Small and mini.

I made some small books with pamphlet stitch using some of the gelliprints from a previous session.

Finding just the right button.

Thanks to inspiration from Ines Seidel  one of my groups has made some paper bowls using brown paper, book pages, tissue and pressed leaves. Now we are making objects to put in the bowls such as paper flowers from book pages, and next week I hope we will make some mini books.

 All you need are some old book pages and something suitable for the cover; I was fortunate to be given some snake skin and I have some offcuts of leather so we are all set.

 I used glue to stick on the cover but in the past I have stitched in the pages. I really,really, need to tidy my 'mini' studio, but all that cardboard, those given treasures, boxes of buttons, bits of leather, they all have their day; but I am running out of space.

'WE Love Your Books'

POINT is the theme of this year’s ‘We Love Your Books’ exhibition. I am pleased to say that images from my book are included in the exhibition which is solely on line this year. You can view the selected entries, I understand that there were over a 100 submissions, here. Well worth taking a look. More details of the contributors will be added later. It is amazing to see the results of people’s imaginative response to the theme, and some of their skills make me envious. I particularly like the metal book and often wish I had more skills in the soldering, metal smithing area.

Many people seem to have gone in the same direction as myself and thought of point in terms of the folds made when you manipulate paper. There are quite a number of stitched fabric books and some cross stitch; there is even a felted book. Points of a compass and maps are also popular interpretations. There is a flag book with pointy bits. There is a concertina book of drawings of insects, which is really clever as when you look closely you see that the drawing is made up of tiny dots, pointillism.

I used a Turkish Map Fold format and drawings made using acrylic ink, which I then photographed and added some text etc. on the ipad. I also used an app called ‘Book Creator’ to make an interactive book which includes some short video clips of the stages and the decisions made in making the book. These are a two clips from the interactive book.

'All about POINT' from J Bowcutt on Vimeo.






'All About POINT' 2. from J Bowcutt on Vimeo.

Sketchbook Challenge - The Book.

Sue Bleiweiss



'my book!

I’m calling it my book but it really wouldn’t be a book without the generous and gifted artists who contributed their time and artwork to it. You could say that I’m excited about seeing the cover out on Amazon but that would be a pretty big understatement…


 I owe a huge debt of gratitude to Jill Berry,Jackie Bowcutt,Laura Cater-Woods,Violette Clark,Jane Davies,Jamie Fingal,Judi Hurwitt,Tracie Lyn Huskamp,Susan Brubaker Knapp,Lynn Krawczyk,Leslie Tucker Jenison,Lyric Kinard,Jane LaFazio,Kim Rae Nugent,Kelli Perkins, Carol Sloan,Carla Sonheim,Kathy Sperino,Diana Trout,and Kathyanne White. Their contributions to the pages of this book make it a work of art. The book has a publication date of June of 2012 (hopefully it will come out a little sooner than that) but you can preorder on Amazon .'

So sometime in 2012 I'll be in print!

'Contemporary-Medieval'

I had a treat last Friday spending the day at City Lit on a one day bookbinding course. The course was called ‘Contemporary-Medieval’ and the tutor was Ina Baumeister, a professional book binder. I think most of us there were attracted by the idea of the book as sculpture and the idea of using old tyres as covers. Well, there were no old tyres, except in the tutor’s examples, but it was still a good day.

 We started with a basic format, sewing the sections onto cable ties, with instructions on raised band sewing styles.

 In the afternoon we saw the tutors work and were given a range of materials, shoe laces, rope, wire, strimmer tape, and old house signs from which to choose in order to make our own book design. I used a piece of black and silver plastic, not sure of its original use, wire, and plastic thread to work on. It was a packed course, which shows the current interest in book binding and the company was good.

E-Motive Exhibition.

Jackie Bowcott
Originally uploaded by rejectamenta

My sketchbook spread selected for the 'We Love Your Books Exhibition'. See some of the others on Flickr.

Book Art Blog

My work is featured here on this new Book Art Blog   from Berlin  which starts with a general discussion and examples of what book art is about.
 The author has used an image of a piece of work I did on my Access Course to illustrate the discussion after finding it on Flickr. I hope it will be a success and provides us all with lots of ideas and inspiration.


I received my mini book swaps from Australia and here are some images from them. If you want to know more about the paper swaps head over to Woven Letters.

Mini Books

Here are some images of the books I have made for the mini book swap on http://wovenletters.blogspot.com/

I used some remnants of leather I had for the covers and used pamphlet stitch to attach the pages made out of nice creamy paper.

The third ‘book’ is made up of pieces of scrap paper and business cards, including some of my own. I have a pile of these on my desk,collected at exhibitions, as I drool over other peoples’ work. The pictures are also to show my son that I do use the sewing cradle he made for me.

I hope the recipient will be pleased as I had fun making them.

On this blog Ann is writing about the workshops which I have organized at Doodles (Tadley). She made a lovely bag decorated with the silk carrier rods which we painted and Cretan Stitch. Last week we made pictures using Eyelet Stitch and wrapped rings. She has been v. creative with the results.
The next workshop is on Wednesday April 21st at 1-3pm. Called ‘Recycle/Reuse’ we will be making art on old book pages and there will be some buttons in the mix too.
I have three short online workshops running on HEN which can be joined at any time; ‘Painted Kantha’,'Printing with Found Objects’ and ‘Monoprint and Stitch'.

Spindle Tree

This is quite fun to work on – I must admit it took me a year to get round to taking the photographs.

In a drawing class we took some hedgerow ‘shrubs’ apart and drew the leaves, the thorns, fruit, etc. It was so long ago that I have lost the original drawings but you get the idea.

I then printed the drawings out on some thicker paper and made a little accordion book with the idea of putting in some photos of my chosen ‘shrub’ i.e. the Spindle Tree. Having been out blackberrying this week I remembered the project and brought home some pieces to photograph.

Woolworths

There will be a couple of posts now about the book I worked on over the last few months for an exhibition; unfortunately, it didn’t get selected but it did keep me out of trouble for awhile.

These were some of my first thoughts.

I chose to make a book about the closure of Woolworths because my school friend’s mother worked there and my first Saturday job was in Woolworths on the haberdashery counter.

There are many people’s memories on the internet and many are similar to my own. We used to go there after school when they had a sort of bar where you could get chicken and stuffing sandwiches. I must say I hated the job but still have some fond memories of the shop.

'A story for very Little Girls'

Finally got round to using this book cover to make a book using a selection of papers, including some nice thick watercolour paper.

As you see, I attempted Coptic binding again, not perfect but not too bad. One of the kettle stitches is not right; it is one of those things you can only practise by doing and that takes a lot of paper, not to speak of patience.
The cover was cleaned and the picture given a coat of acrylic wax. In a moment of serendipity I used some baby talc on the leather and it seemed to bring it up nicely.

Photo Journal

http://photojojo.com/content/diy/make-your-own-photo-notebook-journal/

This is a great link to a tutorial on how to make a Photo Journal. I made mine using two photos of our local fields during the recent harvest. I also used up a stack of old envelopes which I had been collecting. It works well. The only mistakes I made were not to measure the brown paper for the spine nicely and if you put writing on your photos remember that the spine could cover part of your title. Think that out first - wish I had done.

I was asked for a ‘how to’ on the cover material I used on the Coptic Book – I worked out that I made the material about ten years ago. I did look up the reference which is Lis Mann, ‘Faux Par Excellence’ March 1997 and May 1997 in ‘The World of Embroidery’. They are basically painting techniques used on cotton pillow ticking which works like a canvas.

Coptic Stitch

I was able to borrow a copy of a book by Keith Smith which gives very detailed instructions on Non-Adhesive Bookbinding, and so, following the instructions for Coptic Binding I have produced my first attempt. The instructions are so detailed that at times I wondered if they made the whole process more complicated than it need be.
I find I learn best from a combination of someone showing me and then having quiet time to work it out for myself. Having said that I think the book is excellent and plan to get my own copy at some point. The cover is a piece of material I decorated with a faux mineral effect described by Liz Mann in Embroidery Magazine many years ago; for those of you who remember that was before they changed the magazine and cut out techniques for a more art based approach.Perhaps I should try the magazine again as my interests have moved on, but I'm still a sucker for a new technique!

Is it a bag or a book?

Here is an idea of what to do with those important birthday cards that you just can’t bear to throw away. I bound my cards into a book to remember a ‘special’ birthday. I used the carrier bag that one of my presents came in and a ribbon off another present to decorate the cover

I pasted in pieces of old envelopes to hold a series of postcards which I received,and stitched in the cards as separate signatures.

On one page I stitched the wrappers from some very posh chocolates which came from Denmark.




Of course you have to have friends and family to give you the nice cards and presents first.

Paste paper.

Just for fun I made this little accordion fold book for someone who has just moved house. I remember making paste paper when I was at school but only recently found a ‘recipe’ for it in the ‘Collage Source Book’ by Karen McCarthy.
It is called cornstarch paste in the book, which is an Americanism for what we call Corn flour in the UK. I coloured the paste with acrylic paint and after combing it on both Indian Rag Paper and some paper I had made, added more colour with fabric paint.
In the book the paper was used to make paper quilts. As you see, I stitched into it on the machine; it would be interesting to try hand stitching. If anyone would like the recipe let me know and I will post it here.