Exciting News and Exhibition Ended

I am proud to announce that my book "Past Life" was picked up by Richard Overell the Rarebook Librarian of Monash University to be included in the Rarebook collection under Art books and Monash Authors. Past Life was part of Rags to Riches II Exhibition and a description of it reads: Re-purposed book cover painted over with artist's paint. Tin cans were crushed by the wheels of cars in the blue parking permit area of Monash University, Clayton Campus.

This art book represents the modern era because the tins included Coke 0 and Pepsi Max even though it took me over two years to collect all the tins from the parking lot. There weren't many tins lying around to be crushed by cars!

Here I am on the day we took down the exhibition. It was quite sad to see the end of it, but all in all the exhibition was well received by the public. We have no planned for the next exhibition. At this point I would like to have a break from trying to meet deadlines for a while and to enjoy the holiday season. Merry Christmas everyone and thanks for visiting.

CD Books

I went to a workshop on how to make books from CDs last weekend. Yes, ordinary CDs that play music. Of course we only used rejected CDs. I have seen these books made and was always fascinated by them. I mentioned to my friend Tricia whose orginally taught me book making that I would like to know how to make them. She told me she could show me how one day when we are on duty at the Cottage in Wattle Park. That one day was last Sunday, and we had lots of fun creating these little babies. It was not easy, but I was on a roll and made a few of them. They will be handy as gifts.

Here they are, the whole bunch of them. I was lucky to have saved some little CDs amongst my collections of recycled materials. I used Japanese handmade papers that DS brought back for me from Japan for the covers and embelished them with charms, beads and tassles.

A close up of the very first one I made.

These are the ones Sue and I made in the workshop.

Here is Sue concentrating on where and how to assemble the book. Notice the shelf behind Sue? Wattle Park Cottage house Basket Makers of Victoria and it is also a gallery that is open to the public on Wednesday and Sunday. I am a member of BOV and very often I am on duty there on Sunday. There are some cute baskets on display at the cottage and what you see in the picture is only small number of them. There is another room across the hall full of many creative baskets. Take a look at their website to read more about BOV.

MIXED MEDIA AND CREATIVE BOOKS

I have not been posting since last week. The reason is that Winter is almost upon us here in Australia and when I get home from work, it is too dark to take any photos. I prefer not to use a flash when I take photos for my blogs. Natural light is much better. I am a bit fussy with my blog photos. Today I have a chance to take some photos under natural light.

Stacks of books always looks great. For someone who works in a library you would think I would have had enough of books. Actually am not bored with them at all. I love working with them.

The cover for this journal made using mixed media method. It has layers and layers of different fabrics. I then machine embroidered with free motion stitching and then went over it with hand embroidery and hand stitching. In the end, I made a blank book to fit inside. When I showed it at my book workshop on Wednesday I was told that it looks like something out of Harry Potter. Because I did not see any of Harry Potter I did not know from which particular bit of Harry Potter does this journal represent? Well, that was a compliment and I might have to see the next Harry Potter to find out...!

Collage paper is really fun too. Up until now I have been using dust jackets to cover books, but this time I used a few different dust jackets and collages over by machine. After that I made it into a book using Coptic stitch binding.

This book is made for ANZAC Day. I love the texture of print on cardboard. You can get very neat print on some of the cardboard boxes at my library. This one comes from an Australian Standing Orders publisher. It is only a small impression with their company name on it. I have another one with a typical Australia house on it. I am looking for something to make out of that.

On the inside it contains memorabilia of ANZAC Day for example, Anzac biscuit recipe, red poppy, message from Kamel Ataturk, apple tea package and some photos of Australia soldiers.

Memory book