What's been happening?

Not a lot – apart from the boring routine stuff like cooking and washing, and the more interesting but still routine stuff like Babybel minding – she does like her routine.

Having been all fired up to get going on the RP and the litter photos – I haven’t done much of either. Finally, today, I made myself sit down and make notes on some of the Googled information on artists’ books I found – particularly good sites here and here. So I have about 4 pages of notes and a mile of artists’ names to follow up.

Instead of playing around with the litter photos, I’m reworking my way through Sharon Boggon’s on-line GIMP course – by way of working up to Photoshop Elements, you understand. So in exploring layers  and the shear and scale commands, and adding the photocopy filter, I turned this bit of Pollocking

 

 

into this. Perhaps not the greatest bit of photomanip in the world, but I like it.

 

 

 

 

The only place anything vaguely related to my vague idea about litter and books has been happening is in the PMS.

A one sheet book made from a stuffed plastic pocket.  OK, it’s not litter – but the contents are made from junk mail, so it’s related, right?

Of course after I’d punched all those asterisky flowers out of the junk mail I had left-overs – and one thing led to another…

 

 

 

 

 

Woven left-overs.

 

While I was in a bookmaking mood, I experimented a bit more. I was inspired by a hand stitch idea on someone’s blog - if it was yours, I apologise for nicking your idea and not crediting you, it’s the CRS again, let me know who you are and I'll be glad to tell everyone.

I tried machine stitch on tracing paper. The result is best described as a qualified failure. Straight stitch and a long, wide zigzag worked OK – anything else jammed and tore the paper, even with a Teflon foot. But I love the way it looks – with the one sheet book format, you get lovely shadows through from other pages. More experimentation needed, perhaps with better quality tracing paper, or trapping things between two layers.

A long way from litter, though. Trap bits of litter? Crisp packets might be interesting, if we ate crisps – I can’t quite bring myself to pick up real litter…

And finally – the developing story of the ‘orrible collage.

The ripped and over-painted stage. Wensleydale keeps telling me that litter is related to an old craze of mine, graffiti. Perhaps I need to get the spray can out?