by Linda | Apr 26, 2010 | my creative journal
Happy Monday! Today let me share a bit of Modigliani for Monday inspiration. I am totally inspired to do a bit of painting and wanted to share the lovely art vibes with all of you and how it all came about. I happened across Dirty Footprints Studio‘s Art Journal Love video on Youtube, introducing Modigliani and how his work inspired her art journal pages. I was really captured by his paintings of women, bold lines but overall soft blurry, feel to it…really interesting contrast in my eyes.
via cordovero.blogspot.com
I decided to do a bit more digging about Modigliani and learned that he was an Italian artist, but mainly worked in France. Known for his figurative paintings and modern style of mask-like faces and elongated forms, he had a hard life with addiction issues…so sad! Originally from Livorno, Italy (literally just an hour away from where I am now) I realized what a small world we live in. However, I suppose living in Italy means there’s probably a million old world artists who grew up “near” where I live now!
via artysmarties
Looking at Mogidliani’s work makes me wonder why he might have loved to paint portraits of women. Perhaps because he started as a sculptor rather than a painter…or perhaps it was influence from being very close to his mom or the countless ladies of his life in Paris?
via pet-portraitartist.com
I also love to draw portraits of women, although all imaginary from my mind rather than actual portraits. I feel there is so much to learn from Mogidliani’s work and style. It feels very free and sketchy to me and I always try to find ways to loosen up – I can get very tightened up at times. I find myself making up stories for his women…what about you? I’m also inspired to go paint some women now, but I hope you can also find inspiration from his work. And of course don’t forget to have fun with the process. Ciao ciao!
by Linda | Apr 23, 2010 | my creative journal
Another TGIF! Both my husband and I feel super tired after this week. No idea why as it was not any more eventful than normally, I believe. I’ve been having headaches perhaps from too much concentrated computer screen time, although I’m always in front of the computer…what’s different about this week? I thought it would be nice to share a peek at my little space in the corner of our bedroom. I have practically taken over all the space!
Do you like my hot pink crocs? Actually, the more glaring issue is probably ergonomics of my workstation, but we already have an IKEA plan to redo the room, so I’m just waiting patiently for the re-org. Otherwise, I do feel a bit blah these past few days. I’m just looking forward to the weekend and passed some time doing a bit of sketching…random woman again. I actually like the little blob in the upper left hand corner the most!
No ponderings or deep musings for discussion this Friday…nothing except that getting a daily email of encouraging words really helps, especially when we have such busy lives bouncing from one thing to another. Have you heard of the Daily Truths from the Brave Girls Club? I don’t know much about the retreat since I’ve never been, but I subscribe to their daily truths list, a daily email with words of wisdom. It’s a paragraph or two of great writing that makes my day start out positive. It’s definitely a good email to find in my inbox, so with that I bid you a happy weekend. Ciao ciao lovelies!
by Linda | Apr 21, 2010 | my creative journal
Happy hump day to everyone! I’ve dabbled and posted about bookbinding, making journals and my little black books from leather. I decided to try making a slightly larger black leather journal to see if the flexible leather as a cover would bother me when larger. The process of bookbinding is the same for any kind of journal…it just depends on the materials you use and the variation or twist you might add in here or there.
1. Cut you paper to size and fold to create signatures.
2. Cut your cover material.
3. Pre-punch holes in your cover and signatures of paper.
4. Finally, bind your book together. In this case it’s sewing the signatures into the leather cover.
The variation I put into this particular journal was in the sewing of the binding…adding buttons for decoration. I really like this look and didn’t want to create the wrap around closure that would interfere with the nice button decoration. Instead I’m going to look for a magnetic closure and use that instead. I’m quite happy with this slightly larger size, about 6 inches square. Even though the leather cover is soft and floppy, it doesn’t bother me at all.
So now I have these stack of journals with no idea what I will use them for. I made them without reason, just experiments to see what would be possible with the leather. I decided it was time to make a bigger journal that I would actually use to hold a whole bunch of old artwork and looseleaf pages. I saw Teesha Moore’s Fabric Journal Tutorial Video and wondered if I could do the same thing with leather! So I tried…but soon realized some of the leather I have is way too thick to make those little pillows Teesha described, not to mention sewing leather is pretty difficult in itself.
You can see above my first attempts where I pre-punch holes in order to sew the leather pieces together. I skipped filling the pillows in with fluffy stuff, but in the end they don’t look cute like Teesha’s fabric ones with rolled up edges. It’s also scary to think how much hole punching I’ll have to do to put the whole cover together…eek! I decided to go for the simplest version possible, taking the patchwork idea of piecing together material to create journal covers. Here’s my first two pieces sewn together, which really took a toll on my hands. It’s hard work punching the holes and pulling tightly to get the leather bound together. However, I really like the results…so I’m going to keep at it and see if I can piece together enough to make a big journal. Wish me luck…
by Linda | Apr 19, 2010 | my creative journal
Happy Monday folks! It’s definitely been a crazy few days with the Iceland volcano erupting. Travel interruptions, hotels fully booked, car rentals all gone…pretty crazy here in Europe. We don’t live in a big city area, but there’s enough news about the whole issue to cause lots of worry. I mentioned before that my brother is one of those travelers stuck in Holland – impromptu vacation, right? This whole situation is a great lesson in the power of nature. I was thinking no matter how technologically advanced we get, there will always be something out of our control. We have to be able to adapt with nature and go with the flow. I started to ponder the great power of nature, so scary – but also the delicate and vulnerable side at the same time. Nature is all around us, even if you live in the big city – there are plants around, birds chirping and always the sky is above you. It would seem obvious that our environment becomes a huge area of inspiration for all of us, no matter if we write, dance, paint or whatever…
This past weekend our family was able to visit a very nice agriturismo in the area to try out the food. Besides having a fabulous Sunday lunch with our loved ones, we also had a huge dose of nature. I’m no expert in photography, but I like the hobby enough to lug around my Nikon D60 everywhere to capture the moments. I take photos for many different reasons and I take a lot of photos – thank you to digital photography and a giant 16 gig memory card!
For scrapbooking, I take photos to remember the times, to preserve and tell the story of our lives. I also take a lot of photos to use as reference for drawing, to study the shape and forms around us on a 2D surface. Finally, I also take photos because I like to capture interesting views…especially when it comes to nature all around us.
I know there are a million photos of wildflowers out there and I’ve taken countless photos of wildflowers myself. But I still keep taking pictures of them, because it makes me happy to do so and somehow I seem to see and feel something different each time. BTW, you might want to check out Creative Tech’s Fundamentals of Digital Photography – it’s a free course to watch live or you can buy the videos to watch anytime and learn more about photography. I took all these photos this weekend, looking at the details and little elements of nature around us. We also had the privilege of seeing a wild boar mama with her little piglets…how darn cute are they?!
So besides using photographs as direct reference or for collaging material, I also think the process of photographing inspires. Capturing a moment in time…it makes you stop and really look at that one moment. Our lives seem to be getting busier and busier and photography definitely helps to slow myself down a bit. I hope you enjoyed some of these weekend photos I’ve shared and perhaps you’ll take a slow and closer look at your environment for inspiration. Have a great Monday!
by Linda | Apr 16, 2010 | my creative journal
Happy Friday everyone! Although I think some people might be in a frustrating situation right now because of the Iceland volcano. Lots of people were evacuated and the news says there might be health risks related to the fall out. It’s also causing cancellations of flights – including all travel between Europe and North America. I had not even thought about that when hearing the news, but my brother happens to be one of those people stuck in Europe! It’s amazing how even impeccable planning and timing can’t account for all possibilities. Goes to show that we can’t control it all and it applies to so many things in life, right? I know I would be freaking out if I were at the airport right now. My husband always wonders why these uncontrollable events cause me to cry from frustration…hey, that’s just how I express my emotion! But I understand he is trying to tell me that it doesn’t help to freak out, it’s all out of our control at times. Okay, I’m not even a person stuck at the airport right now, but it’s starting to make me anxious knowing my brother is in that situation. While I keep in contact and see if there is anything I can do to help, I’m also calming myself with crafting. I suppose it helps to get busy with your hands, focusing your mind on a little task.
After finishing some freelance work, I continued to make my little black books, testing various methods of binding the paper to the leather covers. I was actually quite surprised that the glued binding works. You can see below that the single pages fan out nicely and the glue dried into a flexible state. I suppose only after years it might start cracking apart? Of course, I didn’t purposefully try to rip pages out, so not sure what will happen with use.
Since I didn’t use any padding between my clamp and the book, you can see there are some marks and glue on it. I decided to cover that part up as I had to bind the paper to the leather cover anyway. I just cut out some circles and used them to anchor the paper onto the leather with some glue. The circle shape is actually a nice detail and I was thinking it would be nice to use many different shapes or flourishes on these inner binding pages.
After I finished this little book, it seems like a pretty standard method, pages fanning out. Again, the glue seems to have dried flexible at this time, but I still feel like after a while it would start to crack or if I pushed down the pages to write. Am I just being paranoid? Wondering if anyone has had experience with glue binding?
The next little black book I made has multiple signatures sewn together. This allows for many more pages, but binding it all to the leather cover pretty much went the same route. I just cut out some decorative paper and glued it all together. Although, you can see the decorative paper on the back is shorter…not sure what I was thinking there. I knew it was shorter, but just went with it…zoning out?!
Since I had glued decorated paper behind the binding part already, this doesn’t look as clean from the side. There’s also an element of attaching just the right amount of cover material so you can close the book with perfect edges, but still open all the way flat. The decorative paper was definitely getting wrinkly in certain parts. It seems that this method is similar to the glue method, just with lots more pages.
Finally, I made a super mini book with the paper left over. This time I decided to sew the signatures directly into the leather cover instead of relying on glue to hold it all together. I realized that this works better with fatter signatures because your holes do have to be a certain space apart to not completely rip through the leather.
The sewing isn’t really sewing – more like tying each signature through the two holes, so you see the embroidery thread on the outside binding and tying a few knots inside to secure.
I used an old earring for the bead part and realized I could put one bead on the end to catch the eyelet, so the string doesn’t go through. Then the other end of the string has a bead so you can secure the book after wrapping around multiple times. This adds a really pretty detail to the book, not to mention reuse of random jewelry items I have. I seem to always lose one earring, so I have a bunch lying around for use.
I noticed that this type of binding really works well with the leather. Each signature is secure, but it’s all very flexible and easy to smash open the paper for whatever doodling or writing. I suppose that is why you see so many of these journals in touristy Italian bookshops!
I know there must be a cooler way to bind these individual signatures to the leather though. Stuff for sale seems to look more complicated anyway. I really think I’ll have to get some bookbinding sewing charts, because thinking about figuring out a cool stitching method myself just makes my head hurt!
Overall, I am really satisfied with my little black books. Even with the little imperfections, stains of glue or wiggly edges…they look super cute and are totally unique. I think the addition of decorative paper inserts and the beads really add a nice accent to the stark black leather. I think my favorite is the smallest one – not sure if the size is winning me over – but I think it’s the exposed stitching and flexible binding. What do you think? Let me know if you have any ideas or variations. I’m already going to try a concertina type book after watching how Marion from A Piece of Craft, made her heart minibook shown on prima’s ustream video. Especially for the tiny books that seem sized for gnome hands instead of human hands, they seem perfect for binding a little art book or something meant to look at rather than for actual use. Well, I hope you enjoyed following along my bookbinding adventure and hope you have a great weekend. Ciao ciao lovelies!
