Why is it…

that when I’m supposed to be making a 2D or 3D piece, or writing a presentation, I am very easily tempted into making a book?

But when I can legitimately make book models for the PMS – I start whinging that I don’t know what to do and I’ve got no motivation?

So I went and did a little bit of embroidery. First embroidery I’ve done for weeks!

Well, I did say a little bit. Twelve assorted sort-of-eyelets, to be exact, on a pair of my litter/not litter photos. The photos had previously gone through the ‘Watercolour’ filter from BeFunky, then been printed on cartridge paper collaged with brown paper, reinforced with iron-on interfacing on the back.

At first I thought the brown paper was too dark, but now I see it as menacing shadows, which seems appropriate.

Then I did make a book.

This is the ‘board book’ from Dorothy Simpson Krause’s ‘Book + Art’. If you are thinking ‘baby book’ – the structure is basically the same, but it’s paper, not cardboard.

 

The reason I wanted to try out this binding is to do with what you can’t see in the shot of the open page – look, no strings!

When I made the book of photos for the identity project, I found the stitching could be visually intrusive – and this binding has no stitches. Yes, much as I hate glue, this is glued together – well, double sided sticky taped together. It opens nice and flat [apart from a slight glitch with the cover, caused by me allowing too much wriggle room], and the image can cover the entire spread, only interrupted by a fold line. And as you can’t see the back, you don’t have to worry about the back side of any embroidery showing – unless, of course, like me, you like the back to show.

The page decoration is nothing special – Krause encourages you to recycle failed art work, and although I wouldn’t dignify these rubbings by calling them art, cut in half they made interesting pages.But – it’s ‘only a sample’.

Krause has another, related binding which she calls drum leaf. This is as far as mine has got.

Do you think I’ve got enough clamps on there? They are holding the text block together till the glue dries. Yes, glue again, despite my glue phobia.

The torn baking parchment is not part of the book, it is serving a protective function, in theory at least.

By now I had the bit between my teeth, so I pulled out my collection of images to be inspired by.

Like this.

Which led to this.

Some more recycled ‘art’ – bits of shaving cream marbled card, with holes cut in them, and a dash of webbing spray because the cover was boring.

I like this one – especially the wonderful shadows it casts. Definitely a structure to explore a bit more.

This evening, as there’s nought on telly – again – I could play with my photos in some program or another, or search the web for artists’ books – but somehow I’ve gone off the idea now I’ve got to do it.