Spread for Peace&Hope Round Robin

For Glynis' Hope and Peace book, I made this spread. Not visible on the picture is the wrinting: Seek hope and you will find peace. I really enjoyed working on this spread - I guess the book begins to speak out loud now....

Tip In Swap

Here are some of the tipins that I did for the TipIn Swap from ABEurope at Yahoogroups. The theme was Lazy Summer Days.
Most of the time, I use double folded pages to make the tipin. It is easier to collage these pages.
Also, you don't have to worry about glueing the tipins in a book.

Colourful Booklets for Swap

This month our group at Art_By_The_Month (on Yahoo) decided that June's theme would be trying a new technique or materials, or using materials that you did not use for a while.
Since it had been a few months since I made a book, I decided to go back to bookmaking. Too bad that sending selfmade books to the other side of the world was not an option for my budget, so I kept it simple and made smaller booklets.

The covers are from backgrounds that I was making for paintings which never worked for a painting - but works pretty well as a book cover!
There is just one signature of light paper, sewn with linen. The signature is connected to the cover with a ribbon. A closure was made by sewing buttons on the cover and twisting some hread around it.

They were fun to make. I might make some extra for little gifts.

Simple pictures

I like my life when it is simple. Simple pleasures, simple things. This is a simple shot of just one eye of one of my cats: Pico. She was named after Picasso before we found out that she was female.
She looks a bit mean on this picture, but that is because she is mean! She is constantly in fight with her (lovely) sister Coco and regards the garden as her terrotority. Coco can count on an attack from Pico when she is not careful in the garden! And this has been going on for the last 10 years.....

Iris in oil

This painting was finished in May, but it took a while before I took a photograph from it. It was done in oil paint, which I like to use for flower painting. A bit different is this painting though. I tend to make softer paintings, but this one has a lot of movement in it.
I made it after working on a larger soft painting of another iris, and wanted to make up all the paint that was left on the palette. Maybe that explains the difference?

Clematis from the garden

I had been working in our garden and could not resist picking this clematis. I put it in a simple glass and took several photographs with my favorite lens: a macro lens (105 mm Sigma).
Often, I like to capture the 'feeling' of a flower, its colour, shape or just the rippling of the petals. That is why most of the picture is soft, out of focus. What do you think, do all pictures need to be clear?

Spread for Crazy Round Robin

I received Susan's book from Germany, to work in. She had a 'no theme' book. I came across this image of horses with their manes in the wind in beautiful brown colours and used that as a starting point.
After I made the decision to use that image, the words for the spread came up quite easily:

Imagine,

wild horses

running free

The book was very small compared to other books in this Round Robin, but I liked to work in this size and format. Small books seem less intimidating!
I tried out some foam stamps with ornaments, maybe a strange combination, but because I stamped them with bronze paint, it seams to fit well.
I also used some non woven polyester and distressed it with a paintstripper (seems to work as good as a heatgun). This was handsewn to the page - easier that glueing.
Am curious about the next book that is coming my way!

French Tulips in Holland

Funny, I have lived my whole life in Holland, but it was only on a recent holiday in France, that I saw so many tulips in one week!
We were staying in Bretagne, near Ploughrescant, and the small cities that we visited for shopping were decorated with lots of flowers, mostly these beautiful striped tulips.
From my DH I got these tulips, back in Holland, on Mother's Day. Time for some photography!
This is just one of the pictures that I took.
Enjoy!

Altered CD for Art-by-the-month

The first time that I altered CD's. These are for the Yahoo group in which we send each other, every month, a piece of art. The theme this month was Music. Last month I received a winderful altered CD, so I wanted it to try it myself.
The backside of the CD is collaged with music paper and painted ricepaper.
During this project I was thinking of making a CD-book, in which the pages are all CD's with collage....

Altered Book Spreads for Claire's Crazy Family

Here are the spreads that I made for the Crazy RR, for Claire from England. The theme of her book was Crazy people, crazy families.
I made some tip-ins so because I needed more space to work out my idea.

The 'story' is about an adventurous family doing crazy things - except the main character: she only collects stamps....

Tags for Art exchange

These are the tags that I made for an art exchange. The theme was 'Vintage Children'. Just last week I found some old musicbooks. One of them was of Dutch children's songs. I used pages of that book as a background. The images came from old postcards and were colour photo copied. I also added old dictionary pages (no need to distress pages for an aged look...) red silk paper and some lace.
I like the simplicity of tags, they are ideal to use as a base for collages and they add interest to altered books as well. The tags were sent out to Holland, England and Australia.

Book of Dreams ready for the Round Robin

The Book of Dreams is (almost) ready for the Round Robin. There will be some decorations added when the book comes home in 9 months.
On the cover I glued a digital collage from my photographs, on the book after adding sheer organza which was stitched with thread and some small beads.
The inside has a medium-transfer (layers of Golden Medium on a print, rubbing the paper off) of on old collage that I made a while ago.
The flap holds an envelope with a little note for the people who will add their work to my book.

Turning the envelope will show the title page with another copy of the collage, behind some organza again. I like that 'dreamy' effect.
The book is made from pastepaper, so there is a lot of colour and texture in the book. I binded not only 'whole' pages, but also pages that were cut back to a few centimetres and this forming a 'stub'. These stubs are ideal to create more space between the pages and allow bulky pages.
I also like them for adding a different page, e.g. a sheet of silkpaper, or adding an envelope or tags. In this spread I used an open paper sort, glued on the stub.

The image is made from al sort of images, the picture of the hand comes from http://www.morguefile.com/ , a free source of images. This is the first page of the spread.

The second page from the spread that I made. And finally the sign-in pages were two pouches will hold the sign-in tags.

New book binded for next Round Robin

Shakti from Spain proposed to start a Round Robin in which we would go completely over the top regarding the artwork and embellishments, we call it the Crazy RR, but will decide on the theme individually.
Seems like a good challenge. Instead of altering an existing book, I decided to bind a complete new book.

This is the cover of the book before adding the decorations. The threads (barely visible here) were sewed in on the spine to add some beads.
I used pastepapers as signatures so that there was not one empty white page in the book. Also I added some 'stubs' as spacedivider, but also to add extra tip-ins, envelopes, tags etc. to the book.

And here is the top view of the book. I do not need many pages, there are only 14 of them, plus 20 stubs.

Round Robin Peace and Hope

This is the cover of my book for the Round Robin 'Peace and Hope' from the ABEurope group (on Yahoo).
This book will be sent to 7 other artitsts around Europe who will create artwork in my book.
This is the inside of the book with the titlepage: Whisperings of peace. Peace is so fragile, whether you are talking about peace in the world or finding peace inside yourself.

This is the first spread that I made before I sent it away. For some reason I kept it quite simple, it seems to fit the theme pretty well.

Puzzle pieces for art exchange

These puzzle pieces were made for an art exchange. I send them to Australia, England and here the Netherlands. In return I received some great artwork from the participants.

The pieces came from a childrens puzzle. The pieces were sanded, painted and then collaged. I rubbed in some bronze paint (not visible on the photo) to deepen the colour. Some fiber was added for texture.