This week I’ve made a notebook using some light weight cotton rag paper – somewhere to collect colour palettes, swatches, and notes about colour.
The paper signatures were easy enough – just folded pairs that could be stitched to the spine of a cover. The cover itself literally dropped through the letter box one day. I cut a corrugated cardboard mailer box to size and painted it white:
The depth of the box turned out to be exactly the right size for a spine to fit the pile of signatures:
I painted some abaca tissue paper with acrylic inks and collaged/stencilled it a bit and used that to cover the white cardboard. I’ve reinforced the spine with another layer of painted tissue.
You can still see the texture of corrugated cardboard underneath the colour but it’s functioning pretty well as a book.
Next job this week is to find a way through these, when they’re dry:
If I can get through them all (and if I can stop myself from keeping them!) they’ll be available from next week.
Love your “upcycled” book! …..and those threads!!!!! Oh my!
I *may* have accidentally put a couple of the threads aside for me 😎 Dyer’s perk, I call it.
The airer is a colour work of art on its own!
Ha! It’s like a little celebration party isn’t it?
Love your color book. You are having so much fun being retired.
Self employed, Janet. Definitely not retired!
You are an inspiration 🙂 I’ve become a little ‘meh’, but now I’ve got big plans for the weekend and also the #100dayproject that’s happening on Instagram. Thank you for your beautiful blog 💜
How lovely, thank you Nina. It’s a great feeling to be excited about starting something creative 🙂
I keep coming back to look at the glorious pure colors of the threads. Just immensely cheering as they are.
It’s like magic, it amazes me every time
Love how you made the cover of the book!So creative.
It’s surprising how much you can do with what you already have
Perhaps a good philosophy for life as well? Just a thought!
Absolutely!
I do a lot of creative items from “used” items.
“how much you can do with what you already have” … reason enough to have a plenteous pantry of stuff that might come in handy some day …
the colours in your book and on the cover fairly glow … likewise your dyed threads on the drying rack … a welcome change from wintry greiges
We’ve had quite a few sunny spring days lately, which always lifts the spirits. Thread colours amaze me every time, no matter how many times I do this. Colour in general, really. Magical.
What a very good use for the book mailer!
Just a case of the right thing in the right place at the right time 🙂