Papers and ironing and orchids

 The good (great!) news through the week was that I  submitted my presentation for the Bind25 Conference in New Zealand. That felt like such a relief and such milestone.

The fact that it was there, always there, waiting for me to tweak it, add to it, delete elements of it, was the strangest of feelings for the past few weeks. But now it is done. Yay.

So I decided to turn my mind to a wee book I am thinking of making in an edition.  To start with I had to work out what papers did I think would be best; and then discover if I had enough of the paper to do what I wanted...

These are my lightest book papers - from my paper sampler book - and I was looking for the whitest, and the smoothest, and luckily for me they were the same paper. Magnani Map paper, 140gsm.

I then looked through my light papers drawer, with Japanese papers and other feather light papers and came across this great piece. We had a sunshiny day so I popped it outside to apricate - gather the sun's rays - and freshen it up a bit.

Which really drew attention to the creases! I need to cut around 50 small sheets out of this piece, so I knew I was going to need pretty much all of it. Next step - google "can you iron tissue paper?" and with my newly found knowledge that yes you can, if you protect it with other paper (which was common sense really, but I do like to check).

And so I did, portion by portion.

And this is the after shot. It worked really well and I realised that once I have cut the sheet down further, I will be able to iron the individual pages as well before using them in the book.

It is going to be a small book - about A7 when stitched, so kind of nice to hold; but will require lots and lots of cutting of papers.

And I thought it really was worth sharing my beautiful ironing board cover design! By Suzie Hope, handmade in Dubbo. I makes ironing a much nicer event.

Which is the perfect segue to some of Dad's orchids shining in the early morning sun...