I think how crazy it sounds), and may eventually get to the card/painting I have in mind.

A major project I've been working on this week has been my life story, and a paragraph from it had me wondering whether this particular event was the cement to my snowflake obsession:

'My sister and I lived with six other young women in an old and ramshackle house on 6^th avenue just off 10 St. in Calgary.  At 17 years of age, I have a memory of being woken from a dead sleep-walking exploit, wearing nothing but a shortie nightgown and cropped jacket in -40 degree weather about half a block from home.  Barefooted, my housemate (who had followed me) and I struggled back to the house in a raging blizzard.  Goodness knows what I was dreaming about, but it certainly turned into a cold, albeit a stunningly beautiful, adventure.  It was just one incident in a lifelong fascination with snowflakes.'

I've also made a couple of birthday cards for condo residents who are celebrating this week - one for a full 80 years and the other for 82.  

And I took a few moments for some household signage that will help John with his memory.  

These aids continue to grow in number and I hope will continue to help for some time yet.

I hope that you had something fabulous to celebrate this week - do let me know in the comments, if so!

Die, procrastination - DIE!

I'm celebrating this week - I've had the Coptic stitch on my list of 'things to learn' for so long that it's lost in the mists of time, and this past week I finally managed to get the lead out and try it.

It's tiny (5 3/4" x 4 1/2"), and has enough flaws to qualify for "Book Fails in Canada' fame, but I've made a list, learned a ton, and look forward to trying it again.

I enjoyed making the signatures as well, using gel prints for the base, going mad with alcohol inks on white-on-white wallpaper, and generally drooling over the results.

Because this was a practice book, I paid no attention to the prints on the signatures, and then had to come up with something to tie them together colour-wise.

While it works as a prototype, it does so mostly for future possibilities.  I may have to up my alcohol ink stash, perhaps!

In any event, I am gleefully celebrating the death of this particular procrastination issue...a few thousand more of these and I'll have the skill to put together that tall stack of signatures I showed you last week.  That is cause for elation indeed.  

Books, books and more books...

Because I'm bent on learning so many new styles, this week alone I have crafted a flag book, a secret message book, and a folded pocket book among others.  The flag book is a style I'd not tried before, and it was on my must-do list.  

When closed, it's a tidy 4 1/4" x 2 1/4", small enough to fit into a tiny purse.

I'm liking the look of that 'mapping' on the back of the book.  The pages and covers are pieces of the paper towel collage I did some time ago.

I also did a secret message book, and if you are like me, spatially challenged, this is a sure way to drive yourself right into loony-tunesville.  It is a meandering book for no discernible reason that I can understand.  Does that sound like I'd never make another?  Pretty much!  😖 😵😣

I can't begin to tell you what it took for me to get this sorted, and I have to admit that I actually glued a couple of pages together when I realized that I'd missed them in the middle.  Grrrrrrr.

I was delighted to get the inking done, and did a mini happy dance to be finished, when I found (right near the beginning) two pages I'd missed entirely.  

Here's what I did with them, as I cursed underneath my breath, hissing like a snake.  I guess this is the secret message.

Suffice to say, it might be a decade or two before I try one of these again...or maybe never.  

I also got started on an folded envelope style book which requires no gluing.  It's interesting in that it takes a 35" long piece of paper to create a book that is basically 4" square.  I've not finished the signature or fun inserts yet, so I'll keep you posted on that.

The collection has been growing and I'm a bit concerned.  I did a quick check around the studio yesterday, and found these.  

Now granted, these are not all from this year, but I am a bit worried about the mania/addiction/obsession.  It appears to be turning quickly into a neurosis, given that over the past few years I have sold and gifted some dozens of them in various forms.  Somebody, please send help.

This has been...

 ...a bonkers week as I've wrestled with the Telus email migration, loss of all my contact information/  calendar and third party connections, plus dealing with my own technically-challenged mind.  Which means, of course, that I am late with this post, so I'll get right at it.

I've been working on one of the colour palette signatures, in a range of hues most unlike me.  In fact, this signature turned out to be about a dear friend, Alice Saltiel, who passed away from cancer.  The palette is much more her style and she was directing traffic all the way.  

In fact, the photo on the front of the signature is one that she took of an artist's work in New York City some years ago; she was sure I'd love it, and I did!

The signature is filled with cards, photos and bits of ephemera from her over the years.

And of course, I've been working on the mini books as well, adding another layer to most of them (with more to finish, and more layers to come).

Picture heavy and verbiage short!  Hope you're having a great week, filled with creative juices to the max...  And if I've had your email/snail mail address/phone number in the past, I'd be so happy if you'd forward it again!  Many thanks.

Often when I'm playing . . .

 . . . I get a crazy idea.  When I do, I usually try it.  That was what happened this week when I was making cover paper for the Head Shots book in progress.  I love making painted paper, and when I wondered what would happen if I threw a stencil on the paper and then let it dry, I just had to try it.

I liked the results so much I had to try it again.

I particularly liked a couple of the closeup shots on the second one.

I just know I'm going to have to try it on every possible combination of colour and stencil, so you know my next few weeks are going to be fun!

While I've not yet made a mini book from the painted papers, I do have a lot of them on the go.

I normally work on these one at a time, but given I have so many in this series, I'm trying to do the repetitive portions as a group, so all the edges got treated here at the same time.  Next I'll be getting into the individual pages to work on them with stamps, stencils and whatever etcetera comes to hand.

And now that the cover papers for Head Shots are in creation, I'm hoping to finish that book in the next week or so.  I've made the painted paper for the inside covers 

and decorative edging, Eileen has supplied me with matboard to create the covers, bless her, and John has chopped them for me.  Progress is being made!

How's your progress been this week?  I hope that you're on a massive roll with your creative life...

People are so amazing,....

 ...aren't they?  This week I received a package of papers, gifted to me from half way around the world, by Tracy of Sojourner.  Here are just some of the delights I found.

It was such a treat to open, and I can hardly wait to play with all these goodies!

And you know there's nothing more fun than getting snippets of art play from friends, especially when they come complete with a hand-crafted card.  And aren't those two little bits at the bottom fun?  They make me think of beach huts.  

I'm loving the possibilities inherent in the deli paper prints, too, since I have very few of these papers and so enjoy the way the translucency looks over top of other bits of art.

And get a load of these masks - aren't they wonderful?  I can see a gel printing session coming up!

And on the home studio front, my large journal and the black and white one are languishing on the side

while I work my way (slowly) through a binding technique with some 'Head Shots' I did some years ago.

Off to the side there are some dozen and a half mini books in various stages.  It's important to me that I start as many projects as possible while the ideas are fresh, right?  😏

My work tables seem to be heavily loaded to the book side these days, and I'm going to blame it all on Joe Rotella and Vintage Page Designs.  I just can't seem to stop.  If you're a book fiend too, I highly recommend you join the Creating Handmade Books with Vintage Page Designs Facebook group...you, too, will be drooling, stunned and addicted.

I'm wondering about your addictions - do you follow them through at the expense of everything else?  Do you do, and do, and do until you get it out of your system?  Would you rather create than eat (I wish it would go that far!)?  Tell me about your creative life!

It's been another week...

 ...of playing in the studio.  I've done a meditative mark-making project from #creativejumpstart21, inspired by @AndreaChebeleu and turned it into a small book utilizing a suggestion from another student to bind it.

I've finished two more mini books from another lesson, with three more to go:

The black and white journal has a couple of new spreads,

progress is being made in the stabbing department (although I am still flummoxed by the choice involved in choosing the covers), 

and I delighted in a very quick and not-at-all-dirty tutorial by @SethApter.  This storyboard project (photographed on my oh-so-subtle file cabinet) took less than ten minutes, and I can see a great range of applications for playing with it.  It cracked me up that he stapled his storyboard labels to his backing, and that one can actually purchase colored staples.  Did you know that?  It opens up a whole new world of possibility, doesn't it?  😄😎😄

I just love being in the studio and trying new things.  I can see there will be a host of new classes in my pocket (and $$ flying out of it) if this Covid-thing lasts much longer.