Brass box making angle

I've had a dormant shop at Etsy for a few months. But now I'm sorting through some things in my studio that I'm not using anymore and will be posting them in the shop. This angle is wonderful for box and book making...and hard to find. (I'm only selling it because...for some reason...I have two!)

Font humor

(TOH to Sassy Art Goddess)

See more funny videos and funny pictures at CollegeHumor.

More boxes, not mine

Little Paper Bird is a boxer (new term!) after my own heart. I see these little gems and I want to make some for me as well as all the rest I have sitting on my dining room table!
Someday I'll have to rent a storage space and then I can just store all the boxes I want.

Stitched stone

Working with paper and books is really only a breath away from working with fabric and thread; there's a huge common space that's shared by the two crafts. So I subscribe to FiberArts magazine to see what's going on in the world of textile arts. (I always wish for better writing and more photos, but it's still a worthwhile publication.)


The current issue contains a small article about Clyde Olliver, a British artist who embroiders stones. The concept alone is wild, but the actual work takes my breath away. It's one of those things that I could stare at forever. I quite literally want to have one of his stones in my house.
He was awarded a grant from the British Embroiders Guild a year ago, and as part of the grant, he kept a blog for a short period. He's stopped writing, but I'm glad that the blog is still available, even if it's not current. It's a small window into his work and method. One post in particular describes how he works with the slate flakes. I'm not going to quote from it...it feels rather spiritual...but I hope you'll click through and read it.
He also has a photostream of his work on Flickr.

Big gardens and big bugs

A friend and I took a walk last night through the Dowling Community Gardens, which are now at their peak. Bella and I usually make the gardens a destination on most of our walks since I'm doing so little gardening of my own this summer. They get full sun and lots of attention from the various gardeners, so it's really fun to see how fast things grow (and how big they get!). But I haven't taken pictures for awhile...I'm guessing that there may be over 200 individual garden plots and each is as unique as their gardener.

Oh yes, and the bug? This big guy was hanging out on my hallway floor yesterday. I expected to see bugs of all sorts at Penland, but we really just have spiders and mosquitoes in Minnesota.

Visit AskHayLee

If you'd like some good advice about dogs, problems at school or with your friends, I hope you'll visit the blog AskHaylee! She'll be glad to help you and she's very cool!!

Pasting or Gluing

I've just discovered that Shepherds Bookbinders in England (also associated with Falkiner's wonderful store) has started a blog for their products. One post has a very good description of glues and pastes and the best uses for all the various types of adhesives. A mundane subject but unless you are only stitching books, you're going to be using an adhesive at some point. Everyone I know uses glue (and paste) differently. I love rice paste for Japanese papers but I have colleagues who won't even consider using it. But every once in awhile, it's good to see what's out there and try something different.

Trees

I'm coming up on my 7th anniversary in this house and I still love living here. But every time I have to mow the lawn, I toss mild curses at the enormous tree that grows in the middle of the back yard. Its root system has chewed up the back lawn and mowing is like pushing a machine over a broken up parking lot with tufts of grass growing in the cracks. Estimates of the tree's age vary from 90 to 25, but it is so large that two people on either side could not touch hands.
Still I love trees and I particularly like how many my neighborhood has. In the last week or two the Dutch Elm Tree Inspector "H" has been through the area and several lovely trees have an orange circle around them and the letter "H", which means that their time is now coming to an end. It never ceases to amaze me how different a place looks when a tree is gone.

My neighbors have been trying to decide what to do with a tree in their back yard that is clearly dying. They've decided to have it "topped" tomorrow, meaning only the top, dead branches will be taken off. I'm afraid the tree is really not in good shape, but I think I can understand the difficulty of taking down an entire tree.

This afternoon when I pulled up in front of my house, I realized that the lovely shade in my front yard was actually coming from the enormous (and healthy) tree in my own back yard. So no more curses (or at least only ones under my breath). I really do love my big tree.

Remembering

I have wonderful neighbors, who among many kind acts, like to take care of my dog while I'm gone. They had Bella with them for the two weeks that I was at Penland, so an appropriate thank-you gift had to be found for them. Their daughter is keeper of the orangutans at Como Zoo and they've enjoyed being "grandparents" to the new baby born there recently. Coincidentally at Penland, one of my studio colleagues brought some Malaysian money for us to use in our boxes...and one bill features...yup, an orangutan. Perfect to feature on the outside of a box to store photos.


I didn't have time to make up their box until I got home, but it was good practice to see if I remembered all that I learned with Julie. Whew! I did. The box is a 3-sided tray, large enough to hold 4"x6" photos with a wrap case and a magnet closure.

Useful tools

One of the great benefits of a long workshop is seeing what tools your colleagues love and use. I made a short list of items to add to my toolbox when I came home from Penland:
* a small plastic jar for PVA. I have a large container of PVA, but it's much easier to use in small amounts. I often use a small dish to hold an hour or two's worth of PVA, but it's often either not enough or too much and I end up letting it dry up. A small jar with a lid is the perfect solution.
*a bead caliper. Julie Chen used the caliper to measure covering materials and book board for the fold gaps in our wrap cases, but I like it as well for measuring the depth of a book block to make a spine.
*a "magic" eraser. Ok, it's not really magic, but it is absolutely necessary to keep on hand when you're using book cloth and glue. There's always a tiny spot that shows up on the fabric, no matter how careful you are and a rubber cement pick-up eraser does a good job of taking care of it.
*more key stock. I have no idea what the original use of key stock is, but if you go into any hardware or hobby store, you'll find a display of brass stock in different widths. The flat pieces in 1/4", 1/2", 3/4" and 1" measures are invaluable for quick measurements. Generally the price is less than $5, though Michael's has now figured out the value and are selling a packaged 1/2" measure for $10! The hobby store display also offers stock that is "cubed" (my word for equal measurements on all four sides) and is great for measuring the gap in your case wrapped boxes.

We used magnets in many of our boxes and I really liked the supply I brought along with me from K&J magnets...so wonderfully tiny and powerful. Instead of trying to match up magnets and polarities on each side of a closure as I had tried previously, Julie suggested using tiny, flat pieces of steel on one side of a closure (covered by paper or cloth) and a magnet on the other side (also covered). That way the closure always works, even if your box measurements are off by a hair. The same company that provides brass stock also sells very thin steel sheets. I understand it can be difficult to cut...the clerk recommended a metal blade in a jig saw; Julie uses a slug cutter in her typesetting shop. Good old super glue is all that's needed to glue the metal or magnet to your book board.

Celebrating the Second: 15,000 Bottle Rockets

The award for "most fired-up," a glass firecracker made in the glass studio. (You can see "most patriotic" next to it.)

Penland knows how to throw a Fourth of July celebration, except they do it on the Second. Or at least this year they do. That's because we're all packing up today (the Fourth) and the scholarship auction was last night (the third). So on Wednesday, we celebrated our country's independence in a display that I'll never forget.

The dancing cicadas (Penland Director and Deputy Directors)

It started with the Penland parade. A chance for any studio, family or Penland neighbor to show off...well, whatever they wanted. We had "Veterans for Peace," "choo-choo Oliver" (parents towing a child in a decorated wagon), "Dancing Cicadas" (the school's director and co-director), and many, many more. I don't think any of us will forget the glass making studio working on creating a large object in their van and pulling out...a watermelon (real). Various studios had created awards and they were given out at the ice cream social that followed the parade.

Clay studio gives us "I'm a little teapot"

But wait, we're not done yet! Penland has its own fireworks tradition beautifully organized by the ground's maintenance crew. You can tell it's got to be the best part of their job description: Keep Penland grounds and building in working order, produce outstanding fireworks display on Fourth of July.

The bonfire on the knoll preceding the fireworks.

After ice cream, blankets were spread on the hill and we watched a great fireworks display. Since they were being shot off on the meadow's knoll only 3000 feet from us, they filled our entire field of vision...wonderful. The finale is a Penland tradition: 15,000 (yes, thousand) bottle-rockets thrown on the fire and set off at one time. Words and pictures can not do justice to the spectacle.

Final Boxes

As I'm getting ready to ship boxes and we're all getting ready to clean the studio, I've had a few minutes to snap pictures of my final boxes. Next week when I'm home, I can post pictures of my colleagues' work on Flickr.

The black box is a cigar box...ostensibly a tray with a lid that is attached. But this one is done in the manner of a real cigar box, with a lid that fits inside the side walls (you can see it best in the photo of the box with the lid up).

The "fall apart" box was very fun to do. It looks like a simple box, but when you remove the lid, all four sides fall down. Terrific if you have an object to display inside!

The culmination of our work this week was a collaboration with the print studio. Our group made a portfolio box for ourselves and one for a print student. While each box was the same size, we all did our own interpretations of the theme. (The inside of my portfolio uses an off-cut from the print studio of a collograph.) In return they did a portfolio of prints to fit inside our boxes. The exchange was yesterday and the results were spectacular.

Yellow Box

If you happen to have a problem while you're at Penland, chances are the staff at the Yellow Box can help you. The box hangs from the ceiling in the meal hall (decorated, of course, in glitter) and is staffed at lunch, breakfast and dinner. Last night got quite cold, so I asked the box for a blanket this morning, and "poof," I got one!
It's also the place to check out the schedule for the day (and if you really want to the know the date, that's there, as well).
Today's schedule:
*7 am yoga
*8 am breakfast
*12:30 lunch
*6:15 pm dinner
*7 pm laughter yoga
*8 pm slides with the glass and wood instructors
*9 pm "cheeseburger" demo: the glass studio has been producing large food objects (powdered donuts, hot dogs) and it sounds like we're invited to watch a giant cheeseburger being made out of glass.
Another normal day at Penland.

PS It turns out that it's also Indigo's birthday, so we had cake for lunch. Who is Indigo? I really have no idea, but I liked her cake.