I have a few different projects to share this time. As you can tell by the title, I'm super excited about sharing my first project. I've been attending a book arts class with Alice Armstrong at Castle in the Air. Our second class was this past Monday, October 8th which for many of us is Indigenous People's Day. Alice cut in half for us a number of toy animals. I choose Turtle for this reason.
We used a printmaking paper and acrylic inks for our base layer. I then used my brush pen for the writing and drawing. Then I shaped the paper for the theme. Canada was cut off in the process. This is the other side and you can see better that the Turtle shape and the rules for living on Turtle Island.
Alice chose this type of paper (Rives BFK) because it takes folding and re-folding without splitting. Turtle folds down like this.
The image of Turtle is one I created a while back for a rubber stamp. I call it Determined Turtle. Here's a close up of Turtle only because she is so lovely and ready to enforce her rules. Watch out.
Yesterday, I had an absolute blast in the studio block-printing fabric for a slew of zippered pouches I intend to make. Every stamp here is drawn and carved by me with one notable exception that I'll point out momentarily. My favorite so far is this elephant.
The next one is Frog studying Dragonfly. This Dragonfly is a purchased stamp. It's too hard to carve something this small with that much detail.
The last one I'll share is Hummingbird studying Flower. The goal with Frog and Hummingbird was to create tension in the composition.
The inks I used for all three were Speedball screenprinting inks that are made particularly for dark fabrics. I'm pretty excited to get these created.
While preparing for the craft fair this December, I thought of making a giveaway. The best and easiest I could think of was bookmarks. I've made 60 half of which are lettered. Enjoy