Merging of ideas and designs - unbound artists' book

 

I have decided to create a third artists' book to submit it for inclusion in a NZ exhibition. The opening photo shows the 5 leaf forms with a poem stamped onto the flat leaf forms.

I have decided to combine a reworked version of my leaf poem that was used in the trio of copper books and the leaf form I used for my mighty river trees artists' book. As you can see from scribbles in my wee journal the idea came to me during one of our Biblio sessions.

I significantly reworked the original leaf cycle poem - it is now a stand alone version titled Leaves. Reworked with some comments and feedback from Fiona - grand to have a word person to bounce ideas around with. See the photo of the text below.

Process-progress photos follow including marking up  from a template, cutting with hand shears and marking up the cleaned blanks for stamping.

Hand stamping does not always go as planned - the s, p and e in whispers were just too close - so I decided to restamp the whole verse - before and after versions of 'whispers' appear in image below. Probably doesn't appear to be greatly different but it mattered to me.

Following are a couple more images of the stamped leaf blanks.

I hope to grab a few hours in the coming week to make the flat leaf forms into their concave shape and then planish the back to create the faceted look.

Solution from a friend

 

I have been mulling over how I might present-publish my small Scotland photo inspired poems - and then out of the blue Fiona received the gift of a small booklet from her friend Annwyn - I was immediately attracted to the clever layered design.

The possible presentation of a photo and poem might look something like the  opening photo - booklet size A7. Annwyn gave me permission to base my booklet on her design - much appreciated.

As you can see from the photos below I had sketched and worked out the measurements for my booklet during one of my biblio sessions.

Then I did the cutting, printing, typing on the old typewriter and stitching - with Fiona's guidance regarding needle, sequence and thread size. Photos of the process below.

The closure I settled on was my design - a wee toggle made from silver-plate; and at Fiona's suggestion a typed end page.

The mock up has given me the chance to do a practical test of the design - there will be a few refinements.

It is likely that I will not get to publish any of the poems until later in the year - too many things to do before we head to Scotland.

Daily Word poem book

 

Whilst at the cottage I have been doing the preparatory work for the publication of a small poetry book. I'm going to use the Blurb platform. I'm going to get our friend Kim H to assist with the actual final layout and publication.

To date I have decided on a few design features including using my own photo images as backgrounds to title pages and the actual poems. I have decided to convert my photos to silver tone to create a softer look and to enable the print to stand out. The 21 images I intend to use are in the screen shot below. Regarding the photos I have written on the mockup to identify the dates and subject matter of the photos so they can be more readily accessed and checked by Kim and myself.

I have made a mockup of the book and identified where the different images, titles and text will fall.

I think I'm now in a good position to work with Kim on this when I return to Maleny.

Daily Words - hammered metal bowls

 

As many are aware one of my regular creations is the Daily Word sets (see above) made up of one shallow mannered bowl and 7 leaf forms with inspirational words stamped on the.  The bowls vary in texture as they are cut from recycled silver plated metal. 

In addition to the Daily Word Sets I have printed a limited addition of my 7 Daily Words prose poems (see images below) that stand alone or can  be purchased to complement the Daily Words set.. The poem booklets are $39.95 each.

Checking gallery- shop inventory recently revealed I had two complete sets of Daily Words and two sets of word leaves so I decided to hammer out a few more bowls. Process photos follow.

Images of completed highly polished bowls follow.

So now there are four Daily Word Sets ($75 per set) available.

Poetry publication progress and packing up 'no to war'

 

It was a letterpress kind of Saturday. I have started printing the reverse of my pages for my Daily Words 'poetry' booklet. The words on the sheets printed don't march the titles as the sequence of the pages is all about how the booklet is finally stitched.

The words above are about Hope not Wonder. A few images of the print run of the two sheets set and printed - 25 copies. 

The words in the last image above are about Love. 

We packed some of our NO TO WAR posters on Friday and sent them out into the world.

I will be away from the letterpress studio for a while - the printing of the 'poetry' booklet will be on hold again for a while.

Poetic progress and product

 

On Saturday I managed to set and print a couple more double pages for my Daily Words publication - a pamphlet book of seven open form poems including poems about  hope and shine - though the words printed above refer to the word Joy because of the structure of the book. 

Photos below show the sheet set out to create the back to back pages - this all takes a bit of doing.

A couple of photos of proofing and 25 copies of each printed.

Today (Sunday) I focussed on marking up, cutting, grinding and doing a bit of forming of the metal - stages in making 20 leaf-form Tea Caddy Spoons.

This first forming stage was done using a metal form and a polished wood hammer - I taped the edge of the form so it would not mark the back of the metal too badly.

With a bit of luck I will finish these next week.