My Lace Book is home!

6 months ago, I started a lace book Round Robin with 5 other amazing artists. My book went to Australia, thank you Suzy Quaife, you’re a gem, to Alaska to meet Karen, and braved barely sub zero temperatures. It also travelled to WI where Deb found time to do gorgeous work in the middle of many distractions, it also went to Teri in New York, who is born distracted, but created beautiful pages, and last but not least, to Liz in Oregon, where the whole crazy Lacebook scheme was concocted in her studio G. And what a prized work she did in my book.

The RR theme was: Vintage or Victorian lace. My particular take on the theme was: A young woman in Paris.

Our pages travelled loose between the covers, as I suspected the spine would always be too small for the end work.

Look at this delicious edge:

A bundle of deliciousness for sure:

Here is how I bound the individual pages, with a stripe of lace on both sides, and some thinner lace to cover the stitches.

The left page is mine, right is Deb.

This page is from Teri, hand painted, if you please.

This right page is the BACK of page from Suzy, who, like all the others, did a gorgeous work on the back of the pages. They were too beautiful to cover, so I’ve just added a bit of lace.

These are the signatures with the lace that binds them together.

And the front and back covers with the spine, before they were all attached together. I found the pearls at Michaels. I’d bought them to study the attachment, and they were perfect on the spine.

I will post the individual pages in the next post.

Our next lace book RR is about the Medieval times. I can foresee lots of beautiful velvets and illuminated pages. Yum.

Heartstrings

It was a great pleasure to take Diane Cook’s online class Heartstrings. She taught very many fun techniques.

Here’s my first one:

That little metal and paper book is just too precious.

The head is normally made with a metal thimble. I happened to have a few wooden ones from India, which turned out perfect for this project:

And since I finally joined the 21st century, and bought an iphone, so my girlfriends can find me when we’re shopping at Joann’s, (what other reason to buy an iphone?), I had to make a pouch for it. That way, I always have my phone close by:

Hawaii Round Robin

This Round Robin has been going on for over a year. It wasn’t really a Round robin, in that all the artists had to send their pages to the hostess in Hawaii, who added the art to each book. Our books should be home by summer.

We basically had to work sight unseen, and that was indeed a challenge. Here are my last two entries.

The first theme was “Cat and Mouse”.

I used real hair evidence of the mouse, but it’s dog hair, since the cat already ate the mouse.

 

And my last theme was to friend Lorena. “Found Objects”

I made a ‘posey” if that’s what it’s called, an assemblage of various found objects, and mounted them on various pieces of lace, doilie, canvas and cloth. It can be used mounted on a pin, or as a cuff. It’s the shabby chic version of ‘Found Objects”. I hope Lorena likes grunge.

Stupendous Stitching

I took a class which I enjoyed very much, showing one how to get the best use of all the sewing machines stitches, and playing with batik fabrics. I loved it. The colors really don’t do it justice.

And my little companion, having a private moment with his favorite bear.

Carnival in Venice

I joined a RR with PaperTraders. The themes were open, so I picked “Carnival in Venice”.

In the inside cover, I went Zetti.

For my first page, I was inspired by the class with Julie Nutting that my friends took last year.

This is the inside back cover, and the back cover, with an aged paper that had Italian script. I used coptic binding so the book opens flat for other artists to work in it. 5 women will work in my book, adding to my theme.

The first participant’s book I received is “Sea dreams”. Here is my entry. I used some images from a digital kit I own from DeviantScrap, then fussy cut them, and added… bits of chain, buttons, gloss. I hope she likes it.

Entries for Lace Books

I have completed pages for several Lace Books in the RR.

The first theme is “A stich in time”

This one is made with fabric paper. I always wanted to try that. I used very diluted ModPodge on top of muslin, then added pattern tissue paper on top. It still remained flexible enough to be sewn.

My friend who’s book this is is a Taurus. It was a lucky find to have a clothes tag with ‘Taurus Home".

I added bead embroidery on this one, and the dress is made of tiny pieces of fabric, since my friend is quite the quilter.

The next theme is “1920 Jazz”. I found an article describing the Flapper girl, which is printed on fabric and used as a background. I also an image of two crazy girls dancing on a beam in NYC, so I super-imposed it on a page of music in Photoshop, and added a flapper brooch which I trimmed in bead embroidery.

The next page is a happy, dancing flapper paper doll, which I made from scratch. Not  my specialty, but it came out OK. What a crazy time that era was.

This shows the edge of this Lace Book, with all the deliciousness falling out of it.

The next theme is “Madonna”. I was bent on making a triptych. This is it, closed.

The inside, with a gorgeous face by Boticelli. The frame originally had another face inside, but Photoshop came to the rescue. It is lined with lame gold fabric, and heavily machine-embroidered.

This is the back of it. I embroidered the bottom brooch, and it felt suited for the Madonna theme.

What women want

I took Collage Camp with KC Willis and adore her methods. New tools to add to my lace books.

I made a journal which I call: What women want. KC uses a theme to guide her in designing her art. She seems to focus on Wild West. Since I’m French, lovely women of yesteryear are more my heritage.

Front cover of book, 8x10 on raw canvas:

Each left page contains a text relevant to the theme.

Details:

 

Details:

Back cover:

I purchased the images from an Etsy digital supplier. They are heat transferred, a new approach for me, I usually just print my images directly on the fabric. The antique and vintage laces are from my collection. It’s such a pleasure to see them out in this book. It was a fantastic class.

Thank you KC.