Botanical Gardens

Last Sunday we decided to go for a walk in the sunshine at the Regional Parks Botanical Garden. It wasn't the best day for flower viewing, it's technically still winter and, despite the warmth, not much is growing yet but, I was still able to enjoy the scenery.

SF Raw Discovery

Things have been quiet on the blog lately because I've been busy editing, sequencing, and printing photographs for a display at the SF Raw Discovery event, which was last night. I hadn't shown photos for quite a while before this event so I was quite nervous, plus, the event wasn't your typical gallery venue. There were all types of visual artists and vendors as well as music performers and a fashion show. It was so much fun! There was great interest and good questions about my work from many of the attendees and I even sold a few prints, which is always a good thing. Here's a peek into my preparations.

Editing photos before printing

Trimming the edges to be even

Making sure my layout is good

My final display. With the weathered wood, it was like I had created my own small forest.

Honey Cakes

I'm not really one for cooking but occasionally I do like to get my bake on. I had some great organic honey and this past weekend I decided to put it to use to make blondies, the non-chocolate version of brownies. I had to eliminate the chocolate chips the recipe called for so I threw in some multi-colored sprinkles instead and wound up with some great little honey cakes. They are delicious, though I'm a little biased, of course. 

A Little Yard Work

Our yard had nearly disappeared beneath all the weeds that were enjoying the Bay Area winter rain, so I decided to spend my Presidents' Day uncovering the garden I set up in the summer. There is still a lot of work to be done but I did manage to uncover the ground under the weeds and my garden plots are almost ready for planting. While weeding, I also discovered a snail, some happy Venus Flytraps, and a flowering succulent. Nothing like a few simple pleasures to make a hard day's work worthwhile.

Carving Again

Classes have started back up at City College and that means my Saturdays are once again full of printmaking and lino carving; it's wonderful! As usual, I'm carving trees, though this year is proving to be quite different from previous years. My new Flexcut carving tools mean I can carve more quickly and cleanly, leading to more graphic images. I'm trying to figure out how this fits into the rest of the series. Who knows, I may just have to start doing multi-block carvings...

A Paper Daybook

I decided to get the long weekend started out right, with a bookmaking workshop. Our fearless leader was none other than Juliayn Coleman of Book Island Bindery and my classmates included Kate, a friend from my binding certificate program, and Courtney Cerruti of Paper Musings. What was the class, you ask? Upcycled Daybook, of course. 
The task before us at the beginning of the day was to disbind a book, add new pages, including calendar pages, and then rebind the pages using the original front and back cover into a daybook for 2013. Challenging but also oh so much fun!

Our books were childrens' books. Mine was a biology book called Your Wonderful Body.

The old pages were mixed with pages from other unbound books, and also National Geographic pages. I, of course, chose the dinosaur ones.

We punched new holes and, since these books were going to have spines thicker than the originals, we sewed on tapes for extra support. I got a little excited about all the pages I could include and ended up with 19 signatures! I was really glad to sew on tapes.

To make the cover, we cut into the old front and back cover boards so that the spine cloth could be tucked inside and create a smooth transition from old cover parts to the new ones.

Then we cased in and had our daybooks! Now, I admit, I use my iPhone calendar all the time, at work I'm addicted to GoogleCal, and my daybook is pretty large and a bit unwieldy to be carrying around all the time. Still, after the first 2 days of living with it, I'm enchanted. I'm still in the process of adding all the dates, but it's nice to be writing by hand. I have a really busy spring and, aside from appointments, I've added my to-do list for the past two days and it lowered my stress to see everything in a list and to be able to cross things off, in the 'real world'. So all you digital crazed folks, go get yourself a daybook, or, better yet, make one.

The Sketchbook Project

This morning I received a confirmation that the sketchbook I completed for The Sketchbook Project arrived in Brooklyn. If you're in the area, or will be visiting any of the tour stops this year (the tour begins in March), my sketchbook is located at call number 194.48-8. 
This was an interesting challenge for me, having to fill an entire sketchbook. It was also satisfying and extremely fulfilling. For my project, I cut words out of the Vogue September Issue 2012 then went back to the same magazine and found images that matched those words, in a way, and collaged them together to create little illustrated poems. My sketchbook will eventually be digitized, but I thought I would share with you some pictures I snapped of the pages in progress or just completed.