The Little Red Book…

of Chairman Cheshire.  [And if you don’t get that reference it is because you are too young!]

Ages ago, I started playing around with embroidering on Colour Catchers, with the intention of making a book  – which I don’t appear to have blogged about, or if I did, I can’t find where.

Then life happened, I got a bit fed up with it, and all the bits got shoved in a box.

today, I was tidying [!] the work room [my usual post-completion clear up, but a bit more energetic than usual] and I found the box – and realised :

1. the pages looked better than I remembered
2. it wouldn't take much time to assemble the book – I had even finished the covers - much more interesting than tidying.

The covers are plastic canvas, of which I have an embarrassing amount, worked in half cross stitch with tapestry wool and torn up left over shirt fabric. I left the ends showing because at the time I was into showing the workings [oh, shades of maths exams].

The same principle applies to the pages, I left the backs visible.

The binding is 4-needle Coptic Stitch – although I’ve done it before I can never remember how, so this time I followed the instructions in Alisa Golden’s ‘new’ book, ‘Making Handmade Books’.

I’m a fan of Golden, so I bought the book sight unseen, but my heart sank when it arrived, because she describes it as a combination of two previous books - ‘Creating Handmade Books’ [which I have'] and ‘Unique Handmade Books’ [which I don’t]. I needn’t have worried – the new-to-me bits far outweigh the repetition, there are her usual plentiful and inspiring illustrations and her description of 4-needle Coptic is the clearest I’ve read by far.

And the new book was cheaper than a second hand copy of ‘Unique Handmade Books’. Bargain.    

After finishing that, I had time to do more tidying – you can see much more of the floor and the work top than you could before – and find another UFO to, though this will need a bit more work.

Thanks to quirkyartist for her recommendation of the fractal program Apophysis – another wonderful opportunity to waste time playing make art – I just wish I could work out how to save my efforts in a format Irfanview recognises!

Just have to make do with the rather less ethereal fractal liquid waves effect from Sumopaint – in case you don’t recognise it, it’s the front cover of the little red book…

 

 

 

And this is the image above, after applying my favourite filter – kaleidoscope – and decreasing the transparency value

 

 

 

 

 

or maybe the triangle pattern with decreased transparency is my favourite – it’s so hard to stop playing!

 

 

 

 

 

And finally – we’ve had some very good news – Babybel will have a little brother or sister in August. We are delighted, of course!