Crafting in self-isolation

By Elizabeth Prata

We are at the present time advised by health and government officials to remain at home and to only venture out to make essential trips. We are to maintain a distance of 6 feet from people we may speak with along the way, aside from immediate family under our own roofs of course. These guidelines, and in some case mandated legal ordinances, are due to the highly infectious COVID-19 virus spreading from nation to nation like wildfire.

I have a ton of things to keep my busy. One thing is to do some crafts. I was putting together a birthday gift last week and I realized that I was low on medium-sized items. Gotta fix that.

I also wanted to pick up where I left off on Pixlr, and using the photo editing and manipulation app to do some creative productions of some of my crafts I'd scanned in. I like using a real piece of art in the digital to add to it. I don't know why. It's just fun.

Here are some of the items I played with digitally. I'll explain each one.

Here is the original. It is a book cover I painted. At the time I was practicing painting techniques and layering. I am not being coy when I say I am really not good at art. I see it in my mind but I just can't make my hands do it right. But I keep trying. Thank goodness for tutorials on Youtube!

Here it is after I played with it using some Pixlr overlays.

This was a Lomo camera photo of two people walking in a hall

I scanned it in, digitized it and put it in an altered book. That's when you take a discarded book, paint over the pages, leaving some words exposed if you want, and make collages on the pages.

This final one is the digitized, manipulated piece with Pixlr overlays.

Here is a stenciling and painting piece I did in my art journal.

I manipulated it using different overlays and put them all into a 4-piece collage:

Here is a file folder collage I did:

And then the added digital stuff-

This upcoming week I'll so some more real life art and practice some things I am attempting to learn. I'll probably scan them and let you know how I did. What are your hobbies? And will our homes all look like this when we're let out again?

Pulled string art and altered book pages

They made it look so easy...

Finished pulled string art from some other, more talented artist

So I tried it...

Um, nope. Let me try thicker string.

Well that was a #fail. Let me try less paint, and pull quickly and more smoothly. Also less pressing down.

Ah! Getting there! That one looks more like the ones I saw in all the videos. Let me try again, still less paint, less pressure.

Voila! Now I have the trick! I still find it harder than it looks, but then again, I find all art harder than it looks.

I persevere though. Now for my altered art.

Fifteen years ago I learned about making Altered Books. You take a discarded book, preferably one that has a vintage cover, and glue together bunches of pages, and of the remaining pages you collage or pant over the words, leaving exposed the words you want to highlight. Each page can then tell your own story, or be a poem. Here is the title page and preface of my altered book. It's the story of my journey toward salvation.

I had a hard time gluing the bunches of pages together and the book came out bulky. I also had a hard time because it was a big project. My talent is small and so my projects must be small. I kept my completed book but abandoned the process, hesitant to try again.

Recently I figured out that you can alter just ONE page. Duh. So I did a few pages last night . They look childish because I used childish materials, colored pencil and crayon, but it's a start. It is harder than it looks, too. Writing poetry is difficult. Even looking over a series of words that already exist to patch together a poem is hard. But it's relaxing and sometimes the stuff comes out pretty, and it's fun, so that's all that matters. Who doesn't like coloring?

More books! The Special Store sells hardbacks for $1 and paperbacks for fifty cents. I got the Sherlock Holmes, Unbroken and Huddle of Sheep, plus the McEwan paperback there. I got the Puritan Paperback The Doctrine of Repentance for 2 cents from Amazon. Yes, 2 cents, the rest was paid for by Amazon points I'd accumulated. Score!

Summertime is time for trying new things, being leisurely, meditating on different things I'm learning, reading, and just relaxing. I hope that even if you don't have vacation time coming, that you can find some time to gather your thoughts, have a cup of coffee straight through, or take a nap. It's the little things.

A Crafting Friday Night (and Saturday morning)

The urge to craft and make things comes and cannot be denied, lol. I like making bookmarks. They're smaller. This is good because the larger page is more intimidating. The blank page when I'm writing doesn't bother me at all, ever. But the blank page when making arts or crafts is highly daunting! I'm not that creative with making things. There seems to be a disconnect between my mind's eye imagination in seeing, and my hands in producing it. What I produce is amateurish, and only that, after a struggle.

Anyway, last night I made bookmarks from my photos, and overlaid scripture on them. Then I laminate. I've been dissatisfied, though, in the results. I can't quite get the size right. Sometimes they come out too skinny and other times too fat. These two came out not-horrible.

I finally got a clue and searched online for a bookmark template. I found one on Teachers Pay Teachers, for free.

The next challenge was to figure out how to insert the clip art, photos, or pictures that I want, into the bookmark while keeping the shape. Hmmm. Just copying and pasting didn't work. After clicking around some, I found that if you click the image, then click 'Fill' and then follow the pop-up menu to where or what you want to fill the shape with, it will work. In my case, I had prepared some clips of work I'd already done.

When I paint or collage or stencil, I then scan the finished product into the computer, thus digitizing it. So I had a number of items from which to clip sections from and insert into the shapes above.

From left to right: an acrylic painting, a color pencil stencil with digital clip art overlaid, a watercolor, a stenciled and painted collage, a paper collage with stencil on top. All art is by moi.

Then the job is to print out. I forgot that when printing pictures from Word I need to lighten it in the edit section, so, they came out a bit dark. I used regular paper and I think photo paper would make it a little sharper. Something went wrong with the last bookmark and there is no black line border all of a sudden, but those are the vagaries of printing. If I make the margins smaller the whole thing goes funky. So, I'll figure that out next time. I just need to cut out this last batch. Overall, I'm pleased. I like the different shapes of the bookmarks, it makes them more interesting I think.

I plan on attending the Annual Winterville Marigold Festival later this morning with a friend. I'll be visiting and also photo taking at this charming festival held in a small and pretty town.

I might be so jazzed up that I come home and have a blast processing my photos and maybe make more bookmarks. Or the predicted heat might make me decide to lay down with the kitties and take a nap, falling asleep listening to birds out my window. Anyway, it seems to be a good day ahead. I hope it is for you too!

Repurposing a hardcover book - I finally figured it out

Yay, I figured out how to both repurpose a hardcover book and also how to sew multiple signatures to make a thicker book.

The pamphlet stitch is the baby food of bookbinding. It's the basic, one-stitch-does-all. But it's a simple stitch so you can't make a huge book using it, because a thicker book uses multiple signatures, which are bundles of folded pages. The trusty pamphlet stitch can only hold so many pages before it weakens and the thing falls apart. Think, using twine to lift a table.

I had always thought that to make a thicker book I'd need to use a complicated stitch to first sew the signatures together and then sew that bundle to the cover. But this way, I use a pamphlet stitch to sew each signature separately onto the cover!

I'd prepared a hardcover a few weeks ago, ripping out the book and using just the cardboard cover to repurpose for a journal I wanted to make later. I collaged the inside front and back and painted the front and back exterior. There is sat until I could figure out the rest.

Then I watched a tutorial on making a junk journal, and lo and behold at the end, she taught how to sew individual signatures to a hard cover using the pamphlet stitch (with one modification. So here it is!

My repurposed hard cover

three signatures

inside back cover, collaged

I'm excited. I bought a hard cover book for a dollar today, it's a bit thicker so next time I'll make 4 or 5 signatures. The cover is plain red so when I collage and paint it I will not have to compete with an underlying design that is already there.

Anyway, success!

Craft Day: results

Anticipating Spring Break is so great. We have a full work week off, plus the two weekends on either side, for an amazing 9 days. It's not like I'm paid for time off. I work 190 days per year and I am paid 190 days per year. The educator's salary is just stretched out evenly through the year over the intermittent breaks and over the summer, but it's based on time worked.

But ten years ago when I went back into educating, I decided I wanted the time and not the money. Of course, money is great, but if I pursued a high salary job I'd be busier than I wanted to be and the stress levels go up also. No, my needs and wants are few, and I'm content with being able to use the time as I wish.

In the time coming up to a Break, I plan all sorts of things. "I'll take two online classes!" I'll read a bunch of books!" I'll make a thousand crafts!"

Sadly, my "eyes" are bigger than my stomach and there never seems to be enough time to do all the things I'd planned. A week off is great but it's not long enough to do everything!

As I got to Friday I realized the week was almost over, and I hadn't broken out the crafts yet! So I dedicated Friday to "Craft Day."

I work so hard at making things. I soooo want to make beautiful things, but I just can't. I never could. My High School Art teacher gave me a grade of C-- out of pity because she just couldn't bring herself to give me a D. But I deserved it. I tried so hard, coming in early and staying late, and starting over, and over, and over. Nothing I ever made with my hands ever worked out. She took pity on me and gave me the extra tenth of a point for effort and desire.

In the 1990s I took many art classes for bookbinding at the local Museum and libraries. In 1999 I went to the Paper and Book Intensive at Haystack Mountain. I read books on paper crafts and bookbinding. Even with all the education and tutoring, my projects were clumsy and amateur. More times than not I didn't finish as the instructor had to move on and help other students.

In the 2000-teens I try the same at home, with just as much fervor and interest and desire, but not the skill. There is a disconnect between my brain and my hand that makes creating things with hand-eye coordination well-nigh impossible for me.

But that doesn't stop me! All this to say that I know my projects are incomplete looking and with a third grader's skill level. I keep hoping someday I'll get better :)

Here's what I did on Friday. First, the background papers. These are papers I'd prepared, or partially prepared, by practicing some techniques, and then plan to use them as background papers in other projects.

In this one I tried using the stencil UNDER the paper, and rubbing with oil pastel crayon over it. I like the technique, but the choice of oil pastel was bad because it clumps. I should use a regular crayon, on its side, like the lady in the tutorial did.

Same technique as above but I used a lighter touch. I did this one in my Fabriano Art Journal because it is larger & taller than the Strathmore.

Then I used a raindrop stencil over the tree rubbing and used a baby wipe to do some smearing. Again, practice. I had never heard of using baby wipes before and I like the idea of using them both for the creation of a piece and the clean up afterward, lol!

I had bought an old Spanish book of some kind at a jumble sale. Keep your eyes open for all manner of ephemera at any location. Even receipts, tickets, entry pamphlets, can all be used at some point in collage. The Spanish book pages are brittle and browned at the edges. The Spanish words, and penciled-in notes someone had made in the book make the pages exotic-looking and good ephemera. This one has a stencil of clocks and gears laid over the page, with distress ink sprayed over the stencil.

Large format tree stencil, pounced using acrylic paint. I'd used a cosmetic sponge for the pouncing. I have a few pages of 12X12 papers, and I selected black because I knew the lighter color paint would make a nice contrast. I liked the berries along the edge not just for their contrasting color but I liked the idea of bare branches on the tree but fruit along the edge.

Below, Strathmore Visual Journal, two pages of collage. I tried various techniques, including layering paint for the background, rub-ons, etc. Still looks unfinished, but I give this a D+ instead of my usual F.

I like things on a smaller scale. These are art tags. I can use them as cards, or attached to gifts for a personal touch.

This is Strathmore visual journal again. The painted background is something I'd done a while back. I used this page to stencil the sun, bird, and thinking woman on top of the block squares of paint underneath.

This is a file folder card. The birds on the front are very light. This is because the paper I'd stenciled it on is cloth-like and soaks up the paint massively. Good to know. It's why I try different techniques.

Card inside. The doily thing will hold the message I decide to write.

So that's it! Something else I did do is clean out one more drawer in my bureau that holds stuff. BTW, the pillow bungee corded to the air conditioner is because a Carolina wren makes a nest every year under the AC in the sill. (The AC unit stays in the window all year). The thin accordion slats weren't enough to keep Murray from trying to get through and attack the five babies that enticingly cheep, perhaps to their doom. So I thumb-tacked a piece of cardboard over it and put the pillow there to prevent Wild Kingdom Birdie Apocalypse from happening in my living room.

The bureau's 9 drawers come in very hand in this two-room apartment with one closet! On the far right the drawers contain-

1. Junk, tools, nails
2. Stationery, office supplies
3. Extension cords, this will be cleaned out also, for the ever growing craft supplies

The middle holds

1. paper, stencils
2. art journals, cardstock
3. ephemera, partially completed projects.

The far left bank of drawers holds:

1. empty. I plan to better organize the paper I've got. I have a lot of paper.
2. magazines, laminating pockets, some crafting tools, sponges
3. wet- inks, paints, ink pads, brushes

So that's it. Thanks for reading!!

Craft day

I've had such a busy week that I realized this afternoon that I had not even done any arts and crafts! I did a bit this PM and I decided tomorrow will be all-day, all-out crafting. Maybe in my pajamas, lol.

Here is the bit I did this afternoon, while sipping pomegranate tea from my china cup and watching Bake Off: Creme de la Creme.

Origami bookmarks, file folder card, tags

You put these bookmarks over the corner of the pages.
It won't fall down.

A couple of tags. I really love the bird stencil.

Till tomorrow!

Mixed Media planner - in progress

I'm following a tutorial making a homemade planner/art journal. The tutorial is called Studio Saturdays: Mixed Media Planner. It is in three parts. The first part is making the cover. The second part is making the pages. The third part is decorating the pages.

Since making a good collage or cover to a book requires layers, it requires time. This is because when you apply a wet medium you have to wait for it to dry. Some Youtube tutorials show the crafter or artist using a hair dryer or craft dryer to speed up the process. I just use air and time.

• The first layer was Liquitex matte medium. Let dry.
• Second layer was Liquitex matte medium. Let dry.
• Third layer was collaging on some papers. I used Spanish dictionary pages and some tissue paper with musical notes. Let dry.
• I applied acrylic paint in dark blue. Let dry.
• I applied acrylic paint in light blue. Let dry.

Now it's the next day.

• I applied orange paint. Let dry.
• Next will be adding a white paint, let dry. Then I'll stencil a design over that, let dry.

Making books is not for the impatient. Which I am. After all that I can get started making the pages. Here is how it looks so far, the last two steps of adding white paint and a stencil pattern are not finished yet.

I'll be covering over the spine so the previous title won't show through. The specs were specific in that we must choose a book cover that was from a book that had at least a 2" spine...but I knew that meant making lots of signatures of pages, and stitching in a complicated way, a task that I usually mess up. So I chose a smaller book and when I get to the part about attaching signatures to the cover I'll figure out what to do then.

But now it's time to make my weekly pancakes. Have a nice Sunday everyone!

Cucumber casserole?!

This was a fantastically perfect weekend from start to finish.

Friday evening was warm and bright, and I'd come home to a clean kitchen and tidy house. I love it when I keep things up during the week.

Saturday was rainy and drizzly but that is just fine for when you want to write and study and take a nap, which is what I did. I made cream of mushroom soup also, but I've never mastered that particular soup and it always comes out very strong. But I eat it anyway, despite the pungency of the mushrooms. I cut up a cantaloupe and enjoyed the zing, along with some lavender tea. I started watching the TV show The Flash. It was better than I expected. I like the innocent, real life but slightly off center cartoon feel to it, and I enjoyed the action sequences because they are without blood and are interesting. And the science, discussions going from real to almost real to could be real, all in an instant, lol.

I had a long nap, which I'd expected to have. On Friday at school was the quarterly reward party for all students who achieved a high benchmark of good behavior. We got inflatables and each grade had a solid hour to clamber up and scream down. But what that meant for us para-pros is that we stand at each entrance and exit of the inflatables cheering the kids and keeping an eye on safety. Standing in the sun for hours on uneven ground always does a number on my back and yesterday was no exception. It sapped my strength, but it was well worth it to see kids just having fun and being rewarded for their efforts.

Around 8pm a friend brought over the Bountiful Basket I'd bought, she was sweet to pick it up for me. It contained butter lettuce, cantaloupe, honeydew, what seemed like 4lb of grapes (sweet and tangy!) tomatoes, onions, kale, cukes, apples, bananas, plums, and more. I washed it all and looked up some recipes. I don't favor cukes but I found a recipe to use up three of them, cucumber casserole. I decided to make kale chips and cuke casserole on Sunday. In the recipe where they say add wheat germ, I substituted quinoa.

Sunday dawned bright and warm. October in GA is simply spectacular. No humidity, bright sun that still has strength to warm, and clear skies. Temps usually range from low to mid 70s and nights around mid 50s. Perfect. The birds were chirping all day long, and it was a delight to listen to them.

I did make the cuke casserole and kale chips, along with marinated grilled tofu and tuna salad with grapes. Netflix has added one season of the Great British Baking Show and I am enjoying working my way through it. I hate baking myself but I like seeing their artistically created presentations and learning about baking even though I never do it myself. I love the GBBS because the music is nice. Unlike Masterchef which is like the Flight of the Valkyries - on steroids - every week. Also the contestants are nice and genuinely like each other. No sabotage, no snark, no snideness. The judges are gentle and encouraging while still being firm. Not the least reason, the show actually teaches something, which used to be the point of cooking shows. Remember, I grew up on Julia Child and Galloping Gourmet. Plus, it's pretty. The setting on that English estate is gorgeous. I like the hominess of the tent and the quaint rustic touches, not like the space age kitchens of American TV with 30 foot ceilings and imposing stainless steel everywhere.

I crafted as I watched the baking show. A few weeks ago at a second hand store/dented merchandise (like Mardens or Job Lot) I had found crafting stuff from Martha Steward and Artist Loft. I'd bought gilding papers and some paints. I decided to make a basic one-signature soft cover book and use some of the tissue paper and gilded leaf papers I'd bought. I never had used gilding sheets before but hey, I decided to just throw some on there and see what happens. Here is the result, not finished, but 80% done. I'll wait for the book to dry and be pressed, then I will add end papers on the inside and a bead to the thread.

In this first photo of the cover, I laid down black and white tissue paper with a design that looks antique newspaper. Then I'd printed a picture of a fir tree from the internet onto antique book paper torn out of a Spanish dictionary. Last I used the gold leaf the make a frame around the smaller fir tree paper.

Single pamphlet stitch. Here is a tutorial for a five-hole single pamphlet stitch but mine is even easier, a three-hole stitch.

I started on the outside ("start sewing where you want to end up") because I want to add a bead or feather to the outside of the book where the stitch's tail is. Cover is card stock, inside is whiteish artist paper.

Tomorrow is a work day but a teacher work day, no kids will be coming to school. We get to arrive half an hour later (you wouldn't believe how much of a different getting there at 7:45 is compared to 7:15, or maybe you would). The weather looks to be nice ahead, and after this relaxing weekend, which will continue with me reading my book to some instrumental piano music shortly, all seems well in Comerlandia.

Have a good week everyone!

Crafting: Vintage Graphics printed on old book paper

Here is a great idea for book arts and crafting I got from a friend on Facebook who had posted a HomeTalk article. Here is the article

DIY Book Page Art Magnet With Graphics

It's actually not just magnets, but greeting cards, book covers, book marks, and kind of paper art really. Here is what you do.

Select an old book bought at a jumble sale or library discard sale. I have several neat ones. One is a Spanish dictionary and one that is an oversized 1950s world architecture book.

HomeTalk pic

Tear out a page from it and put it upside down in the printer.

HomeTalk pic

Then find an image you like, either on your computer or on the internet. I really enjoy The Graphics Fairy for free vintage clip art and other graphics. www.thegraphicsfairy.com

In essence, you're just using the book page as your printer paper.

EPrata photo

then once the graphic is printed on your book paper, you can do what you like to it. As a first try, I made bookmarks. I am still working on how to center my graphic on the book page. It was easier to make bookmarks because I could cut them up and not worry about the centering until I gained more experience with the process-

EPrata photo

You can see here that I glued the papers onto cardstock. You can, at this point, glue them onto magnets, or fiberboard coaster material, or cardboard, or whatever.

EPrata photo

I pressed them, let the glue dry and then I laminated them with my new Swingline Laminator I bought for cheap through Amazon.  Voila!

So easy! I can see already I am going to have to buy more printer ink! ;)