Attitude.....in progress

"Attitude" is a fabric and paper art journal that I have been working on and it's almost complete. This is my first attempt at making a book where the base is paper and each page has a fabric piece sewn onto it......it's a hot mess! The cover is made from an upholstery sample with layers of fabric scraps. The fleur de lis is a metal piece that I bought at an architectural salvage store in Louisville, Kentucky. I used a Tim Holtz gadget to punch holes into the metal so I could sew it onto the cover. It also was a rusted and dull silver color and I totally changed it playing chemist. After many hours of trial and error....I declared it done! I am very happy with the end result.

The signatures are made with paper and have other scraps of batiks, lace, crochet doilies, ribbons intertwined with tags, rubber stamp images and quotes added. I prepared a total of four signatures, however, how many actually get sewn into the book remains to be decided. The first two signatures have grown immensely fat so the book may end with three...and that's okay too. I'll post photos of a few of my favorite pages later.

Project Pronounced Complete #8

One of our exchanges this year in our art group was "mail art". I received from Susan a great piece that folded out into a mini-book that she named "stream of consciousness".  I absolutely loved her idea and how she put it together.  I decided to make something similar with a few changes.  I used a medical year book that I had picked up in one of my many dumpster dives and cut the cover to the size I wanted.  I used my own dyed canvas fabric for the spine.  I played the game of using only what I had in my shoebox of miscellaneous images.  I used rubber stamps to add quotes or images but only those that were presently on my work table.  And the last thing was using the verbiage I had previously cut out from books/magazines that I use for ATC's.  Instead I added them and in my own way, it was my stream of consciousness.

Project Pronounced Complete #7

Tall Sally was the title of the book in one of my book binding books. It is tall and narrow with envelope inserts sewn in the middle of each signature. The placement of the holes in the spine was something new to learn for me. The whole book was a delicious challenge. I began this book with the idea to send it in for submission with all the time and effort it was going to take be to completed. Yikes...the move, new business, and no art studio for a year put this plan on hold.

After I took the book out of the "to be completed" box, I was no longer interested in what I had started.  I no longer liked the cover that I had originally made.  The first thing I did was remake the front cover by salvaging the embellishments I wants to reuse.  My art style had changed during the time span when I had first started this project.  I just had to close my eyes to the first four signatures that I made and move on.....and that is exactly what I did.

Front Cover

Spine

Back Cover

Signatures

You can see the envelopes

One of my favorite page layouts.

I kept my artwork simple.

I did more rubber stamping than collage.

This is where the previous signatures were completed and I started the new signature with NYC.  I went from doing a lot of collage to a very simple format.