The String’s a Spring!

Wow….when I have a good and creative week, it really does start to roll! Too bad that doesn’t carry over to me getting dressed and leaving the house sometimes….

But, it is spring here in beautiful Southern California, and while its been a bit on the windy side, we are already experiencing warmer than usual temperatures. Our darling Diva tasked us this week with using a Spring for a String (#264) and since I am working back through Helen Williams’ e-books, I thought I would work up some ribbons with that spring. Morning Glories with a little of Helen’s Mooka-Style and a pretty green ribbon to tie it all up with. This is a little bit of what we will be doing in the May Flowers Class on May 21st. That class will feature several of Helen’s tangles on a larger format, including her new Compass Daisies! I simply love her work.

I know what you are thinking…wow….those colors are beautiful! They actually look even better in person. I was experimenting with my new Peerless Watercolors for this, on Fabriano Medioevalis paper in the 4.8-ish inch square.

Peerless Watercolors are saturated sheets that are activated with water. Instead of pigments, they are mineral dyes. There were originally developed to hand tint photographs around the turn of the century (like more than 100 years ago…) and the formula has not changed. The colors are translucent, except for the Spotting Black, Opaque. They come in cards that are about 6 x 2.5 inches, and you can just use a water brush to work with them. They are a little strange to work with in their native form…so there are a variety of ways to make them into neat, lightweight, portable palettes to work from. Jane Davenport has a great video and information on that here. But…me being me, I took my own creative license and made mine a bit different.

To give you perspective, that is a hair tie as a closure. 3″ x 4.5-ish. I have acetate between each page for protection and as a mixing pallet, and only cut a 1/2″ piece for each place. It weighs about an ounce, and is easily held in your non-dominant hand while working in it, so page flipping is no big deal. The pieces of card are stuck in with double sided tape, and when it runs out, I can just pull it off and put in a new one. As you can see, the color of the card is not really representative of what color they are, so a swatch test is necessary. I used some old watercolor paper I have had for probably 20 years (and the puppy had chewed on when I still had a puppy) so the net cost of this was…well…just the paints. I also stuck a few extra pieces of watercolor paper in the back in case I got an urge to try something, and the inner cover liners are also watercolor paper.

Not that I haven’t been busy prepping samples for the May classes, and packing for TangleU next week, but I’ve been on rather a book-making tear. In addition to my Peerless pallet book, I also finished my working notebook/travel journal for TangleU. In an effort to not bore the people that aren’t interested in bookmaking, I will show you the highlights. I’m still trying to figure out how to make another listing for just paper craft-type things, so you don’t have to be subjected to this…

I’m pretty impressed with it, and have started keeping track of my “lessons learned” for each of these types of projects, so I can continue to improve them. This one has 4 sets of pages (for a 4-day retreat) with each set having one watercolor page with a “tile frame” mounted on the back of it (still using up that puppy-chewed paper!), 10 sheets that are lined on one side and blank on the back, trimmed with Washi tape and some stickers, and a double-sided pocket folder that I also decorated. The closure is a button held on with another smaller button through an eyelet, with the same cord braided and beaded to loop around the button. This was mostly made from a WeR Kit I found in my drawer, and I bought one button and 4 sheets of 12×12 scrapbook paper. So again, it cost me nothing but time, really, to make.

AND, on that note, I really need to sleep. Baseball season makes me stay up later than I usually like to keep up with my beloved Giants, so I tend to be a bit more sleep deprived than usual.

Stay Crazy My Friends!