Week Seven - Mugshot for Mom

Week Six - School Pictures

Week Five - Fizz Pop

Week Four - Lost My Marbles

Week Three - Guess I'll Go Eat Worms

I think in 2014 I will do a creature challenge. One drawn creature a week.

Week Two - Censored

Week One

This year, instead of a book a week, I will decorate a page a week to create one book at the end of the year. It's not as time consuming as a book a week but still gives me something to work towards. Every week I will decorate a page from an old book. Though this is technically the second week of 2013, I am just now posting week one's page. I'm not sure if I will title or write about every week but I have time to figure that out. Please check out the book challenge show at Pullen Arts Center. Reception is the 17th.

Week Fifty Two - Sporadic Snake

Well this is the last book for the year. The book challenge is now complete and I am quite happy with my body of work. This week's book is in the long Coptic style and is made from bits of everything: wrapping paper, scrap paper, receipts, labels, instructions and more. It's name comes from its flexibility which makes it feel almost alive. All of the books that Kathy and I have made will be in the cases at Pullen Arts Center all through January so make sure to stop by and take a look. The reception for the gallery will be the night of the 17th.

Week Fifty One - Rain On Your Parade

This week I did another canvas cover. I have recently gotten quite into books with canvas covers because they are malleable and there are many ways that you can decorate the cover. For the book challenge, the first canvas cover I used acrylic paint with some mixed media elements. The second canvas cover I used alcohol inks and acrylic paint with a snowflake template. This time I just used the alcohol inks so I could play around with them and learn more about how they work and what you can do with them. I decided to call this book "Rain On Your Parade" because of all the bright colors I used, but I had so much of the ink it started to pool and I let it drip off the canvas which makes it look a bit like it got rained on. There is only one week left in the year!

Week Fifty - Fibrous

I recently taught a fibers surface design class at Pullen Arts Center. For many of the pages I used my dyeing samples from the class and one of the embroidery samples. The cover is my sample for paint on dyes that I turned into book cloth. It has some blank pages in it and would work well as a sketch book for a fiber artist or to hold needles, labels, and ideas.

Week Forty Nine - Vertebrae

I stitched together the spines of old hard cover books to create this recycled cover. I used 2 from a children's story series, 2 old literature books from middle school, an old thesaurus, a French war novel and an American political novel.

Week Forty Eight - Think Again

This a traditionally bound book with a hard spine but I was inspired this week to make it a triangle instead of the normal rectangle. Who said books had to be rectangle anyway. I'm quite pleased with how it turned out. It was a bit harder to cut and cover because of the 45 degree angles but well worth it. The book fits nicely in your hand as well.

Week Forty Seven - Jacobs Ladder

This is a Jacobs ladder book if the title did not give that away. This was a lot harder than I thought it would be but it's also my first time making one. It's made from an old deck of cards and pages from a phone book. It took me 3 tries before I got it right but I guess that just makes it better.

Week Forty Six - Snowflake Madness

As the title states, this week's book is snowflake themed. The cover is hand painted on canvas using a snowflake stencil, acrylic paint, and alcohol ink. The pages are from packaging paper. I also laminated a few snowflakes so they could be sewn in with the signatures. In the past 3 days I have cut out about 11 or so paper snowflakes, so I feel the title is appropriate. I have cut out Star Wars themed, pac-man, skulls and more.

Week Forty Five - Too Much Coffee

This week is apparently all about coffee. I used coffee sleeves as the pages inside and cut the covers to be the same shape as the coffee cup sleeves. Instead of sewing them together, I used book rings to bind it, which allows you to easily remove and add pages.

Week Forty Four - Come Join Us

Happy Halloween! And to celebrate I made a Halloween themed book. This is a tunnel book with 4 panels. Each panel I cut by hand with a different scene. This style book makes me think of small plays and theaters, so I named it Come Join Us, as this is a Halloween show.

Week Forty Three - Starry Night

The cover of this book is made from scrap canvas that I painted with acrylic. The abstract painting reminds me of a night sky so I'm calling it my version of a The Starry Night. The paper inside is blank and used to be used for hand written dedicated end pages in bibles. The paper was donated to Kathy, who gave me some.

Week Forty Two - Travel Journal, Sweden

This is the journal that I took to Sweden with me. I took an old book, removed the text block, and replaced it with blank papers and recovered the spine for extra support. This week it is more about the content of the book than how I created it.

Week Forty One - Papper of Sweden

Since I am in Sweden, I decided to make a book with different labels, paper, maps and more that I have found so far here. I only brought a needle and book thread with me, the needle of which is now broken, but I found a cool paper store in town where I got the hinges that are on the spine and I used the bag from that store as the cover.
I have also included a picture from downtown Uppsala. I love it here.

Week Forty - Pear

I carved the book into a pear shape and painted the edges. When I added a stem and leaves it became a pear! (Which happens to be my favorite fruit). This is probably the last of the sculpture books for a while. I leave for Sweden tomorrow (10/4/12) and I will be there for about 12 days. I have no idea what next week's book will be like but I hope to be inspired by Sweden.