Still Looking Slowly

My work is slow. It takes time. There are so many choices and decisions along the way; most of which need me to test them or trial them. And so we are still looking slowly...

I like the cards, I worked out where the masking strip for lettering would be, I knew which tape worked. I had chosen the pencil and the white pen (tried a silver one but it just looked like more pencil). I had my watercolour palette worked out and I worked out how many pebbles and broadly in which positions.

I kept going back to my 'recipe' and trying to work out how I could include transparent or translucent paper.  It's not easy with an accordion stitched book, but I checked out whether the 10gsm Tengucho could be glued over an area.

I tested the Spray adhesive - but it left a rusty brown mark which wasn't going to work. Then I tried a plain old Blu Stick and you can see this was not yet quite dry.

I thought that gluing the whole piece of the Tengucho down really flattened it, and took away the look of it, so tried just gluing at either end; leaving the middle part of the paper 'free' and so you could see the texture better.

I quite liked it and was almost set to do it, when I wondered as the book was handled, would the lightweight paper lift or roll? And yes you can see that it does, so it was back to the drawing board for the transparent paper. Sigh.

I began to think other design elements and piercing came to mind - not outlining, just in a few places around the pebble forms. This was tested on a piece that had worked up until the moment I had to remove the tape, and a fair chunk of card came with it.

I wondered about blind embossing and embossing and found the small pebble forms I had used to blind emboss the covers of my Grief is A Stone book-ets back here. And I really like their subtlety and the way they simply hint at the forms. 

And so we continue. I have now painted and drawn all the cards for the books. I have blind embossed all the cards, and pierced all the cards. With wisdom I have decided to ignore the recipe because in the end, if the recipe doesn't serve the book it is not helpful.  I am still looking at ways to incorporate transparent or translucent paper, but it won't be on the pages.

I have started to plan the covers and am beginning to play with the title page. I think I have chosen the thread for stitching, but am yet to decide on a container. Still plenty to go on with - and of course I still have to write the words!! I did do a trial of each of the pages and the size of lettering that would fit, so that is something. I thought I had lost it, but found it under a pile of paper today so at least I don't have to repeat it.

And just for a break from thinking about the book, I did some more swing tags for Barry.