I've not been writing, but I have been working. I figure is time is short, it's better to do something and worry about documenting it later.
Anyone who knows me in real life will not be surprised to here that the hardest part of making art for me is working with the physical stuff. I'm not a person who is very precise in any part of my life, and that does double for this. I am careless and sloppy and nothing behaves the way I want it to behave. The scissors don't cut, the glue doesn't go where I want it to, the ink smears, the letters are crooked. I fight and fight with the materials. And I'm never really happy with the outcome.
So what I do is to rehearse everything. I will make everything at least twice, maybe more times. At least I get an extra copy of whatever I'm making out of the deal. So, because I'm not very good with the "stuff", I am reluctant to start sometimes. This first picture is of the paper I'm going to use for the pages of my Mermaid Dreams book. It is posterboard from Walmart. It isn't glossy, it has a matt finish, but it is heavier than paper. i cut it into 4" wide strips. That means I am more or less limited to the number of pages that will come out of the strip because I'm folding them, not cutting and then stitching them together like a conventional book. I'm making an accordion book.
The folding is pretty neat, actually. I have this plastic thing with ridges on it. I set my paper on it, and then use the bone scorer (which is actually plastic, not bone, but bone would be really cool and I'm going to be on the lookout for an old one!) and then mark where I want the fold. For this book, it is every 5". I'm actually better at doing this than any other part of the process. I like doing it too. There is something very satisfying about the way the bone folder works so nicely and the result is so clean. The length of the board, though, means that I don't end up with a book that has both ends pointing in the same direction. So I had to take the end off of one side and tape it with linen tape to the other side. I know that sounds sort of confusing, but trust me that it is what happened. It was the first time I had used the linen tape and I LOVED IT! this is a really weird thing, the linen tape. When I made the first book, I didn't fix the problem of the ends. I just ignored it. But I knew exactly how to fix it, with the linen tape. But as far as I know, I've never even HEARD of linen tape before. I just knew about it. Crazy huh? But there it was in the store, and I knew how to use it. It was really weird but I just went with it!
The other thing I had to do was print the photos. I wanted to print them on satin finished photo paper. I don't know why, but that has become very difficult to locate. I went to an office supply store here, and I saw they had photo paper the entire length of the back wall of the store. But did they have satin finish? No! Of course not.
I also tried at Blicks. They had matt finish, but that's not at all what I'm looking for. Finally I found a couple of boxes in my paper supplies. Thank goodness I'm a packrat when it comes to photographic paper! I also ordered some "good" paper online. I used the Canson to print on, and the result was ok. Considering the difficulty of finding the paper, it should have been a lot better however.
So I got them printed out and cut to size. Next will be to start assembling the book and writing the text out. I've been practicing the writing but it feels too ornamental and fussy to me. I'm not sure if it is the colored ink or the lettering I'm not liking. I'll try writing them in a couple of different ways and see what looks best, I think.
Anyone who knows me in real life will not be surprised to here that the hardest part of making art for me is working with the physical stuff. I'm not a person who is very precise in any part of my life, and that does double for this. I am careless and sloppy and nothing behaves the way I want it to behave. The scissors don't cut, the glue doesn't go where I want it to, the ink smears, the letters are crooked. I fight and fight with the materials. And I'm never really happy with the outcome.
The folding is pretty neat, actually. I have this plastic thing with ridges on it. I set my paper on it, and then use the bone scorer (which is actually plastic, not bone, but bone would be really cool and I'm going to be on the lookout for an old one!) and then mark where I want the fold. For this book, it is every 5". I'm actually better at doing this than any other part of the process. I like doing it too. There is something very satisfying about the way the bone folder works so nicely and the result is so clean. The length of the board, though, means that I don't end up with a book that has both ends pointing in the same direction. So I had to take the end off of one side and tape it with linen tape to the other side. I know that sounds sort of confusing, but trust me that it is what happened. It was the first time I had used the linen tape and I LOVED IT! this is a really weird thing, the linen tape. When I made the first book, I didn't fix the problem of the ends. I just ignored it. But I knew exactly how to fix it, with the linen tape. But as far as I know, I've never even HEARD of linen tape before. I just knew about it. Crazy huh? But there it was in the store, and I knew how to use it. It was really weird but I just went with it!
The other thing I had to do was print the photos. I wanted to print them on satin finished photo paper. I don't know why, but that has become very difficult to locate. I went to an office supply store here, and I saw they had photo paper the entire length of the back wall of the store. But did they have satin finish? No! Of course not.
I also tried at Blicks. They had matt finish, but that's not at all what I'm looking for. Finally I found a couple of boxes in my paper supplies. Thank goodness I'm a packrat when it comes to photographic paper! I also ordered some "good" paper online. I used the Canson to print on, and the result was ok. Considering the difficulty of finding the paper, it should have been a lot better however.
So I got them printed out and cut to size. Next will be to start assembling the book and writing the text out. I've been practicing the writing but it feels too ornamental and fussy to me. I'm not sure if it is the colored ink or the lettering I'm not liking. I'll try writing them in a couple of different ways and see what looks best, I think.
- 7:44 PM
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