Atlas goes postal

Remember this?

Yes, it's one of the two US postal bags that I got delivered to my doorstep (okay, it was my office's doorstep) in the past few months. In them were wonderful amazon.com orders and no they weren't so huge that they should have required their own bag. They were simply delivered that way, in a box inserted in a neatly closed postal bag. I already thought is was cool that this happened once, but twice was like a little miracle. Today I am going to show you what I did with a part of one of them, 'cause you know I couldn't just let a gift like that pass by unused. ;-)

As I have mentioned before I have slowly been altering an atlas over the past months to turn it into my new everyday journal. I took out about half of it's pages and then put gesso on the remaining ones. After that I put paint on every spread, sometimes gouache and sometimes watered down acrylic. Here's some examples of the spreads as they are now all ready for use.

After I did the inside it was time to think about the outside of the atlas. It had a fabric cover and I had put gesso on that as well, so I basically had a very boring white book. At first I wanted to do a very colorful collage on the cover, but then I remembered my postal bags and thought: why not make a cover out of a piece of them?

So I got to cutting and sewing. The material was quite easy to sew with my sewing machine. Because it was still a little bland I added some ribbon and that was that. It didn't really need any more than that. Here's how it looks now:

The front...

The back....

The whole thing!

I'm pretty excited about it and think it's a really unique cover, so a big thank you goes out to the US Postal Gods for sending me these treasures.

Meanwhile I have started using the atlas and I really like it's big sturdy pages. I have finished several spreads already, but will show some of those at a later time when I have some more. Here's the first spread as a little teaser ;-)

You can see it only a little in this picture, but I like how the original page still shines through. It gives some extra interest to the spread. (You can also see I like extra extra dark chocolate!).

For the coming time this atlas will be my steady companion as it records my daily life. I love it already!

What are you up to wednesday - part 15

First let me tell you how overwhelmed I am by all the responses to my handmade book! You don't know how much your comments mean to me, thank you so much! It makes me like the book even more and gives me the courage to maybe do something similar in the future. Ideas are already spinning in my head, oh my!

For now let me show you what's on my worktable in the studio as we speak:

It's the beginning of a whole new Remains of the Day Journal! For now I have simply dubbed it ROD2 . (Now that I think about it that sounds like a robot from Star Wars doesn't it, but I think that was something like R2D2, haha). What you are looking at is the finished inside cover. In fact I have finished the entire cover and am now trying to decide what kind of wrap around I want to make. That's why all those ribbons are lying there.

On the top right corner you see a fragment of my ribbon basket and I'm telling you about it, because of the way I store my loose ribbons. Maybe it's something you'd like to try if loose ribbons getting caught into one another drives you crazy. I put every ribbon in a separate griplock bag. Then I punch a little hole in the bag so the air can escape. That way I can keep the ribbons seperate and protected, and a lot of them will fit in one basket, because the air won't get in the way ;-)


I love love love ribbons and lace by the way (I must have mentioned this before) and for that reason alone I want to show you some cuties I recently purchased (it's not like they were on my work table or anything, I just want to show them off!). 

 

When dealing with pretty ribbons and lace I become like Gollem from the Lord of the Rings films. "I wantsj it, I needsj it, my presssiousss!" and heaven help the hobbit who tries to steal my ribbons! ;-) Hmm, I guess I'm like that with paper and fabric too. Okay, I'm always like that with art supplies. But...eventually it does always get used. It just may take some time.

Anyway, the above ribbons are so wonderfully old fashioned. I used the third one from the left for the cover of ROD II. Here's a closer look at that cover:

The outside cover.

The inside cover.

I had quite a struggle putting this cover together. That is to say I spent a lot of time last night fighting my sewing machine. I even had to bring out weapons to conquer it, like a screwdriver and many many curses (it was not impressed by the latter). But in the end I was victorious. Woman over machine! Yay!

Although it may seem like it considering my latest posts, not my entire world is dominated by ROD journals. I actually have another journal going at the time. My current everyday journal: the altered atlas. Here's the spread I'm working on right now on my journaling table downstairs.

This spread also hints to something else I've been up to lately, which is going through my stack of magazines and just clipping out images and words that speak to me. I put them in folders/files according to size and this way I have images readily available for journal collageing and my stack of magazines gets a little smaller too.

All in all, I'm pretty busy, but that's the way I like it. Hope you're busy being artsy yourself and wishing you a very creative Wednesday.

Presenting The Fully Handmade Book!

Over the past few months I have let you share in a lot of freebies and other pictures that featured elements for the 'big' project I was working on. With big I mean 'a lot of work' not so much 'a really large thing'. Inspired by the ROD journal I wondered if I could make a book that did not consist of remains of the day nor of pretty ready made papers and elements, but that would fully consists of stuff that I had made myself.

So I started painting papers and I started drawing labels and tags and borders. About ten days ago it all came together when I finally began constructing the actual book and I am proud to say I finished it and here it is:

I call it the Fully Handmade Book! The book measures about 12x16 cm, so it's about A6 size.

After making all the papers and elements, which took a lot of time, the cover was finished within a day. I had thought about maybe dying my own fabric too, but this pink fabric just called out to be used for this project so I decided against it. Maybe next time.

I did spice up the wrap around ribbon. I found it so utterly boring, even it is a beautiful blue color, that I decided to sew a load of buttons on both sides. It looks really cool, although I hadn't thought about how heavy it would make the ribbon ;-)

I added some ribbons to the fabric of both the outside and inside of the cover. I kept it simple, because the fabric itself is busy enough with all the stitching in all those bright colors.

The book consists of five signatures of 16 pages each. The signatures are hand sewn into the cover, but the rest of the book is fully machine stitched. All the papers were decorated by me and all the labels and borders and stickers were made by me as well. I made freebies of all the elements which can be found on my flickr. Feel free to use them.

I won't bore you with all the spreads, but here are a few just to give you an idea of what the inside of this book looks like.

 

I think I will use the book to collect quotes. It's too small for me to be a regular journal. For now it's just lying there looking pretty in my sewing room and every now and then I can look at it and be proud of my little big project! Hope you enjoyed looking at it too.

Wishing you a wonderful artsy week!

ROD journal all filled up

Last January I took Mary Ann Moss' wonderful class for making a Remains of the day journal. It's an absolutely excellent online class that I can't recommend or praise enough. As a result I had my very first ROD journal finished at the end of the month and I was mighty proud of it too. You can read more about it here.

I had a big idea for this journal at first, which was to use it as a vessel for exercises from Liz Lamoreux' book "Inner excavation", but somehow that just never happened (so many plans, so little time), so it lay in waiting patiently for me to use it for something else. Every now and then I would tenderly caress it so it didn't feel abandoned, 'cause I loved it so much. (What do you mean, that's weird?)

Last May I finished another everyday journal (the Roses Journal) and decided to let the ROD be my next everyday journal. It was quite a challenge at first for someone who is used to starting with a lot more 'emptiness' on pages, but it turned out to be great fun. And now...now it's filled. And here's how it looks now:

It has a little more wear and tear which I absolutely love. It has been used and it shows. It's also even more filled with all sorts of elements, trinkets, pictures and anything else you can possibly fit in a book (anything flat basically).

It was a challenge to write on these patterned papers. Black pens didn't always work so I had to use colored paint pens sometimes, this only made the journal more interesting and colorful. 

The journal is also full of little flaps, things added with paperclips, taped in photographs or just flyers and postcards. I like the messy effect of all that 'stuff'. It gives a sense of abundance somehow.

When making the journal I already enjoyed the fact that I could use my pretty papers for the pages instead of actual 'remains of the day' as the course recommends. But when filling it I also started using all sorts of stickers, die cuts and other ephemera I had collected over the years. It's a really good way to incorporate all the pretty things you've accumulated over time.

Anything just seemed to fit together even if it didn't fit together at all. That's the paradox of an ROD journal. If you search for ROD journals on flickr you will see what I mean. There's such a variety of things that people use and somehow they just all work out well. It's a wonderful concept really.

It took me only about six weeks to fill the book, which may be the only draw back of this wonderful journal. I love to write so my writing takes up space and that means that filling this journal was indeed a matter of weeks instead of a matter of months as is usually the case.

But I'm not complaining, because this simply means I have to make many more of these journals to fulfill my journaling needs ;-). Right now I am using my altered atlas as a journal, but I am in the beginning stages of making another ROD journal and I plan to make several more so I can fill those up as soon as the atlas is filled. This may take some time yet, but that's okay, that also means plenty of time to make plenty of journals. Yay!

Wishing all of you a very artsy weekend.

PS: a shout out to my blog pal Andria for doing a post on our mail art/atc exchange. She sent me some wonderful cards in the mail and you can find them on her equally wonderful blog. Take a look and compliment her on her creativity!

What are you up to wednesday - part 14

Finally, after three weeks it's time for a real what are you up to post again! You remember, right? Those posts where I show you a little of what I'm up to right this minute. Well, here's my work table in the studio:

I finished up a couple of projects in the last few days and that usually means that I clean up my studio just a little too so I don't get lost amongst all the junk. That's why the table looks a lot less messy than usual.

Finishing up projects also means starting up new ones and that's what the above picture is about. I am doing a sort of mind map on an idea I am having for making an artist's book around one of my favorite novels of all time: Wuthering Heights (yes, I have two copies lying there on the table and would you believe that I actually had a third, but had read it so often it broke?).

That's about all I know about my idea yet: an artist's book on Wuthering Heights. Of course I have all sorts of images in my head, but because it might be a big project I need to have a little more to go on, so I am doing research and putting down thoughts and ideas in my sketchbook. We'll see where it leads. A plus with this novel is of course that it's free of copyright, so I can just use the text in my work without having to worry about the copyright monsters. For now it's just an idea. Working on it will let me know if I should pursue it or not. I'll keep you posted.

Now here's a glimpse of something that just makes me happy. For two reasons actually. It's the wicker thingy in my sewing room (what do you call this?). In it are a bunch of very colorful fabrics I have collected over the past months. About half of those I bought two weeks ago during my vacation. Just knowing that those fabrics are there puts a smile on my face. Pretty fabrics are like pretty papers: they're a joy to look at and being able to make something with them is just a bonus.

The second reason this picture makes me happy is because on top of the wicker thingy is the big project I finished last sunday: my totally handmade book. You know, the one with the self made papers and hand drawn labels and elements. I made the cover this weekend and I like how it turned out. I will show this book more up close sometime next week and also give you a look at some of the spreads inside.

Another thing I completed was filling up my very first ROD journal! It was a great joy to use and I'm kind of sorry it's full now. So...I desperately need to make another one or maybe two or maybe three or... ;-)
Very quickly yesterday morning before work I picked out three fabrics that I will probably use for the first one I will make. Here they are:

The coloring in the photograph is a little off, the actual fabric is greener in color, but you get the idea. Of course there will be added ribbons or snippets of other fabrics included, but these three will form the base. I'm really looking forward to starting this one.

As for the filled up ROD journal, I will probably show some of that in my next post.

The third thing I finished is the prepping and covering of the altered atlas! I just started using it as my current journal a few days ago. I will show the atlas and some spreads of it also in a future post.

Well, I've been a busy bee and it seems this post is mostly full of teasers for future posts. Now you have a reason to come back again! ;-)

Hope you're all up to something artsy too today and if not...what are you waiting for?