Book binding mania

While looking through the art store (now named Dick Blick) I found smaller 5 x 7 canvas boards to work with. I took my old journal down to Kinko's and copied them. Then I reworked them and actually like them better. I tend to keep pictures in their original state when I use them so I went all out to cover them.

The blue book is for a friend and the pink book is mine. The pink book is chock full of paper so it may not close when I'm done with it. A good learning experience and I have a couple of other books that I want to make this weekend. The funniest thing is that in the blue book I hand cut the pages with an x-acto knife and a ruler and they turned out very even vs using the paper cutter.

I don't recommend working with black fabric when you just start out binding books it's a real pain to see where your holes are.

Playing around with creative wrapping ideas. I have a new fondness for blue and yellow or gold.Vellum paper and map.

Mail Art.

I am getting back into the mail art game and I am pleased at how this turned out. It's too bad you can't see the sparkle on the water colored background but you can't have everything. Overall it turned out well and I was able to use quite a few pictures that I took as collage elements. Her belt is the back of an underwater hippo. I sealed everything with gel medium so hopefully it made it safe. I wish more people would address the best way to seal mixed media artwork for mail art. I have several rolls for Scotch brand packing tape and contact paper for big wrapping jobs. I want to finish up my rain journal by the end of the week. It's going to rain again next weekend so I have that to look forward too. I'm wondering where my rain boots are but I have a backup pair of keen boots that are serving me quite well but alas they are not red with flowers.

organizing

Pail from the hardware store. Stack items by order of use. I rarely use gesso so it goes on the bottom. Add paper to build up the bottom and stack bottles on top. I have several identical tubs of matte medium so I label them all on the top. One bucket is for liquid acrylics and the other is for adhesives.

Tara Donavon

I wish I had a picture to show but I finally made it into the Tara Donavon show at the MCASD in downtown San Diego. Google her images and get blown away. The pieces are giant so the bigger you can see them the better. It's only a hop and a jump from my place and the museum stayed open till 10 pm. At 3pm the line was wrapped around the corner so I came back at 7 and took a twirl. She does the most amazing things with cups and straws that sound silly when I write about them but amazing to see in person. I was looking at an old issue of Selvedge and they had an article about her work so I was pleasantly surprised to see her work in print and in person in the same week. I do have a post card that I will work into my journal and I'll take pictures of it once the rain journal is done. If you don't like the rain make a whole journal about it so you can embrace it.

Here's to good friends

My friends hosted a fun Valentine's weekend so I made a shirt to commemorate the experience. It was really funny because we were sitting in a bar/restaurant in West Hollywood, Los Angeles and I was like did you see my shirt. My friend almost fell out of his chair (15+ years of knowing each other and we can still catch each other off guard). It was a whirlwind weekend with hanging out, a wedding( insert me crying like a dork),falling in love with the best dog in the world, getting lost on the way to the Rose Bowl and just talking late into the night.

It is raining like crazy cakes in San Diego but I will take this over the giant snow storm friends are dealing with in Maryland/DC. I hope they can dig themselves out soon. I have had snow go past my knee once and it was enough to last the rest of my life.

So in the spirit of newness I'm overhauling my blog and setting up an esty shop that I will have filled by spring. I need to get a jump on things before the year of the tiger sets in. This is my year but I'm hearing it is not a good time to start a business and I am not particularly superstitious but why mess with the fates?