Sunday, July 02, 2006

hand made book with bead embroidery by Robin Atkins, bead artist
Bead Embroidery in Hand-made Book ~ Wedding Gift!

Earlier posts (May 29 - June 9) this year covered hand-made books made by my students at Valley Ridge Art School. Today, I finally got around to taking pictures of the book that I made during those four days. This book will be a wedding present for a very dear young friend, who I met in Romania in 1988, when she was 11 years old. Tomorrow I'll mail it to Denmark (where she lives now). I'm hoping they'll want to use it as a guest book, an album for their wedding photos, or perhaps a journal for recording special moments in their life together.

For this particular book, I first painted all the papers with many layers of acrylic paint. On some of the papers, I used acrylic matte medium to apply ephemera such as postage stamps, torn maps, torn vintage sheet music, candy wrappers, etc. I used various painting techniques, such as stenciling, stamping, texturing and glazing. From these painted papers, I selected the ones I wanted to use for the covers of the book and to wrap around each of the six signatures (sections of blank paper) inside. Here are a few of them:
painted paper for hand made book by Robin Atkins, bead artist
painted paper for hand made book by Robin Atkins, bead artist

painted paper for hand made book by Robin Atkins, bead artist
Next, I started sewing beads on a pretty piece of silk cloth. Like most of my work, it's improvisational, but I like that it looks a little like a tree. To me it suggests that this marriage will be grow, thrive and be well rooted in love. Here's a close-up of the bead embroidery:
bead embroidery by Robin Atkins, bead artist
Constructing the book came next - pasting papers on the cover boards, cutting the hole for and inserting the beadwork, glueing the binding, and finally sewing in the signatures. Here's another view of the finished book showing the spine:

hand made book with bead embroidery by Robin Atkins, bead artist
This particular binding method allows the book to open flat and shows off the painted signature covers in the spine. Here's how it looks opened between the second and third signatures:
hand made book with bead embroidery by Robin Atkins, bead artist
The technique for inserting bead embroidery into the cover of a purchased book is described in a book recently published by Interweave Press... Beading for the Soul includes project examples and instructions by a number of well-known bead artists, including the book making project/instructions by me. Deborah Cannarella did an excellent job of editing, researching and presenting the theme of the book in such chapters as Beading for Healing, Beading for Prayer, and Beading for Protection. I feel very honored to have been chosen as a contributing artist.

13 comments:

  1. You are just so multi-talented! What a great gift. I'm sure they will love it. Its beautiful.

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  2. THIS IS SPECTACULAR! Lucky girl that gets this............

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  3. What a wonderful gift! I hope they love it & appreciate the amount of work you have put into this. It is really beautiful.

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  4. Back again.....after looking at your complete blog!!!!!! I want to be in that class:-) OMG what wonderful projects your students have produced! I am all thumbs when it comes to that fine beadwork, but would still try....I had to laugh when you write that beading is great to do while watching tv.....I would have beads sewn to my thumb and fingernail.tee hee....

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  5. That is beautiful, the bride will certainly cherish it forever.

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  6. Anonymous11:21 AM

    Hi I would love to learn the painted papers beading and book making but sad to say I cant get to a class . Whats a person to do to be able to learn all the so wonderful thing? I need help.
    A person in Pittsburgh really frustrated to learn how to do this
    Linda

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  7. Just lovely! I would never want to write in such a gorgeous book! (I think I would be paralyzed.)

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  8. Robin, this is exquisite!

    And how wonderful that you've kept in touch with this young girl through all these years...Romania in 1988 sure was a different story than it is in 2006...Better now, I am hoping!

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  9. I'm very excited. Our public library has this listed as a NEW ITEM. I put in a request & cannot wait until it is available for check-out.

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  10. This is so pretty. I also love the music-note hearts:)

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  11. Thanks, everyone, for your comments... again, I feel so supported!

    To Linda in Pittsburgh and anyone else who'd like to learn how to make books like this... Think "baby steps" and start with what interests you most.

    If you're attracted to the painting, check with your local art supply shop or community college for a class that could get you started with acrylics. If you're attracted to bead embroidery, try your local bead shop or pick up a copy of one of my books. If it's book binding that attracts you, check with your local library about local book binders.

    To Debra... I took a class once in Coptic book binding and paste paper painting. The instructor told of purposely spilling spaghetti on one of his newly created books, so that he wouldn't be intimidated about writing in it. He asked that we hand copy a poem into one of our signatures before we even bound the book... just to get us over that "too precious to use" hump. It worked for me. I like to start with a rubber stamped image or two, then a few words, maybe written around the edges of the stamped impression.. from there it's easy.

    The joy of creating hand-bound books is quite beyond my ability to describe... and the best advice anyone ever gave me about how to do it is this: "Just do it!"

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  12. I have 3 altered books I did a few years ago when I thought I might move in that direction and I have not written one word in any of them. I need to find some courage, huh? Enjoy the week in Beadland!!

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  13. have fun in beadland...your classes look like great fun and your wedding book is just exquisite...

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Thanks you for joining the discussion on this post today!