Trees in Winter: concertina paper/fabric booklet

First visual stage

I have begun putting together the winter tree concertina booklet which began in my head, and on the page, on 27th January, and probably before then. All to often, I spend hours jotting down ideas, expanding them - and never actually passing the stage of early experiments! This year, with my plan to participate in Warwickshire Art Week, I must actually complete some projects; not one of each but duplicating them. One for my portfolio, and others to sell, if they inspire buyers. I managed it for village art show in the Autumn, sold some pieces, and am expanding my range. Basically, I love to work in paper and fabric, incorporating my own photos and words, adding embellishments of many sorts, depending on what it is I am making.

On the way

Well, I've passed the point of no return, of my usual evasion of actually beginning. It was almost the same this time: cold feet that what I envisaged would not work. I have to add here that I am still keeping notes, a creative diary, and a sampling sketchbook. The notes are necessary because if I want to replicate a technique or method I have used, I forget what I did if I don't write it down; also because from time to time I am asked to write a feature on my work, with step-by-step instructions and the notes are invaluable. I find my camera useful for these records, and they are added to my sampling book. 

Potential layout (view in pairs and imagine the zig-zag folds)

I have to add at this point that the photographic record I made today is poor and out of focus. No excuse, but my workroom is out of action (power points in need of repair) and the north-facing bedroom where I usually take my product photos has no heating in it at the moment, and dashing up and down stairs with bits and pieces was to daunting to face on such a bitterly cold day here.

Potential layout

After all this lengthy preamble, maybe I should explain what I am making. A concertina booklet with paper pages fused to fabric - the topic: Winter Trees. I've been taking photographs on each of our 'picnics' since the 1st January (see last few posts), writing my 'word-whisper' on the spot, or when we return. All the images I am using are cropped out of a larger image, taken specifically with that in mind. The paper pages are made from an old second hand book - I purchased a quantity inexpensively from my favourite antiquarian bookseller a couple of weeks ago, intending to 'alter' them for these sort of projects. These I distressed with a walnut colour spray to 'antique' them.

Revised layout, images and words fused

I collected  quite a few possible embellishments, intending to 'audition' them against the layout - something I always do (comes from my years of editing magazines). I decided on this occasion that less is more and that as the pages were so small (only 4in x4in - 10cm x 10cm), I would keep them simple. I did not have sufficient of the cotton lace I wanted for page edges, so had to substitute. The replacement will be better, I think; less obtrusive. The photos were manipulated and printed, fused to the pages according to my layout, as were the words I added. I did not like the planned final page, so typed and printed one of the word-spills that I had written on our picnic the day I truly began this project. All is now ready for adding stitching, and then fusing to a cheesecloth/muslin backing and adding the cover and title. To be continued .....

The pieces immediately above are ready to be stitched around the images and words, then lace edging will be stitched in place. These finished pages will be mounted and stitched onto the concertina background. Cover and back-cover have yet to be created. Double-click on any image to view it at larger size.

Starting Work for Art Week Sales & Exhibits

My notebook box

On the assumption that our Village Art Week will be going ahead at the end of June, I need to begin creating the paper and textile books I intend to demo and sell. I need to plan what I am going to make, and when. I am notorious for writing lists and ideas and not seeing a complete project through; so I decided that initially on each evening in January, I would jot down my thoughts - for I could visualise what I wanted to do. Most evenings I have managed this. I brought my 'quilt journey' box into action, moving into it my current notebooks and word-whispers, a small box with pens and tiny paint box, my 'burnt sugar diary'. 'Quilt Journeys' (my 12in x 12in pages that will be linked into booklets) are ongoing, but my workroom is out of action, noted from time to time on Facebook. I suddenly realised that making sufficient textile books of this size was impracticable, they would take too long, cost too much and in any case are a personal record of aspects of my life. 

One of my finished fabric books (a gift for a grandchild in 2009)

Far better would be 6in x 6in (15cm x 15cm) which is a size I have frequently worked with. I had my theme - landscape and gardens, using my photos and my own word-whispers but adding collage from old books. Notes proliferated but gradually some parameters emerged, stimulated by the arrival of a catalogue from my favourite second-hand bookseller who specialises in my chosen subjects. Her special offer was enticing and a parcel soon arrived (I was determined that pages from these would be ripped up and used for stitched collage, but now they are here I just may have to keep one or two intact!) 

Second-hand books purchased for collage

I am keeping a diary, and have prepared a series of A4 cards outlining themes and tried and tested methods that will save me from endless experimenting. Time to begin - and then on Monday evening came a breakthrough: in searching for photos to match my poem-spills that I intended to use, I came to the conclusion that I find it easier to create words to match an image than the other way around. (Though it is immodest to say so, this ability comes from endless exercises when I was young, a technique I subsequently used when teaching my classes of eight-year-olds. Here's what you do - select an image or object at random and without thinking jot down some words, adjectives particularly; just whatever comes to mind.) I rarely change my poem-spills and word-whispers, though I may tweak them slightly for their look on the page. 

Tree image, cropped from a larger photo

Today I set this in practice: my dear husband Raymond and I took a picnic and drove a few miles in search of the images I wanted for a 'Winter Trees' book. Previously we would have sat eating out picnic and I would have looked at the scene and words would come into my head. Today I started from the visual aspect, looking for trees that could be cropped out of a larger picture, leaping in and out of the car into the strong wind, taking a photo and using the 'enlarge' facility on my camera to view where I could enlarge a section, even though the image was a long way off. 

Top road into village

I scribbled a few words, but will probably 'write to fill' - i.e. print the image I want to use, collect pieces of collage and any ephemera I want to use, arrange them speedily on the fabric background and assess how many words will be needed to fill whatever space I allocate within the layout for text.

Enlarging part of the tree

I have already today taken sufficient images for an eight-page paper and fabric book, and this last, as the light began to fade and we dropped down the hill into the village illustrates my point of 'photos first, words afterwards'. Click on the final image below so you can see it full-size - look at the horizon, can you see the portion I will crop and enlarge? And this is what I wrote: "Trees in groups, on the skyline, at a field's edge, in copses; bird-haunts, shelter, and fuel to keep us warm."  I type the text into a word document, click 'file, print, save as pdf' and then convert the pdf into a jpeg using Photoshop Elements. A sheet of images are assembled in another Word document, and printed in reverse onto 'Epson Cool Peel' image transfer paper. Look back through this blog for posts where my word-spills appear, and you will see what I am referring to.

Down the hill into the village
Dusk is imminent, but trees on the skyline can be cropped and enlarged

Here's the final image, trees on the skyline; I took lots more, but these that I have posted best illustrate what I am talking about, and the method that I will be using to put these first books together; not just one but three or four the same; batch-production saves time but each will vary slightly. And that's just one theme. I have others lined up.

All work and no play ...

this part of the landscape took my fancy - I so love winter trees; you can do so much with images such as these

Last weekend, Raymond and I went for a winter picnic; I journaled a word-whisper and sketched; and posted about the experience. It was a revelation, had me determined that I would play a little each evening, creating hand-made books of these special moments, for even essential and much-loved office work can pall when there is never enough time to stop. That was last Sunday, and we decided this morning to drive out with another picnic - only a few miles; find a gateway in which to park the car and out with the journal and pen. 

Cropped from the main image, played with in Photoshop
(when we arrived home), I could zoom in closer, a machine-embroidered image, perhaps

Last week was spur of the moment. This, today, felt forced, rushed. But I was determined. Down local lanes somewhere in forty years we had never driven. "If we don't stop now, it will be dark," I said. So we did, and I looked at the landscape: bare trees, a field, a far-off and somewhat insipid view. My muse had vanished, or were we so  hungry, 2.30pm of a Sunday afternoon that home-made bread, salad, prawns and ham, with a flask of hot, hot tea overtook me? First, whilst the light was right, I took a photo, and started writing, visualising the textile page that would emerge: word-spill transferred to fabric, photograph patchworked and stitched, embellishments added from my stash (collected and hand-made).

And so we sat, and ate; I played with my camera, and words fell out of nowhere; and I found I was somehow absorbing the landscape, the sky, the silence; and the task I had set myself was done. 

And I have to explain that I so very nearly abandoned this, my Journaling blog, at the end of last year, felt I was going nowhere with my paper and textile creations, my experimental pieces, and all the finished pieces for which they were but forerunners. I felt I would never have the time to achieve all that was in my heart and mind.

But after the village art exhibition in October 2011, some of us talked about participating in Warwickshire Art Week Open Studios in June of this year; and I thought, "yes, I'm ready for this." So any spare time is now devoted to working-notes on what I will make and hopefully sell, from map-trails to quilt-journeys to textile poem-spills - and actually creating them. My journaling / sketchbook pages progress (must do, or I forget how to pull it all together), and thus this blog WILL continue, and I will post thoughts and sketch pages and finished keepsakes; and I hope the Sunday picnics will become the norm and a happy escape, and the catalyst for a portfolio of pieces.

Journal spilling again

Anyone reading my new-year's day post on my 'Wild Somerset Child' blog will have realised that 2011 was my annus horribilis, and it would seem from the comments already kindly posted by blog followers that it was likewise for others. I am not here re-visiting my feelings - or lack of them - on 1st January, other than to say that the winter picnic my dear husband made for me, his kindness in driving me out of myself, and my deliberate snatching of my Journal Spill notebook and camera, catapulted me into 2012. Description of the day, and photos, can be seen here: I mentioned that my journaling word-whisper would appear here in due course. Here it is, and I apologise that my blogs are all interlinked. That's the way I am.

So I sketched, and the word-whisper fell onto the page, not in its usual format - that will happen in my 'Quilt Journey Word-Whispers' (have I lost you? Sorry). I turned to the back of my fat notebook and spilled some more: a little more coherent, a finding of something that I was afraid had been lost, though maps are so often a trigger. My perceptive husband knows when work has overtaken me and I need to be 'taken out of myself'. And here is what I wrote at the back of my book, subsequent to my poor sketch-spill:

"Ilmington Hill: the names alone speak history. Compton Scorpion, Cathole, Foxcote, Woodmeadow, Lark Stoke, Goose Hill, Ebrington. Fields evocative of past lives, villages long gone; only the names and the marks on the landscape reminding me of what once was; hedge and ditch and furrow, barn and byre .... a sparrow-hawk alights on the roadside hedge, steel-blue back; pauses just a few seconds, then swoops low past our parked car, and is gone."

You can double-click the journal image to read the words I wrote 'on the page'. Thankyou for visiting.

And now another thing ...

past, present
and future

Last night, some of the participant exhibitors from the Art Exhibition (mentioned in my last post) met to discuss how we felt about its success or otherwise, the outcome, and a move towards the future. It was mostly positive, but in any  local community, there will always be a range of opinions, which do not matter too much if one can progress. A certain amount of treading on toes! The good news was that the suggestion for a village arts group was mooted, with the immediate goal being to participate in Warwickshire Open Studio Week 2012 next July. The creative souls amongst us can focus on what we each individually love doing. 

Well as far as I was concerned, participating in the Exhibition has focussed my mind, both personally and professionally. I posted about my 5ft x 5ft 'Castle Turret in a Church' on my 'Wild Somerset Child' blog so will not replicate what I said. And after living in this beautiful part of the 'forgotten triangle' for over 40 years - now very much discovered - it would mean so much to me to discover the kindred spirits within our rural community. Double click on this or any image in this post to view at enlarged size, and be able to read the details.

past work: word-whispers, image transfers, hand-made textile journal 

I have not yet come to the point: journalling in my various genres has brought me to the day where I suddenly realise that all my experimentation over so many years can move in any direction I want. Oh! My recent months of 'Map Trails' - and years of patchwork, sketches and scribblings, embroidered samplers, theatrical costumes, word-whispers, leaves, flowers and stones - can branch in any direction; and, so long as I record what I do, can be replicated. 'Illustrated Journals' are well under way. North, South, East or West; any compass point can take me wherever I want to go. A personal geography; a trail seventy-plus years in the making.

Beguiling: one of those 'must have' moments; money changed hands

So a leap forward, wanting to move on but not ever losing what is past, present, future or maybe. I walk into Whichford Pottery to buy warm alpaca socks (really) in their Octagon Gallery, and light upon a hand-made journal; beautiful, tactile, the cover using techniques I want to explore and adapt. For what it is, not expensive, but beyond my normal budget. And then I remember the proceeds from my exhibition sales of the week before, and am beguiled, and it is mine; and already a part of my creative life, my 'moving on' whilst encompassing the past. And that is another thing ....

Map Trails in progress (this a part of  'Malvern') are already moving into phase two
and three, with determinations on long trails - Somerset to Wales to Shropshire
to Hereford and back to Somerset; and in 2012 to France and Germany.

Getting ready ....

Needing to create in whatever spare moment becomes available (to retain my sanity), I accepted an invitation earlier this year to participate in a new art and craft exhibition being staged within our Cotswold village. And now it is upon us - not just an exhition but a sale of work also, which I was not anticipating. I am focussing on mixed-media work: map trails, fabric books, illustrated journals and the like: textiles, paper and words. Mortified today when I came to assemble some more of my painted paper-bag pocket-pages, to sell as 'note-keepers', and I could not recall how to make them. Memory is not what it once was! I dismembered a previous one to discover what I did, and having done so, made sure I had notes and sketches to make them again. Recording is as important for me as the actual making, which is perhaps why I have to have deadlines to complete anything, and why I spend so much time planning and not executing.

'pocket pages' - made from recycled paper bags

And this is the first time I've tried blogging from my new iPad (nerve-wracking), so I will close, but hope you will join me in spirit next Saturday (26th), and if you are local to here, or prepared to travel, do please join us - and say 'hello'. A good luncheon can evidently be obtained at The Norman Knight, opposite the Village Green, and Whichford Pottery is well-worth visiting. We're raising money to restore the windows in the Church; there is stained glass dating back to medieval times, and the village itself existed long before the de Mohuns were granted land here by William the Conqueror in 1086.

P.S. I had to finish this on the office Mac - have not yet learned all the intricacies of my iPad. And if you want to find Whichford, key postcode CV36 into a Google map.

Mixed Media Journaling

It's a while since I posted any of my journaling. None of the pages in my sketchbooks or journals were quite finished. I would paint or paste and leave the book open to dry, and then work would intrude and I would necessarily move in to something else. The two pages here were begun on a summer get-away when I had the time to indulge myself in word whispers and mixed media - in the caravan.

We spent a morning at Richard's Castle just outside Ludlow. Not the modern village but the fortified Norman castle and adjacent (much later) abandoned church and graveyard. The castle ruins spooked me, which is unusual as I am captivated by the medieval period of history, but the stony and steep path up to the churchyard inspired the herbal word-whispers shown on the two pages. I used napkins as the basis of the pages, adding the words after the acrylic wax I use as an adhesive had dried, and then only a few days ago, added the watercolour sketches and a watercolour wash over the words - which has to a certain extent obscured the writing. Best to double-click the images if you feel like to reading them.