Urban Graffiti Altered Book

Wow, this is my 200th post to this blog! ;oD

Yesterday I finally finished my Urban Graffiti altered book for a swap on my Yahoo group. It's long overdue and has been a difficult project for me to complete. The idea for the swap was mine and was inspired by street art and stencil graffiti artists et al but not long after the swap was set up I began to feel totally blocked about it. ;o( I extended the deadline twice and still my Muse stayed on strike but inspiration finally struck in November and I was on the point of organising a trip out to photograph graffiti when I landed myself in plaster! However, my photographer friend, Rob, came to the rescue with some graffiti shots that he'd taken and I was off and away at last!

The book I chose is quite large - about 11" by 18" - and I removed alot of pages before I started on the six planned spreads. The idea for the book was to make the spreads look like the walls in the photos with the photos stuck on them if that makes sense! I tried to choose different parts of the photos to depict and I also used different media to get different effects on the pages. These included gesso (white and black), acrylic paint, watercolour paint, crayon, oil pastel, pencil, coloured pencil and marker pen. I wanted a layered look so that sections of different spreads showed whichever spread the book was opened at.

So, here we go with some pics of the finished book!


I used aluminium tape for the cover and used black Staz-On ink to grunge it up a bit! The stencilled title is done with a black Sharpie pen. I really like the look of the tape background and might experiment with the technique some more. I couldn't get the Staz-On to dry though and ended up spraying the cover with acrylic varnish.


First spread.


Second spread.


Third spread.


Fourth spread.


Fifth spread.


Sixth spread.


Close up of the end of the last spread.




Just a couple of shots looking at the whole book from different angles.

Zine Post Script

I thought it would be easier to answer questions from the comments on Elizabeth's zine here rather than in the comments. :o)
It took me a while to work out what Elizabeth meant by "spirograph stamp" and then it dawned on me that it's the stamp I used around the little intro piece on the first page! It appeared on my blog a good while ago when I first made it and it's the impression from the bottom of a plastic pie tray! ;oD I use it loads and it's still a favourite of mine!
The metal bits are rejects that M brought home from work. The joys of having a husband who is an etcher! :oD It's some sort of keyboard job and they always have trouble etching it so I get lots of the ones that don't make the grade!
For the CD I chose just a few of my current favourites on my iPod. I add music all the time, I love broadening my horizons musically and it was great to share some of my eclectic tastes!
I used zebra print for the cover once again (as I did on my one page zine for a recent swap) as I billed them both as "an Artful Zebra Zine" and I think I will do the same for any future zines and I thought a recognisable cover would be a good idea. I may end up changing my mind depending on the zine topic I suppose but that's the idea for the moment!

Zine

My lovely friend, Elizabeth, is celebrating her 50th birthday today. ;o) In honour of this auspicious occasion I decided to make her something special and as she loves zines I decided that's just what I'd make her. Now she has received her zine I can share some pics on here. ;o)

I decided the zine should be called 50 Things and would have just that in it - 50 things! It's a combination of facts, artwork, poetry, freebies etc. I wanted to number everything so all the pieces have a stamped number somewhere on them. I had whole page contributions from more lovely friends, Jill, Claire and Skippy which made my job easier! ;oD

So, here we go:


This is the front cover. The title is made from a piece of altered vintage photo. I loved these vintage red photo mounts!


This is the first spread. The glassine envelope contains a wee booklet all about the year of the rooster in Chinese horoscopes. The right hand spread is the back of Jill's page. Because the way I bound it would have obscured the text I had to bind it backwards as it were but I don't think it detracts from the page at all, well, hopefully not anyway!


The front of Jill's page, on the left hand side, has a pocket which is stuffed fit to burst with 50 things for Elizabeth to use in her art. :o) Elizabeth loves poetry so I searched about and found three lovely wintry Haiku to include. This page contains the one spelling mistake I missed, blast!


The right hand page of this spread is the front of Claire's lovely double sided spread.


This is the middle of Claire's spread, all about Twelfth Night. Unfortunately the thread I used to bind the zine covers a little of the text but I tried to position it in the best place so the least text is covered!


The back of Claire's spread on the left. On the right are a set of four seasons ATCs. The numbers are stickers stuck on the plastic envelopes not on the ATCs! The ATCs are printed underneath as well so the originals can be removed.


On the right hand side is Skippy's fab page. The pea soup recipe on the left is removable and underneath it says "In the USA, January is National Soup Month".


The final spread! As I was a bit pushed for space I used the blank portion on the back of Skippy's spread to add things to! No 36 is a fold out piece containing 50 journaling prompts. The rubbing of a fifty pence piece on the right hand page has a real coin over the top when all the freebies are added!


It would have been impossible to scan the zine pages with all the freebies in place so you can see most of them here. The freebies comprise of a vintage birthday postcard, a charitable gift from World Vision, Best Thoughts printable from The Toymaker, red beaded trim, bag of metal pieces, music CD with 25 of my current favourite pieces, 5 pieces of handmade background paper/card, vintage whist score card, vintage poetry booklet, vintage card of buttons, vintage bus tickets, unmounted rubber stamp, printed Morse code alphabet, fifty pence piece and a pendant.


The last item is the pendant I made which hangs on one of those round choker type wires but I couldn't think of a way to attach it to the zine properly as it was an odd shape so I ended up putting it in a suitable wintry themed box (see bottom right of freebie photo) and just putting it with the zine. It's made from a vintage fishing spinner, a vintage fuse and text. Elizabeth sings with a church choir and the line of Longfellow poetry seemed just the right thing when my eyes hit upon it. ;o)

This was my second attempt at a zine after participating in a one page zine swap on The Zine Pool. I think I have a long way to go yet but I've definitely caught the zine making bug! ;oD Both the zines I've made have been steep learning curves for me and I hope any future zines I make will all help to improve my techniques and see me become a much better zinester. Zine making is SO much fun though, I highly recommend having a go! :oD

Booklet

As a little diversion between projects with paint drying today I made this little dowel spine portfolio from instructions in More Making Books by Hand: Exploring Miniature Books, Alternative Structures, and Found Objects by P. Thomas.



This is the outside showing the spine.



And this is the inside showing the little pockets.

I made it using a sheet of hand decorated paper from a recent artist papers swap and it was really quite easy despite looking a bit difficult! ;oD Anything involving accuracy always makes me a little nervous! LOL I'm planning on altering the cards in the pockets but I think it would be good for all sorts of things. If it was made a bit deeper it would house ATCs nicely. ;o) My only problem is that I think I cut the spine slits a little wide as the dowel drops out given half a chance! Good fun though!

Altered Shoe

On my Yahoo group, I hosted a winter themed altered shoe shrine swap and I completed my shoe this morning. It's a baby shoe that I stiffened with Paverpol, spray painted and added embellishments to and then mounted on a vintage tin that I cut and bent to shape.

Art Journal Spreads

A few more art journal spreads to share, all created, sitting by the open fire with my leg up, from the never ending scrap box by my side!

Altered Book Spreads

I'm gradually working through my outstanding commitments and have finished with two more books in the children's literature altered book round robin I was participating in. There were two groups for this RR and both these books are from the group that I wasn't in. So, firstly, here are my two spreads in Secret Garden:





I thought the first was a little simple and looked like I hadn't applied myself very much so I decided to do another! As I may be the last person to work in it I used the back pages to make a niche for a key. Neither spread turned out how I imagined but, hey ho, isn't that just the way of artful things?! ;oD

And this is my slightly weird spread in Water Babies:



When I read the text about "ten thousand sea anemones covering the rocks" I knew I had to make sea anemones! ;oD The highlighted text just says "ten thousand sea anemones" as I haphazardly painted over part of the sentence! Doh! The anemones are made from plastic carrier bags using a pair of shredding scissors! It was great fun although I was a tad fed up with the static making the plastic stick to me by the time I'd finished! LOL

Journal pages

Just a couple of art journal spreads to show I'm still alive and kicking despite the plaster cast! LOL I've got a box of scraps and am using them up in various art journals while I sit with my leg elevated!!

Monoprints

As promised, I have monoprints to share from the course I went on last weekend. ;o)

So, we did two very easy sorts of monoprinting. Firstly, we inked up acrylic sheets and then laid a piece of paper on top. Then all you have to do is draw onto the paper and then peel the print off. It's a bit tricky to know how much ink is right and my first pic illustrates too much!! I drew my fruit shape with a pencil and you can just about see the lines if you look hard:



I tried again using pencil and this is my second, much more visible, print:



For my next print I used my finger to draw which gives bolder softer lines:



I also tried laying a collagraph block onto the paper and rolling over it with a brayer:



This really is the edited highlights - I did loads of prints with this technique, I could've kept going for hours! It's really easy, it can be done at home and you never quite know what you'll get! ;o)

The second monoprinting technique used the press. We inked up acrylic sheets again and then laid shapes cut from paper onto them in a random pattern. It then went through the press with dry paper and this is the resulting print:



I then removed the shapes and laid them back down in different positions and ran it through the press a second time with this result:



I really enjoyed this introduction to monoprints and collagraphs and feel I will be investigating further! I loved the thrill of the reveal, never quite knowing what's going to appear! The room was filled with lots of oohs and aahs every time a new print came off the press! :oD If you get the chance, have a go! It's great fun and alot of it can be done at home. ;o)

Collagraph Block Printing

So, now my prints from the monoprinting and collagraph block printing course are dry I can share some of them on here. :o)

We started the day by making collagraph blocks with ordinary card by cutting out shapes and gluing to another piece of card. These are my first three blocks:





I used the third block with ink later on in the day which is why it's coloured. The second block was a serendipitous mistake but I so liked it that I carried it through the day on further blocks and prints. ;o) It said fruit/seed pod to me although some of the other girls saw it as a tulip. We used these blocks for "blind embossing" which was putting it through the press with damp paper but no ink. These are some of the resulting prints:



These are two prints from one of the blocks using ink:





We also used Environmount (shiny white surface on both sides with recycled newspaper inbetween) to make blocks. The white surface could be peeled back in varying layers. These are some of the prints from some of my fruit blocks:







I also used Environmount to make a block with four fruits on. I took a couple of prints from it and had intended re-inking with different colours for more prints but the block was so delicious after the first two prints that I've left it as it is! Here it is:



So, that's a bit about the collagraphs. Tomorrow I shall wax lyrical about monoprinting! ;oD

Pendant

Now that the recipient of this pendant (my lovely friend, Skippy) has it in her posession I can share a picture of it on here! ;o)



So, the base of the pendant started life as a little petit four tin which I took a hammer to and flattened out! The only thing I added was the letter 's' in the centre and then I used alcohol inks, foil and glaze pen, added a couple of doodads on the bottom and hey presto! ;o)

Stamps, envies and monoprinting!

Thought I'd update you on what's going on in Studio Ha Ha! :o)

I've been meaning to share this photo of my hand carved cork stamps for a while but kept forgetting! Carving an alphabet set from wine bottle corks has been on my to do list for ages, years in fact! LOL So, over the summer I finally got down to working on a set. I have to admit they were surprisingly easy to carve, I wrote the letter in Sharpie on the cork and then just used my ordinary craft knife to carve them. My only problem was not always remembering to write the letters backwards! Actually I rather fancy a set of backwards alphabet so may do that when I have enough corks for another set! ;oD



I'm currently working on a inspiration themed one page zine for a swap on The Zine Pool Yahoo group. These little dinner money envies will be stuck to one of the pages of the zine and will be filled with something, not sure what yet! :oD I had great fun making these yesterday. I used crayon over a plastic rubbing plate, added watercolour paint and zapped with the heat gun. I've eyeletted the flaps and they will all have fibre like the one on the left of the pic when I get around to adding it tomorrow.



Today I've spent the day at White House Arts in Cambridge, with my friends Becky and Skippy, on a Monoprinting and Collagraph Printmaking course. It was an excellent day and I learnt lots about techniques that I'd never tried. We made collagraph blocks from cardboard by cutting shapes and gluing to another piece and also from Environmount (shiny white surface on both sides and recycled newspaper) by "drawing" with a craft knife and then peeling the surface off to varying degrees. We made prints from our collagraph prints with and without ink and also tried out simple monoprinting with ink on perspex sheets, laying paper down and using pencil, fingers or whatever to draw on it and then peel off to see the print. All my prints and blocks are drying out but once they're dry I'll be able to share some pics on here. ;o)

AB Spread

Haven't posted anything for a while so I thought I'd share this altered book spread in the latest Literatura Infantil round robin book that I've worked in. This one is The Little Princess by Frances H Burnett. I wanted to do a spread about servant life and this is what I came up with:



I used acrylic paint and ink over scraps of old fashioned writing then added the Victorian servant image, the spoon (printed on acetate) and the buttons. The text is dry letter transfers which I then scratched a bit for a more worn look. Quite pleased with this one, I seem to be getting over my more is more attitude!!

ATCs

It feels like an age since I last posted although it's only a couple of weeks! I've been immersed in co-directing and performing in an amateur musical production but we finished out run last night and so I'm catching up on some swap commitments that have languished for a wee while. I'm hosting an ATC swap on Mixed Media ATC UK group the theme of which is just to use all natural materials. I decided I wanted to use wood for my ATCs and so I borrowed a pyrography tool from a friend and had a play this afternoon. I didn't find it very easy to do what I'd wanted to do pattern wise so this is what I came up with instead:



After I'd done the backgrounds I was rummaging about looking for some little twigs to attach to them but came across some sea worn shells and decided to use those instead, their simple shapes and colours just seemed to complement the backgrounds.

Altered Text ATCs

I'm participating in an altered text ATC swap on my Yahoo group and, despite actually trying to work on something else, I finished mine this afternoon and these are they. ;o)

Art GCSE

In the absence of any other artwork I thought I would share some of the stuff I've been doing with my daughter. She has started her GCSEs this year and is doing art. We were discussing it one day and before I knew it I was agreeing to work alongside her doing the same homework and as much of the classwork that I can given that I don't have the classroom resources! First up, in class, she was presented with a copy of the painting, Woodcutter by Kasimir Malevich, see below.



The task was to reproduce all or part of the painting on an A3 spread using oil pastels. This is my finished piece:



It's not something I've done before and despite feeling quite unskilled at using oil pastels once I got going I really enjoyed it! ;o)

We're working on coursework entitled "Figure and Space" this next piece is a 15 minute observational drawing of my husband, not that you'd know it was him! LOL



After this I had to do a 3 minute drawing of him without removing the pencil from the page and also not looking at the what I was doing! Good fun! And that was followed by a 3 minute drawing holding the pencil right at the very top, like a paintbrush. Now I have homework to complete that involves using some previously sourced pictures of figures in movement to draw or paint a piece based on one of them which shows movement. Eek! Still thinking about that one! ;oD

It's all great fun and hopefully is encouraging for both of us. :o) I think I'm going to be tackling all sorts of things that I wouldn't necessarily have tried which is all grist to the prospective artist's mill.

Symbols Piece

On my Yahoo group we recently had a symbols swap. Each player supplied a list of symbols they use regularly in their artwork and then another player made a piece of artwork in their own style but using someone else's symbols. Does that make sense?? I was working on my piece when FIL died and have been somewhat blocked ever since. I had several attempts at different pieces before finally getting to what would become my actual swap piece! I think I just had a mental block on it because after FIL died I wasn't doing much, if any, art for a good while and when I came back to the piece I just felt completely stymied whenever I looked at it. Fortunately the fog finally lifted yesterday and here it is:




I managed to use seven of the twelve symbols on my partner's list;

greens, golds, going on yellow or brown (brown vintage tablemat, yellow sardine tin lid, hanging trim)
poetry quotes (lines from a Longfellow poem)
rectangles (sardine tin)
chequerboard effect (metal mesh)
triangles (Blakies)
stars (gold stencilled stars on base, metal star on sardine tin)
dots (copper nails)

Art Doll

I've been participating in an art doll swap on my Yahoo group and this is mine. She started life as a fork and I gave her a restyle by bending the tines. ;oD Her "dress" is copper and blue wires just wound around, very therapeutic activity! After some tinkering about I managed to attach her clock face! Her arms are copper wire with plastic beads that have seen better days but I felt they suited my doll much better than shiny new ones. Her legs are one of my soldered vintage fuses and part of an earring. Once she was finished I decided to mount her onto something and so she reposes on a big piece of tringular metal that I liberated from the shed! I couldn't get a decent shot of the entire piece as the flash kept bouncing off the metal so this is just the actual doll portion, not a brilliant pic but hopefully you get the idea!

Women in Art Video

Check out this cool video on YouTube. I loved it! ;o)

Sketches

Just a couple of pages from my sketchbook on holiday. Last year I drew (well, tried to! Who remembers the sheep with a wooden leg?? LOL) alot of sheep, this year the theme has been boats!