I had a very constructive day in the studio today. I worked on my first Assessment piece. Here is the finished book open on a bed of red dogwood I collected whilst out walking a few weeks ago.
Although I didn't have to make the book for the first assessment for my City & Guilds course (Creative Computing in Stitched Textiles) I really want to see my design ideas as a finished piece. My source was this picture of the Scottish Parliament Building. We couldn't use scanned or imported digital images.
Using the paintbrush tool in Paintshop Pro I roughly painted the shapes in the colours from the image. I then manipulated it using various filters to get the designs you see on the front and back covers. This took a lot of hours and was my third attempt at the design I liked the other two as well but this particular one printed well.
Since it was a book cover I wanted it to be sturdy bot because I was using hand made Lokta papers which are lightweight the cover needed to be light enough to complement the papers.
This is the back cover design. I decided to use pelmet vilene for the cover. To get the design on the pelmet vilene, I didn't want additional layers so printing onto fabric wasn't an option. I printed the design on to T-shirt transfer paper and ironed it to the vilene. It worked a treat and the colours were great. I also wanted the front cover design to have some texture and so I mixed paints in the colours of the print and mixed them with Xpandaprint and carefully painted some areas of the design and heated with a heat gun. I used a 3mm x 1mm zig zag stitched for the edges of the front and back covers to give them a more finished look.
Bookmaking is very new to me and I wanted my little book, which measures 6.5" x 4.5" , to lie flat when I was using it and so I decided to use a coptic binding. There are a number of instructions around the internet for these and I finally worked it out. I used little eyelets on the front and back covers and a space dyed thin knitted ribbon for the coptic binding. I am going to use this method again, once I worked it out it was easy and effective.
Before putting the book together I created some designs on some of the pages using a lighted incense stick.
I had a very constructive day in the studio today. I worked on my first Assessment piece. Here is the finished book open on a bed of red dogwood I collected whilst out walking a few weeks ago.
Although I didn't have to make the book for the first assessment for my City & Guilds course (Creative Computing in Stitched Textiles) I really want to see my design ideas as a finished piece. My source was this picture of the Scottish Parliament Building. We couldn't use scanned or imported digital images.
Using the paintbrush tool in Paintshop Pro I roughly painted the shapes in the colours from the image. I then manipulated it using various filters to get the designs you see on the front and back covers. This took a lot of hours and was my third attempt at the design I liked the other two as well but this particular one printed well.
Since it was a book cover I wanted it to be sturdy bot because I was using hand made Lokta papers which are lightweight the cover needed to be light enough to complement the papers.
This is the back cover design. I decided to use pelmet vilene for the cover. To get the design on the pelmet vilene, I didn't want additional layers so printing onto fabric wasn't an option. I printed the design on to T-shirt transfer paper and ironed it to the vilene. It worked a treat and the colours were great. I also wanted the front cover design to have some texture and so I mixed paints in the colours of the print and mixed them with Xpandaprint and carefully painted some areas of the design and heated with a heat gun. I used a 3mm x 1mm zig zag stitched for the edges of the front and back covers to give them a more finished look.
Bookmaking is very new to me and I wanted my little book, which measures 6.5" x 4.5" , to lie flat when I was using it and so I decided to use a coptic binding. There are a number of instructions around the internet for these and I finally worked it out. I used little eyelets on the front and back covers and a space dyed thin knitted ribbon for the coptic binding. I am going to use this method again, once I worked it out it was easy and effective.
Before putting the book together I created some designs on some of the pages using a lighted incense stick.
9 comments:
Holy Moly woman these are fantastic.
I love the book how it looks on the twigs just fantastic, The front and back cover well stunning.
I can never find the right adjective to discribe your work, sorry always using the same old words but you are just so talented.
You got the hang of book making my dear don't you worry they are perfect...
This is really lovely. Nice job!
fantastic work!! My last creation is a book cover too, and I know what difficult job it is!!
Wow Carol! This is fantastic, well done - really really amazing work.
Well Carol, I'd say you've outdone yourself. This a super, and I love all the different techs. you always use in your projects.
Beautiful job as always.
Brilliant book making Carol. I love seeing how artists get from their original design source to the finished product.
It looks lovely Carol, I like the way you displayed the open book. It looks a bit oriental.
What a great book!
Thank you everyone for your kind words. I think I may make more books it's such fun.
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