Beadlust

Lisa's Beautiful Hand Made Book

Today we're taking a look at the 9th of 10 books made in my recent 4-day class in Wisconsin. Before getting into it, here's a link to a page of pictures on the Valley Ridge Art Studio site (taken during the class); I'm the one with greying brown hair, black painting shirt and red apron. There are some really neat closeup pictures of some of the painted papers we made, many of which remind me of fabrics.

Now back to Lisa! Here she is, painting a wash on the back side of her painted papers. Each of the signatures in this book design is wrapped with a painted paper. A color wash made with watered-down acrylic paint gives a pleasing look to the insides of these signature wraps. One can rubber stamp, write or draw over the color wash.

Lisa had taken a bead embroidery class from me prior to this class, and so whizzed right through the beaded piece made to inset into the cover of her book. I'm going to feature one of her other pieces in a post sometime in the next few days. It's an amazing portrayal of a turtle. I mention it now, because it's theme is "Going In"... going into the water, the place where land and water meet. To me, it seems that she may be exploring that same theme in her book... green and blue... sky and water. What do you think? By the way, she wrote to say that she is using her book to transcribe some of her favorite poems.

I love the soft colors of Lisa's painted papers. She achieves a lovely harmony between her beadwork and painted papers. The colors of her beads are bright enough to stand out, but don't completely overpower the gentle nature of her cover paper. By her smile, I'm guessing she's pretty pleased with her finished book!

Reminder: check back in a couple of days to see some detail shots of Lisa's amazing turtle piece!