I am changing the focus of my blog strictly to bookbinding, and I am moving it here:

The Monk's Cat

I Don't Panic!

Today I've sworn off facebook and the news. I can't stand reading all the political ads & posts today so I've decided to focus on my long neglected blog. Yes, I have already voted.

This past weekend I attended a class given by Randall Hasson, artist and calligrapher from Sante Fe, New Mexico. The title of the class was, "The Layered Journal: Text and Texture". The purpose and goal of the class was to learn to add texture to flat surfaces, and experiment with how calligraphy works with texture. The class worked with several different Golden mediums, my favorite was the Matte Medium. This was a clear matte acrylic that could be put down on a journal page and, once dry, gone over with an acrylic wash to give the page a two toned texture effect. The picture below is an example of that.

The calligraphy is not mine. Randall offered to write anything in our journals that we wanted. I wanted the words, "Don't Panic" at the beginning of the journal. Randall started and didn't like the mark made so he turned it into the letter, "I". Kind of changed the meaning of the phrase. It went from a directive, "Don't Panic!" to a declarative, "I Don't Panic!", which sounds a lot braver to me. So I have this reminder at the beginning of my experimental journal that reminds me that I DO NOT PANIC. So I must remember, that I will create without fear.

Click here to visit Randall Hasson's website.

Buttonhole Binding

This is a book I made at a local book artist's home yesterday. It is a slight modification of Keith Smith's Buttonhole binding. I felt a little rushed at the end of class and you can see it in the bottom stitching of the book. I hope to have some time today to sit down and do another book with a little more care and time.

This book is constructed with Davey board which gives it a bit more more heft than using cardstock. The top and bottom part of the spine are wrapped with book cloth. The thread used for binding is a 4-ply waxed linen from Royalwood, Ltd. The inside sections and outside book cover are monoprints done with acrylics and plexiglass. Each one is unique. This is a video on YouTube that is very similar to what I did with my printing.

Instructions for this binding is found in Volume I Non-Adhesive Binding: Books Without Paste or Glue. Keith Smith's books can be found on his website.

It is a very beautiful book, I am definitely going to need to make some more.

Celestial Watercolor Tutorial

These celestial paintings might look complicated but are very easy to create. You may be surprised at how easy it is.

To start you will need:

*Transparent watercolors - These can be the inexpensive kind, pan or liquid. I used Grumbacher on most of my paintings but did one with inexpensive Yarka watercolors. Before starting on the project, moisten pan watercolors with water. I did not use liquid watercolor, but would suggest diluting them with a small amount of water - an intensity of color is wanted.
*Watercolor paper - I used Arches Cold Press 140lb. but any watercolor paper should do.
*Dr. Ph. Martin's Pen White Ink - It may also be possible to use a thin, very OPAQUE white acrylic paint but I have not done this.
*Masking Tape
*Ruler
*Pencil
*Old toothbrush
*1 or 2 brushes for watercolors. I used a round (or mop) brush for the painting, and a flat brush for saturating the paper with water. A larger brush would be better than a small brush. I used a size 12 round brush and a 14 flat brush.
*2 water containers (with clean water - of course!)

1. I wanted a white border on my paintings, so as to resemble a photograph. To do this, very lightly put a small dot inside each corner - a quarter inch down and in from the side. When I was finished it looked like this. (I am working on a small scale, but this should work on most any size watercolor paper)

2. With the masking tape, secure the paper to a smooth surface. You want to bring the tape up to, but not cover, the dots on each corner. I taped my paper to a piece of plexiglass but most any surface should do - just make sure the tape,water, or paints will not ruin the surface you are working on.

3. Liberally wet the watercolor paper. I mean literally make it SOAKING wet.

4. With a wet round brush, pick up yellow. The brush should be fairly thick with paint. Randomly, touch the brush lightly to the wet paper. The yellow paint should spread and create an irregular shape or shapes on the paper.

5. Clean the brush in the first container of water and do a final rinse in the second container. Here I have picked up Burnt Sienna and I am randomly touching the paper with the brush. I do go over *some* of the yellow with the Burnt Sienna.

6. Now I am adding Blue Green.

7. I am adding Ultramarine. The colors should start to meld a little bit but there should be some individual colors showing. If the colors are not seeping into one another, use the brush lightly to move them.

8. At this point it will look like a blobby wet mess. Very carefully, draw off *some* of the liquid by bringing a paper towel up to the edge and letting it touch the watery paint.

9. It doesn't look like much right now but leave the painting to dry. The colors will spread a little bit more and soften as they dry.

10. Once the painting has almost completely dried, the *stars* can be added. A toothbrush will be used for this effect. Saturate the end of the toothbrush with Dr. Ph. Martin's Pen White and flick the bristles a couple of times to get most of the paint out. Now flick the almost dry brush over the painting to create tiny white splatters of dots. Do this until you are satisfied with the look.

11. Carefully peel the tape *away* from the painting. Violà! An amazingly easy celestial painting!

Here is the same method done with inexpensive Yarka watercolors using only basic yellow, red, and blue. I actually like this one better than the Grumbacher one. Try experimenting with different colors and see what you get. Leave some lighter areas mixed in with the dark. You might be amazed with what you create!!

Celestial Inspiration

I have decided I would like to make a simple book which holds inspirational quotes. I imagined the quotes being on small cards that could be pulled out and read. I eventually decided that I wanted a celestial feel to the book, and after watching a variety of videos on YouTube and glancing through a book called, "The Tao of Watercolor", by Jeanne Carbonetti I decided I would give it a go.

Here is the final result.

I think I will post a tutorial for this project.

Liar

I am such a liar. A big fat liar. Can I redeem myself, and does anyone really care? I'm a once a year blogger. I need to do better, much better. Not for non-existent readers but for myself. Here's to trying again. Third time's a charm, or something close to that, it is said.

What have I been up to? Well, really a lot. In the past couple of years I've taken up bookbinding. I even attended the American Academy of Bookbinding this Spring in Telluride, Colorado. I was taught French fine leather binding. I am a solid "C" student in fine binding. I would really like to get much better at it, but I am struggling with the fear of failure right now. I need someone to slap me and tell me to get a grip. I know better, and should be plowing right along with my third fine leather binding. But it sits downstairs in my "studio" and threatens me with mediocrity. I prefer to work on bindings that are more simple and still just as beautiful.

One of my favorite bindings is coptic binding. It has an open spine so the stitching can be seen. I'm going to stop here and post it, so at least I'll have an incentive to come back and edit.

White Christmas

We had a white Christmas this year. A nice, quiet laid back kind of day.

I'm Back! ...and let's see if I can stay. I'd like to try and keep this up in 2013 as kind of an online journal and less like a crafty instruction blog. I'm going to stop here, temporarily as the picture I wanted to upload is still on the CAMERA. Be back soon. Written to no one in particular.

Pink Mini Albums for a Cure

Laura Denison from The Paper Trail has organized her second annual Pink Mini Album Auction to benefit the Susan G. Komen foundation. I've decided that I needed to get my butt into gear and help. The bonus is that I get to create as well.

My mini album is neither pink nor actually a complete creation of mine. A couple of weeks ago, I just got back from a boy scout trip to New Mexico and had no brain cells left for any kind of originality. I sent a quick email to Laura asking if I could create one of her patterns for the auction and she replied, no problem. So, I set to work on the album below.



Okay, no, that does not look like an album. It's not, it is a small replica of a suitcase that I created from one of Laura's patterns, Vintage Suitcase, to hold the actual album (Although, Laura's pattern does show how to make the suitcase into an album). I made the album inside seperate from the actual suitcase. Here are some more photos:











The inside pocket of the suitcase isn't quite what I envisioned, but I'm thinking the person who wins it can change it to their liking. If they wish. If you are interested in bidding on this album, or seeing what else is available, visit Pink Mini's 2011 blog this next week. Please look over the mini albums, I know a lot of work went into all of them, and make a bid. If you don't win, think of contributing something to the Susan G. Komen foundation. It is a worthwhile cause.

Mini Notebooks

I have been fortunate to have had time lately to be creative and make many things. Unfortunately, I haven't made the time to post any of them. Here is a recent creation:



It looks like a deck of cards, but it is really a mini notebook.



I modified a technique I learned from Tascha here. Instead of wrapping the outside pieces of illustration board (mine is just leftover cardboard) I pasted the playing card directly to the board. The board was the same height as the playing card but was about a 1/4 inch (about 0.6 cm) wider and painted with cream acrylic paint. The playing card, obviously, will not cover the entire cardboard - leave this space to the left of the front cover and to the right on the back cover. The spine paper should be cut wide enough to cover this space (my spine paper was 5.5 inches x 1.25 inches). The inside cover paper was exactly the same size as both pieces of cardboard plus a little extra for length (you can cut off any extra later with a craft knife). The inside papers were slightly smaller than the dimensions of the book cover - just center these papers when attaching to the inside cover sheet. If you are not sure of what I am saying, watch Tascha's video and then come back and read again - I think it will be much clearer.

Even if you are not sure of what to do after watching the video and reading my ramblings - go ahead and try it. Here was my first attempt at the modified mini notebook:



Not exactly what I wanted but I was trying to learn and it helped me modify the second one even better. I actually don't like the color of the spine paper on either notebook so I plan to make a few more with some other colors. I think it's a pretty neat little notebook.

ATC Swaps

Why I am doing this at midnight when I should be asleep? I have no real good answer for that.
Anyway, I recently stumbled across a blog in cyberspace that offered an international ATC (artist trading card) for anyone who wanted to join. Well, international really appealed to me and I love creating this with paper (if you hadn't guessed already). I'm just going to add the photos now and come back to edit and add more later. Here are the ATC's I received. Aren't they great?!




Here is some of the ATC's I sent:

Embellishments (or I Need Felt!!)

Today's Papertrey challenge was to make your own floral embellishments. Well, my first mistake is looking at what others are doing. Now, I need felt. There are many, many cute and gorgeous things being done with felt embellishments. Yes, I NEED some felt.

Unfortunately, for today's challenge I had no felt. So, I tried the usual Papertrey suspects, the stamp set In Bloom and Copic markers. But I felt that has been done plenty of times before, so I turned to tissue paper flowers (yes, I know - it has also been done many times before - you won't find anything terribly original in this post). So, instead of spritzing them with a glitter spray I painted them with Twinkling H2O's. I thought this gave them a very deep saturated color with some glitz. I was going to top them with buttons but thought they needed something a bit more, so I added some sparkle from Darice (the 1.99 package from Michaels). Voila' tissue paper flower embellishments.



I didn't have my first choice of colors for the card so I worked with what I had. I also attached a pull drawer box to the back of the card to hold extra embellishments to give the recipient some for their own projects. Oh, and by the way I used my circle scallop Spellbinders to cut out the tissue paper flowers. I find that so much easier than the punch. And if you fold the tissue paper several times over, you get many flowers punched all at one time.



So, in short here is the card recipe:

Stamps: Vintage Labels from Papertrey
Ink: Dark Chocolate from Papertrey
Paper: Dark Chocolate & White cardstock from Papertrey
Ribbon: New Leaf Satin by Papertrey, Chocolate Chip taffeta from Stampin Up
Other: Labels 1 die & Flourish Impressabilities from Spellbinder, blue rhinestones from my own stash, handmade embellishments - recipe below.

Flower embellishments:

Tissue paper cut with Spellbinders scalloped circles (the 2 smallest sizes - 2 pieces of each size).
Scalloped circles were then painted with Majestic Blue Twinkling H2O. Tape 2 larger circles to 2 smaller circles, and add a gem to the middle.
Crinkle tissue paper around gem and slowly unwrap flower.
Voila'!

Origami

Its a long shot but I had to try. When I saw that Nichole from Papertrey Ink was having a contest with origami - I had to participate. Origami is a passion of mine. My project for this contest is an origami box. Of all the origami projects and creations out there, boxes are my favorite. This particular box is from a favorite book of mine, Joyful Origami by Tomoko Fuse. The box is called Flowery Pinwheel Octagon box.

Here is a look from the top.



On another note, wasn't K.D. Lang amazing at the opening ceremony for the Winter Olympics?

"Paint" By Number Challenge

Here is another Papertrey Ink Challenge (I'm outdoing myself :)

The color palette was based on the first letter of your online user name. Since I go by Kimberly Ann my color palette was as follows:



I didn't quite have all the colors in the Papertrey cardstock so my supplies were as follows:

Cardstock:
White, Ripe Avocado, Raspberry Fizz by Papertrey
Pumpkin Pie & Really Rust by Stampin Up

Stamps:
Turning a New Leaf by Papertrey, Sentiment from Fall Elegance by Papertrey

Ink:
Versamark, Dark Chocolate by Papertrey

Other:
White satin ribbon from Michaels, White Perfect Pearls from Ranger, Scallop border punch from Stampin Up, Clock and circle clip from my own stash.