April 2015 Week 2 - Content

Hello Everyone,

Well, I do believe Spring has finally made it to Milwaukee and that always lifts everyone's mood.  I was asked today if I lost weight and I had, about 5 pounds of layers.

Now to this month's book.  The Layered Cut Paper Book.  As I stated last time, I wanted to start by making actual size templates for all the pages.   This helps work out any drawing or composition problems that might come up.  And since I am making the templates out of printer paper, it's easier to cut through, so there's less time involved.  One not so good part of using cheap printer paper though, is that the templates are fragile, so they won't hold up to many tracings.

Doing cut paper images requires lots of patience, but once you get into it, it becomes very meditative.

As you can see, I did try to simplify and pattern the different cells.  I tried to use shapes and patterns that could easily be done as cut shapes.  If you have not done cut paper before, it does require a few attempts to determine what needs to be cut out.  And sometimes it's just a matter of trial and error.

Also when you are working with such simplistic shapes, design becomes extra important.  The design principles I always come back to are Scale and Proportion and Variety and Variation.  As they say "Variety is the spice of life!"  So when I'm drawing out my designs I always try to remember "big and little, short and long, fat and skinny, curvy and straight".

I also worked out my solution for adding the needle work.  It was here that I decided I will be do a concertina folded structure with the needle work as decorative edge.

I would have loved to make the pages separate and have the needle work be the binding but, as you can see from my attempt at it below, it would require more construction and time then I currently have.

the reject - I decided it was the wrong way to go after only a few stitches

So I'm going to stick with what works for now.  I will stick this idea in my mental catalog and I might return to one day.


For next week, I will do a demo of the construction of the concertina fold and how I join sections together.  I will also demonstrate the cutting of the actual images.

Till then, Happy Spring! and

Happy Book Binding!

Sheila