A love/hate relationship...

 ...with food has me stuffing my recipe box (and face) with wonderful possibilities, and ho-humming  the fact that I have to actually make the meals to enjoy them.  After some sixty years of the so-called 'culinary arts', I am no fan of cooking at all.  You do realize that is somewhere in the neighbourhood of 15-20,000 dinners alone?  So I cleaned out my recipe box the other day, discarding a huge pile of 'what was I thinking' recipes - some tried, some failed, some of no interest at all.  And you know when an artist working in paper gets rid of paper, it never really disappears.

'Meals I Have Murdered' © Win Dinn 
8 1/4" x 4 1/2" x 1"  2021

It all started with a trio of paper bags that somehow came home with bottles of wine during the last pandemic-filled months.  Cutting off the sealed end, I folded the bags in half and folded each half again to create an accordion.  I cut a slit in the top of the two centre folds, creating two pockets in top that would contain tags.

Being a relative newbie at creating artist books, it didn't occur to me that the flimsy wine bags would be unlikely to stand up to what I had in mind.  By the time I'd added the tags to the centre pockets and additions to each of the end pockets, the bags were screaming with the strain of over-indulgence.  

Stitching the bags together with a pamphlet stitch did NOT do the trick.  I glued the fractious package to the spine of the cover and proceeded carefully with fingers crossed.

That was still insufficient to stabilize things and I added washi tape in the hopes that would encourage it to cuddle up securely.

By then it was such a toxic mess that I tore into it all with oil pastels to add to the grungy look.

Now you know how oil pastels feel on paper, right?  There's a definite yuck quality which is why I use them so seldom.

Given that it was all such a hot mess anyway I added some quickly sketched drawings with the pastels, 

and some succinct notes

before calling it a day.  Well, two days actually, because when an artist decides to make a mess, 

it can take a good long while.  I was praying that the book would hold together at least long enough to take some photos - now that's done it can go onto a top shelf and slowly disintegrate into the woodwork.  😵

All is not lost, as I still have stacks of discarded recipes waiting for a home and no doubt the Universe will provide some much stronger tubular paper bags.  

Here's what I learned:

• Make sure your substrate can take your abuse...strong, paintable, and sewable. 
• If it's not working, keep playing...you'll learn something and the freedom of knowing the end product is not important is liberating to the max.  

It's been a wild one...

... in the house and in the studio this week.  Seems like the loosening of restrictions has brought a number of people to town.

With a visit from our daughter and grandson, to a friend from a long drive away, it's been exceptionally busy here.  The friend, Louise Olinger, was in town housesitting for a week, so we managed to play for two mornings in the studio.  Louise is an accomplished watercolourist, and her website is pure delight, with enough eye candy to keep one occupied for hours.   Louise' wish was to play with mixed media, so the glue cave got a great workout

as did the studio tables.  You can likely tell from the photos that she is a bundle of energy and great fun to play with!

We were so engrossed that I mostly forgot to take photos, and only managed this one of the bookmarks she was creating.

I did remember to take a shot of the tags I created - some hours after she left!  

As I was tidying up the studio in the aftermath, I found some suspicious things lurking about - not sure where they came from, but they are obviously in the works.

I do recall working on this, the fifth in the Line Dance series, as I work towards a final design for a larger piece.

And the dryer sheet paper somehow mysteriously collected an array of circles - pretty sure it was after midnight, because they didn't appear until the morning.

All in all, it was a colour-full week, and you know that's my favourite kind of time!  Happy week, my friends, and do catch me up on your doings in the comments!

Don't I live...

the best life?  I get to play with people all the time, and this past week was no exception.  Hosting a teambuilding playshop for the TAPS staff was a celebration of high jinks.  We played so much tag that my head was spinning by the end of the day - look at all of these!!

This group was ready to play from the moment they walked in the door.  

There were piles of deliciousness everywhere I looked, and the laughter was constant.  The ladies gave me the gears about all the ways I repurpose supplies but it really got bad when I asked them to save the hole-punch paper holes from their tags.  They thought I was nuts, but I got the last laugh; I used the ones they gave me on a tag after they left.

And because I was on a roll with the silly season, I followed that with a journal spread.

Thanks, my friends for such an enjoyable afternoon.  And if you're looking for a way to entertain yourself and guests for a few hours, why not book your own time? Call me at 250-428-2115 (or email windinn@telus.net and we can set a play date.

It's all fun . . .

. . . and games in the studio, especially when there's company.

Gwen and Beverly joined me this past week for four hours of tag-making, topped off with a gel printing session.  The hit of the printing session seemed to be the fun foam prints, so I thought I'd share the tutorial again:

It all starts with a dollar store foam surface.

Luckily I didn't discard/give away/lose my bag of foam shapes saved from other projects.

I've secured some of the shapes to the base with liquid gel medium - a great glue!

I'll be taking this one a little further than I did in the video above, using a round-tipped-impression-making-thingy to add some texture.  Incidentally, a knitting needle or dried-up ballpoint works just as well.

You know that by the time the tangling work is done and it's been used a few times it will resemble all the other fun foam templates - colour extraordinaire!

And while the gel printing session was fun, the main event meant that Beverly and Gwen were hard at work creating layer upon layer to bring a series of tags from background to finished product.

I neglected to get photos of the finishes but they were all certainly looking fabulous when I caught these in-progress photos.

And you can tell from the grins on our faces that it was a blast.

We're already looking forward to round two!

I'm hoping your week was at least as much fun, 'cause it's hard to beat the creative life!

As we wind down...

...the playtime and ramp up for Valentine's Day, it was obvious that we'd have to do a heart-filled morning of play.  Of course, I discovered that in my Purge to the Max I'd cleaned out most of my red/pink/purple paper (or did I use it all?!).  This necessitated a Gelli-printing session, always a fun way to lose a day.

With lace,

a plate, and my trusty brayer (along with a journal for cleaning it),

I made several sheets of paper and some tags to start the day off right.

With a supply of paper, tags and ephemera, the excitement was high.

Linda M was as colourful as the paper, 

and Deni dressed for the theme - gorgeous, right?

 Lynne was a whirlwind and had half a dozen pieces made before we could even blink!

I was drooling over the results from all of us.  Here they are, with Deni's first three (I may have missed two or three of hers),

a couple of beauties from Linda, 

 and a host from the ever-prolific Lynne.

These are mine, although I think I've misplaced my 'Quiet Colour Brush' somewhere in the madness.  The good part is that I've obviously retained the Wilfully Wonky look everywhere, right Linda?

The funny thing is that I don't see a piece of paper lace anywhere, nor any of that oh-so-carefully-created paper.  What's with that?  It just goes to show that you can't trust artists of any ilk!

Catch me up on your doings in the comments below...I'd love to hear about all of your Love Projects!