More book making

Sharing more books I have made recently.  This first one I used lots of papers that were used behind other paintings.  I love the wide variety of abstract marks that show up on these papers and use them frequently.  Making this book was a good way to use some up.

This book now sits on my morning table and I am adding art work and mark making to it daily.  Having fun with it.

This is one of the background papers that collect paint and where I wipe off rubber stamps.

A rogues gallery

I used elastic hair ties to attach the signatures.

This next one is not a traditional book.  I suppose I ought to call it a scroll.

 Click on the pictures to read the Mary Oliver poem, Sleeping In The Forest.

 Hmmm, I don't know why the above picture has such a different color.  The one below has correct coloration.

"grappling with a luminous doom."  I love that line.

Above are pictures of the outside of the scroll.  I used coffee dyed muslin for the base, hand stitching small panels together.  Then I copied a poem by Mary Oliver titled Sleeping In The Forest on used tea bag papers and glued them to the muslin.  I've rolled the whole thing onto a knobby stick I found.

 The panels on this side correspond to the poem on the reverse side.  This is a little embroidery I created a year or so ago, I thought it would fit into this story well.  There is a little "pocket" holding seeds, beads and lichen.

 Stones on the river bed.

 "Nothing between me and the white fire of the stars but my thoughts, and they floated light as moths among the branches of the perfect trees."  The moth painting is from a Heron Dance book.  I stitched down tiny star sequins.

 I stamped insect images on used tea bag paper and it can cover this image and owl feathers.  I glued just the top edge of it down.

Most of the images I used are from the Heron Dance book.  They are paper and I glued them down.

 I love Mary Oliver's poetry.  And I love the Heron Dance publications with most of the watercolor paintings by Rod MacIver.  The two seem to go together well.  I do not have any copyrights to these works so this scroll is purely for me.  I think I will put it in a quiet glade in my forest and see how it holds up to the elements over the years.

Making books

Since the nice weather has arrived I've switched from making quilts to making books.  Today I shall show you some of them.  Please do remember that you can click on the picture to see it larger.

 This little accordion book measures about 4 inches square.

 I decorated it mostly using some of Jane Davenport's collage napkins that I purchased at Joggles.com.

 I also did a little acrylic painting in places.

Finally I put a spine on it using some scrim and added a few beads, sea shells and fibers. 

The second little book, constructed in the same fashion, turned out quite differently.

This one I used mainly images from some old Heron Dance booklets I bought.  Hated cutting them up but I do love all the little paintings and this is a fun way to recycle them.

Next I made a couple of tiny accordion books.

I already gave them away, I think they were about 2 inches square.
There are more but this is enough for today.  Don't want to overwhelm you with photos.  Since I only have half a dozen at most followers any more, this blog is mostly a record for myself.  I guess people don't read blogs any more.  I didn't like posting on Facebook, it felt too impersonal and I've been reading things about Facebook that I don't like.  So I'm back to blogging.  Thanks for sticking around.

Meet Clara Llama

Did you know I have llamas?  Did you know I recently acquired a new one?  It's true, I did.  Here she is the day I got her.

I took her on because my friend who had her was moving and couldn't keep Clara.  She was all alone at her previous home so she is really better off here, in a herd now.

Clara was badly in need of trimming so I finally got around to catching her and going at her shaggy matted dirty hair with a good pair of scissors.  I covered her eyes with a cloth and that helped calm her down so I could work on her.  Took awhile but here are the results:

I can actually see her tail now!  Before she had some filthy dags hanging at her hind end and now they are gone.  (dags are the dirty matted stringy hair that hangs around the tail area)  I'd like to catch and trim Gracie next.  She is the lighter colored one in the picture above.  

This picture shows the mass of hair I cut off of her.  I couldn't save it, too dirty and full of burrs and totally matted.  I saved a couple of chunks thinking I might be able to needle felt them into some sort of thing to give back to the friend I got Clara from. 
Before, when I only had 3 llamas, Gracie was at the bottom of the pecking order.  Someone has to be and she is the youngest (at 7) and came after the others (before Clara) so it was her by default.  Now she has someone to pick on so she is happy.  Clara doesn't seem to mind being at the bottom.  I think she is just happy to be in a herd instead of alone!  She is very sweet and inquisitive, as is Gracie.  The other two are older, probably getting close to 20, which is fairly old for a llama.  They are both stand offish and don't like to be touched.  Clara is about 13.  The original 3 llamas were used to wading across the creek to get to the big hay field.

It took Clara awhile to get up the nerve to follow them.  She didn't know how deep the water was.  Eventually she gave it a try and now crosses back and forth with the rest at will.

Here they are, waiting to cross the creek.

The water isn't terribly deep as you can see by the water line on Angel.  Surprise, the oldest llama, (she came with that name, all of them came named) likes to hug the fence line as she crosses and she barely gets her feet wet.  Clara took a cue from her and crosses like that.  Angel and Gracie like to just wade on through.  Gracie in particular likes to play in the water.  I have to keep the water barrel tied down otherwise she will play in the water and knock it over.

I made this last image into a card for my friend and sent it to her.  She misses Clara but is so grateful I was able to give her a good home.  I'm happy to have her.  We were already supplying the hay for Clara in her old home so now we will just put it in our barn this year.  Hay season coming up soon!
Here are a couple of links to old llama posts I've made, in case you want to see more of them:
Llama Love
Llama quilt
Meet Grace