more from the handmade book pile...

Today was a rare day of sunny warm weather this summer..... noice! - double noice as it was the local swimming club carnival.... (yay to our fishy kiddlettes who came home with a swag of medals and happy grins!).

So no creative work for me today - but here are a few more (blank) books recently created...

these are small (about postcard size) -the pages are soft hahnemule paper, covers are a decorative paper, stitched over little leather 'tapes' (scraps from that amazing collection of bookbinding goodies I scored last year!)...

the red covered books feature some oil marbled papers on the inside covers (I created and stockpiled these papers more than a decade ago! you never know when something will be useful... and I simply cannot bear to throw anything away)

the brown covered books feature a snippet of old road ordinance maps inside the covers (another gifted stockpile - my bestestest mates are geologist blacksmiths, P&M once worked for vic roads and they collected a pile of maps that vic roads was throwing out - somehow this pile ended up at my place.... now the salvageable bits are making their way into some arty projects..... expect to see more of them in the future!)



tomorrow is the last day of the summer holidays before it's back to school for our two.... EJ will no longer be the youngest kiddie in the school (she is now a big yr 1 student - watch out world!). Sass will get to see his 'girlfriends' again (he's just starting yr 3, so I trust that this 'girlfriend' business is an innocent affair.... he IS however his father's son..... and the world's biggest flirt, so the mind boggles!)


just for the record (as I often get comments like 'how do you manage everything?') - I find juggling arty things and community commitments and farm and garden and family (most particularly - giving  our young kiddlettes what I feel they need)  is ALWAYS tricky... I never feel that I get it right: that I give all the different spheres what they need and deserve... so I live in a permanent state of guilt. I try to keep my fingers busy (so my mind doesn't wander and wallow) and pack every available minute with work at hand (that's why I have my lists... otherwise I get lost or distracted easily - the lists bring me back from the abyss...)


mostly I feel that I fail - but I tell myself that maybe tomorrow I'll do a better job....



fingers crossed




.....

rainy days

I'm so very excited that I've been forced to remain indoors - maybe for days and days and days as the rain (finally!!!) come bucketing down here at the creek  - I'm posting all my rainy day pics at my sams creek farm blog site - but the relief and excitement is almost overwhelming that its hard to think of anything else - or do anything other than watch in wonder as the wet stuff keeps falling


I started making myself a (hopefully) lovely art journal yesterday..... here's where I'm up to....

I've completed the bookblock - its a fairly substantial A4 landscape format with about 16 sections - longstitch sewn over tapes (the paper is just simple archival cartridge with ingres endpapers...it is meant to be a utility booklet after all!)

but it's just raining too hard for me to get from the house to the studio (about 20m from the house mind you!) to finish it off today

and isn't that simply the most MARVELOUS NEWS!



OMG it is simply BUCKETING down here right now - I wish you could hear the torrents of rain on my corrugated iron roof!