From my window

This is what I can see, right now. When I get back with the arrival of spring, I will take the same picture to see the changes. "Go west old girl", is where I am going; will be getting acquainted with a new little being making his/her debut into this world. I will also get to play with Henri, the 2 year old big brother.



In the meantime, here is a picture of the little tiles I really enjoy making/inventing. It measures 4 x 5 inches (8 x 10 cm)and it is assembled with linen thread; the last in this series.



Below... Weirdly enough, this also looks like a view from a window. As you probably guessed, it was made with the clay sheet left over from the cutouts. I thought it looked interesting so I baked it with the intention of using it in some way or another. It remained in my face for a long time and then...one day boom, there it was. And now here it is!



May the end of this winter be good to you!

Upside down clouds

Today I skied on a carpet of clouds. Maybe they fell from the sky. It was divine...
Another reason for making books is that it gives you an opportunity to invent four different surfaces. Don't forget that you can paint, sculpt, apply/invent textures, mix colours, use moulds, apply mosaics, well you know, the sky is the limit. Here are some books that I made recently and finally got to photograph.

This one measures 2 1/2 by 3 1/4 inches.

This one I don't have anymore but it measures about 3 x 4 inches.

3 1/2 x5 1/2 inches; the size of a Moleskine. Right now I am involved in a Moleskine exchange. We draw, paint, scribble, sketch, write, or whatever in each other's "moley" every month and exchange them. Because it is the same size as the moley, I can practice in this book. What I like about this style of book is that it lays out flat: you can use both pages for one drawing. More on this later.


This front cover is painted with tinted liquid clay over a mosaic of sorts: so much more to explore with this technique. Actually, upon reflection, it is liquid clay over mokume gane; the shavings of the mokume gane were used on the back cover.
If you click on the images you can see more details.
Have a great weekend: the temperature might cooperate!

If I were a worm....

...I would be a bookworm. I love libraries, book stores, the smell of leather books, I love to handle them and read them, alter them and write/draw/paint in them! Which brings me to the subject of book making. I have always been interested in making books and polymer clay lends itself well to this craft: the covers are easy and so much fun to invent. I made a lot of books: all clay books, box books (or book boxes, I don't know which), books from notepads, accordion books, whatever I could think of. About two years ago I decided I wanted to make a real book from scratch with paper pages inside. Said to myself: "Easy kn easy"(sp?)... NOT... I didn't have a clue. So, when we went to Tremblant (which is our yearly gathering of friends who play with clay for one whole week), Krista was making books; I watched her from the corner of my eye and thought that I could repeat what she was doing, no problem. So during that week I made two covers...nooo they weren't going to be the conventional covers; I wanted something different. That year, we also experimented with extruders as you can see.



Got home, took the needle and thread out and started sewing. Got me a book! But it was wobbly and the spine looked like a bunch of noodles all scrunched up. Oh boy! To hide the spine, I used fibers and beads and whatever was handy. Looked OK but was still loosey goosey.



I was determined that next time in Tremblant I would make a real conventional book. I did my homework by looking around on the net and learned a lot about Coptic stitching. So last fall, Krista gave me the little extra push I needed to complete my first book (see the first picture on this blog). I have been making them like crazy and now I know a little of the craft - still have much stuff to learn though. I'll be teaching a class on assembling a book at Morrisburg. Oh and yes, what joy it is to hold a book you made from scratch and sketch, doodle, paint and write in it!!!



The inside back cover of my first wobbly book was made using a modified transfer: a young girl's head in an old lady's body. I guess that describes moi. he he

Les restants mutants

Vous arrive-t-il de travailler à un projet et de trouver que les restants de pâte sont quasiment plus intéressants que le projet lui-même? Ça m'arrive souvent quand je fais des mokume ganes: je les mets tous de côté, je finis par les empiler, je les regarde, parfois je les passe au four. Souvent à reculons, je les mets en boule et hop dans le bac des retailles de pâte qui servent à faire des noyaux de perles ou je ne sais quoi... Je pense que parfois je préfère travailler avec des restants plutôt que de commencer un nouveau projet. Probablement c'est pourquoi j'ai utilisé les restants de la perle Casablanca (que vous pouvez voir dans une autre entrée) et je les ai utilisés jusqu'à ce qu'il n'en reste plus du tout!! J'en ai recouvert quelques perles que j'ai roulées en boule sans but. La petite perle que j'ai faconnée ne me disait rien:

alors pour aucune raison je l'ai coupée en deux. Waouuu voici ce qu'il y avait à l'intérieur.

Vraiment joli; me fait penser à des géodes où l'extérieur est terne mais quand on les coupe! Oh merveille! Je pense que j'ai terminé avec ces restants de Casablanca. La perle coupée en deux va probablement se retrouver dans ma boite de trucs intéressants que je vais sûrement recycler! ha ha

Mutant leftovers
I am going to try and translate (actually adapt). I'm still ambivalent when it comes to writing in French or in English and today my intuition told me to do it en Français.
Funny, but a lot of the time I prefer to play around with leftovers to see what I can do. Using those Casablanca bead leftovers (I am running this to the ground right?),I decided to cover some beads. They were boring: really not inspiring. Out of nowhere and for no reason, I cut one in two and I found this little treasure. Ha! I was quite surprised. And to make my story short, these two halves will probably find their place in my bin of stuff to recycle; I don't have an idea of what to do with them...yet!

Leftovers à la Mode

Actually, I thought I was done with the leftovers from the Casablanca beads. Yesterday, making a feeble attempt to clean my workspace, I found these.



I don't know what to do with them; they will go in my "stuff to recycle" box. Maybe one day I'll figure out something.

It went crunkle today

... the snow that is: but that wind was fierce. I wonder why Canadians talk about the weather so much. The answer (me thinks) it that we live in such close proximity to the planet's moods and whims. For us in the North, it is rather diverse: it is a privilege. Although sometimes...
I made another bracelet after the other one and thought I would be on a roll (of bracelets that is). But no, I got sidetracked into books. Voici:



Come to think of it, it was made with the leftovers of the Casablanca bead leftover bracelet in the previous post. Stretching a good thing to the limit. Creative juice!


Keep smiling!

Melon Drips

Title: nothing to do with the text. I just don't like to find them so I invent anything.
A little while ago as I was surfing the net with nothing in mind (those make for the best finds) I came upon this tutorial from Desiree McCrorey and thought, why not? Got some lovely beads made,(thanks Desiree, great tute)....

but I had these leftovers that could not go to waste. I figured out a way to use them much to my satisfaction. The beads are fun but the bracelet is "funner". I put my spin on the Casablanca beads.Yesssss.

Like most of the stuff I make, this bracelet is reversible.

Et c'est parti mon kiki.....

Eh oui, je me suis enfin décidée à écrire dans le blog que j'avais mis sur pied il y a longtemps. Problème majeur: dans quelle langue? J'ai jonglé avec le dilemne sans trouver de solution: est-ce que ça demande du temps un blog? Oui, mais pas tant que ça. J'ai compris qu'il fallait que je plonge de toute manière. Deux solutions: ou bien je traduis tout (ouach, c'était mon métier) ou bien j'en ouvre un autre en français. Je vais probablement opter pour la deuxième solution. Que je pourrai faire après la fin d'avril, une fois notre réunion annuelle à Morrisburg terminée.
Si vous jetez un coup d'oeil à mes entrées précedentes,vous verrez que ces jours-ci je fabrique des livres...des petits livres de pensées, d'esquisses, livres d'artistes.
Et puis je travaille les petites tuiles (env 2x2cm). Je commence par faire une grande surface que je texture ou décore et ensuite je découpe. Je reprends chaque petite tuile que je refais comme si c'était un mini tableau. Je rassemble le tout et ça fait des .... tuiles plus grosses. En voici une autre!

Ah oui, si vous voulez participer au tirage One World-One Heart, cliquez sur le lien en haut à droite et mettez un commentaire au bas du message en question (pas au bas de celui-ci). J'ai placé un livre au tirage. Le tirage se fait par hasard le 12 fevrier prochain donc assurez vous que j'aie une manière de vous contacter au cas où...

The sound of snow

Have you ever listened to the snow? while walking on it (of course)! You can tell the temperature outside by the sound of your footsteps. This morning, the sound was crickle! That means it was very cold outside in the -25C range. When it crackles it is around - 20C and then it goes crunkle and for me, that means it is fairly warm weather...snow wise that is. Good skiing weather for sure.
Recently I began making teeny tiles with polymer clay and I am looking at (yet again) many possibilities; endless ones. Here is an example of what I do: the tiles are fairly small (one inch squares). I start by making a sheet, give it a general design and cut it up in little squares. I then take every little square and treat it like it was a single unit (i.e. a little painting). I then reassemble them and get this result.

This is the first one I made and assembled. If you click on the image you will see it close up. I'll post the other ones another day. I am still looking for ways to assemble the tiles. Hint: I love fiber arts.