Day 11 in the studio...

Had to have an essential early night yesterday so catching up with blogworld for both days this afternoon.  ;o)

So, I'll kick off with a little update on the metal tags.  I decided to glue them together in pairs so that I can have text on both sides.  There's not as many pairs as there might be because I was a bit slow gluing and, having put glue on all of the tags, by the time I got to the last ones the glue had gone off!  I may do them again once I've decided what text I'll be using and have more of an idea how any I'll need.  Here they are having a little trial run at being confined to a binding ring....

I devoted most of my studio time yesterday and today to getting some more sorting done, I have successfully emptied and sorted the biggest of my cupboards which had lots of bags of miscellaneous rubbish... ahem, I mean valuable art materials, filling it's shelves.  Along the way I did actually do a fair degree of art journaling as I kept happening upon things I'd been meaning to use in journals but forgot about as they got shoved to the back of the cupboard so that was nicel serendipitous!  ;o) 

Today I find several things that I want to work on as I enter the second week of 30 Days of get Your Art On.  I found a couple of old linen backed maps gathering dust in a corner and will be prepping them as bases for some collage work.

I've torn the maps (that's upset any cartographers in the vicinity!) into their individual sections of the maps which are roughly 3 ish inches by 6 ish inches with losts of nice dangly threads on the edges!

I'm loving the texture of the piueces and I'm looking forward to splashing some paint around on them tomorrow.  ;o)

Another find, this time buried in a box of papers, is this poor lost soul...

It's part of the stubby bit of a book of raffle tickets, I say part because it was chewed by one of our lovely dogs who mistook it for a snack, and some of it was beyond saving and had to be laid to rest in the recycling bin.  However the surviving stubbiness is destined to become certainly the narrowest, if not the smallest, book art project I've embarked on.  ;o)

It has a glued spine of course so some reinforcement may be required once I get going on it otherwise it may not stand up to the rigours of it's transformation.

Size wise, it's about a quarter of an inch wide by about 5 or 6 inches (can you tell I didn't have the foresight to measure anything before I came to blog and now can't arsed to go back up to the studio and do it?!) so loads of room for textual play!  ;oD

Lastly, yes, I know I'm harping on a bit today but I'm nearly there so bear with me a teeny tad longer... lastly, I came across these concertina books from a recent Fenland Arts event. 

 
My fellow Fenland Arts artist in residence, Fred White, and I were at a local Cultural Olympiad event where we were encouraging folk to be creative with a selection of materials we had available.  I had taken a stack of beer mats generously donated by my friend, Richard, (well, I say generously donated, what I really mean is fished out of his recycling bin in a strop because he didn't ask me if I wanted them first!  lol) and in the few slack moments during the day I used them as bases for making concertina books.

 
I hadn't made any little books for a while before this event and would like to finish them off as samples for a prospective kid's workshop. 

Ok, aaaand relaxxxxx, end of blog post!  ;oD 

Soooo, the metal tags are progressing... yesterday I cut them all out, trimmed them to within an inch of their lives and swore my way through getting the holes perfectly finished.

This afternoon I wielded some colour and painted the little poppets, I wetted the watercolour paper first and then sprinkled over dry Brusho powder in brilliant red, black and turquoise.

In my usual thrifty way the mountboard I used to paint the tags on is destined for another project.  ;o)

And, lastly, you can't beat a dirty artist's hand photo!  ;o)  Or do I mean the dirty hand of an artist?  Lol

It's been nine days since the start of 30 Days of Get Your Art On and I've so enjoyed getting back in the studio, getting my head down and doing, yay!  ;o)  I do, however, feel that this week has just been about easing myself back into the regularity of daily doings so all I can say is roll on the next 21 days!  ;o)

Pleasant pottering

I seem to be blogging in retrospect every day!  ;o)  This afternoon (ah, that would be yesterday afternoon now, of course!) I spent a couple of hours engaged in some studio pottering.  I have a habit of gathering things destined for the studio from other parts of the house into bags which then line up in the studio awaiting dispersal.  ;oD  So, this afternoon I was dispersing some bag's contents.  Pottering is a pleasant occupation, especially so if you need to be in the studio but don't know what you want to be doing.  I find some light pottering always prompts some creative action and gently carries you off on serendipitous adventures.  ;o)  And so it was this afternoon...

I wish I had been blessed with the foresight to photograph the bunch of metal tags I found before I started to play with them but unfortunately it passed me by!  I do have photos of the process so far though.  ;o)  The tags came from my husband's old job; he used to do chemical etching and often brought home scrap metal shapes.  The tags are a sort of elongated pear shape, stainless steel with a hole at the narrower end, about 2 inches long, and it struck me that they'd make a good book so I have set about the process of transforming them. 

There are 26 tags in total and I've started off by gluing them all to watercolour paper with gel medium and then I weighted them down and left them to dry.

They'll need a bit of tidying up on the metal side as some of them got a bit gluey during the process.

This evening, once they were dried, I started cutting them out, 1 down 25 to go!  ;o)  The edges need some sanding just to round the corners nicely and then I plan to colour them all and add text.

I slapped some emerald green Brusho on this first one as an experiment and have left it to dry overnight.  I'm thinking of using some poetry I've written as the text on them, possibly using dry letter transfers but I haven't really decided yet.  In fact, I may not even use text, ah the excitement of what might be!  ;o)

As an aside, some of you who knew me way back when will remember that it was my discovery of altered books which started me on my artistic path.  ;o)  I have a passion for books, reading and book arts.  I have been asked many times over the years how I could "destroy" a book by altering it and also told that books aren't books unless they're two covers with text on paper between them!  Yeah right!  (insert raised eyebrows and a pout to accompany that!) I have a sudden urge to return to my altered book roots.  ;o)  I have had the privilege over the years to work with some fantastically talented artists in collaborative and round robin altered book projects.  I have held in my hands altered books that are true works of art, books that were dying a slow death on a charity shop book shelf liberated and resuscitated with passion, patience and such imagination.  I have seen artists go from being unable to make even the smallest mark in a book to producing amazing, freeing, beautifully expressive altered book artwork.  If that's "destroying" a book then by all means call me destructive!  ;oD  Here endeth today's sermon!  lol  Oh, except to say, check out this link, book arts at it's best!  ;o) 

And just to finish, while I was pottering about the studio I rediscovered something I'd forgotten all about.  Back in May I was in a local shop buying some cotton sheeting and, as the shop assistant unrolled the bolt of fabric to measure it, I was interested to see a length of printed paper tape attached to the fabric.

The assistant told me it's called truth tape and it's purpose is to help with stock taking. I asked if I could have some (they just throw it away) for artistic purposes and she rummaged in the bin and gave me a huge handful. ;o)