Day 55/365
My latest design of Coptic Journal. It’s also a new, larger size.
I’m really leased with how the paper for the covers turned out in these ones. They were part of my hand dyed paper project.
There are only a few books from this series, and they’re available for the next few days at the One of a Kind Show.
Day 45/365
As I’m sure you know by now, I’ve got a rather large arts and crafts show coming up, the One of a Kind Show. I figure this is a good time to showcase the processes I go through in making some of my products.
Today’s featured project: hand dying paper!
Testing colours, making sure to get just the right hues. I use a mix of inks and watercolour paints.
Mid-dying – yes, this is a messy process! And I love it!
A side view of boards covered with my hand dyed paper, drying in the press, makes a great texture shot.
Day 33/365
Today I’m working on the largest books I’ll be making all season. Not quite the largest books I’ve ever made, but for a long time at least. I am reminded that I prefer making smaller books.
Measuring 8″ x 10″, the ample page space is great for sketching or writing in long paragraphs. I’ll be featuring these books at the One of a Kind Show at the end of the month. (I’m at booth D49, stop by and say Hi!)
Day 19/365
This is the aftermath of an evening spent hand-dying paper. I’ve started using more colours and overlays with colour washes. I’m pretty excited to see how they turn out as books. These will become lovely covers for some very special journals!
Day 14/365
Last week I wrote about testing indigo-dying techniques, where I used watercolour paints and washi paper. Today, I’m going to talk about my experience using real indigo dye on both washi paper and handmade flax/abaca and hemp/abaca papers (from the folks over at Paperhouse Studio here in Toronto)
If you’ve ever tried your hand at the popular Shibori technique, which is used for dying fabric with indigo, you’ll be familiar with the science side of this process. Once indigo dye (which comes from a plant leaf) is mixed and heating up in a vat, the trick is not to stir it or otherwise let oxygen into the vat. When the paper is dipped into the dye, it comes out green at first (as seen in the above photo), and then changes to that awesome indigo blue once the dye has oxidized (as seen in the photo below).
That’s the main idea anyways, I won’t pretend to know it all! But there is something exciting about combining science and art. I cannot put my finger on it, but it made the process quite enjoyable and ultimately gave me a real appreciation for the finished product.
To see what I did with some of these papers, take a look at this journal. And stay tuned as I’m still working on projects with the bulk of the papers I dyed.
Day 3/365
For a few weeks now I’ve been playing around with paper dying using indigo. But before I started using real indigo I did many tests with watercolour paints (indigo-colour, of course) and I wanted to share some of my favourites with you.
I cannot stop thinking of blue and white ceramics when I look at this one, the pattern is lovely!
The resulting papers are lovely but they just aren’t the same depth and richness of colour as true indigo-dyed papers. I’ll go over some of the things I made with the true indigo dyed papers in a few days. And at some point in the future I’ll do a post about the actual hand-dying process and how messy/fun it really is!!
Sprouts Press 