Category Archives: Craft design

Making a Jacob’s Ladder Book

Several people have asked me how to make the Jaccob’s Ladders. I’ll try to explain a bit, but it’s really too complicated to describe just in words. I used the instructions in Making Handmade Books: 100+ Bindings by Alisa Golden. It’s available through Amazon.com or other booksellers.

Here’s my brief explanation.

The “steps” of the ladder are made from “sandwiches” of two  boards. I covered my boards with my marbled paper. The sandwiches are joined together by ribbons and that’s the tricky part. The ribbons weave in and out of the sandwiches and are glued on the inside but not on the outside.  The weaving is not straight down the ladder as the ribbons must loop around the step so that the ladder can move.  If you open the ladder slowly, you can see that the ribbons form an X  between the steps, with the outside ribbons staying parallel to each other and the center ribbon “X-ing” them.

In Golden’s book, she lays out the process in 28 steps with diagrams.  Even with that help, it took me several tries to get the weaving completely correct. Once figured out it is a lot of fun!

Good luck and happy gluing!

Ladders6

 

Click below for a short video of a Jacob’s Ladder in motion.

Jacob’sLadder

 

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In Production Mode

For the last two weeks I’ve been on vacation, visiting my family.  The first week I was house and pet sitting while they had a spring break vacation.  Even though I had my laptop with me, I knew  I would be bored with just a dog and a cat for company for a whole week.  Before I left home, I was busy choosing papers and ribbons and then cutting the paper and board for a bunch of new Jacob’s Ladders.  I’m very glad I did! Along with reading several books and the twice daily dog walking, the ladders kept me very busy.  I commandeered a table in the kitchen that had good lighting, much to the dismay of the cat who thought she owned that spot. Every morning I played with my ladders.

Here’s the proof:

TexasGroupI’m getting much better at not making mistakes on the ribbons — or at least, I know how to fix them when I go over instead of under!

I had great fun in choosing the papers before I started.  I have music, recipes, art prints and even the Bible. Here are some close-ups of some of the “steps”.

I have another music ladder completed except for the last step.  I miscounted the number of boards. About half of these ladders will be for sale on Etsy.

I also visited the local art supply store, just to see.  Of course I bought a bit of paper to play with.  I made, or rather started some soft-cover books with long stitch bindings.  I’ll save those for my next blog!  I still am owning a blog on the process of masking marbling.  I hope to get to that soon.

 

 

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Maps of the Mind, Marbled, of course

Maps are some of my favorite recycled papers to marble.  I try to use colors that complement the areas of the map – browns and rust for desserts, blues and greens over the oceans – as well as harmonize with any printed colors.  As with much in marbling, you can plan a lot, but the paints seem to have a will of their own in the end and that’s the element I find so fascinating.  The little drop of white that centers itself right over a town or the purple swirl that almost follows a coastline  or the yellow streak of marbling that happens to disappear on top of a printed red and magically appear again to lead to a river or mountain is always a surprise.

Here are a few maps I’ve marbled in the past.

In my last marbling session I did a bunch of pages from an atlas.  Because of the way books are made, when disbound the pages are not consecutive, so I had gazetteer pages facing map pages.  I had originally planned to use both pages for ladders,  but I like the maps so much that I don’t want to cut them up.  Here are some of the pages.

I’ve used my marbled maps in numerous projects: books, towers, portfolios, almost everything I make, I’ve tried it with maps.

The map covered towers have been very popular, especially when I use local maps.  Eventually I will map some map ladders, but right now I’m “laddered-out” as you will see in my next blog!

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Shimmer & Shine

One aspect of marbling that haven’t explored much is the use of metallic paints.  I had tried some in the past with rather mediocre success and just hadn’t worked with them again.  During the class at the Campbell Folk School this fall,  I had some very successful pieces with metallic paints.

These two pieces show the use of metallics. In my last marbling session, I decided to explore their use a bit more, trying to match metallics with colors and just seeing how they reacted with other colors.

One of the first things I verified was that metallics just don’t show up well on white paper.  They tend to just look like a flat brown, orange or grey.  The colors I was playing with were gold, copper, bronze and silver.  Here are three white cards that had gold and copper on them.

As you can see, it’s hard to tell where the metallic is.  In contrast to this, here are some of the pieces I made with metallic paints using colored card stock.

The papers used for these pieces were black, royal blue, red, and purple. The gold and coppers are much clearer.  The amount of shininess depends entirely upon the amount of paint dropped.  On some of these there is way too much.  One problem that arises with metallic paint is that it granulates very quickly and has to be constantly stirred – without making bubbles!  This paint had the added problem that it was old and even more prone to coming out of suspension.  Fine for experimenting, but not the best.  That is why there are so many little “bits” of paint in the designs. These are especially noticeable on the fine lines of the get-gels.  On the purple stone piece, I decided to join rather than fight, so I left it at the stone stage without trying to do any drawing out.

I think I’ll continue working with metallic paint, in moderation.  I like the clear crisp colors a bit better, but it does have a place in my marbling palette.

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More Ladders

I was so pleased that I finally have the ribbons straightened out that I made a bunch more of the Ladders.  I’m especially enjoying using pages from vintage books.  The way the paper is cut, I rarely have complete paragraphs or even sentences.  It is a mind stretcher to “read” some of them.  They are not really just random words, but more like dream thoughts that never get quite completed.  I’ve cut a bunch more from cookbooks, Shakespeare and even the Bible.  I’m looking forward to putting them together.

In the meantime here are the ones I’ve finished.

All of these are for sale on Etsy.  In other news, I’m still cleaning up from my last marbling session. Marbling is fun, but it does make a mess!

I’m still sorting out the papers and trying to decide which papers to use and which to sell. That’s always a fun enterprise.  More on those papers later … I hope!

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Rainbow Update

Just a quickie to show you what I’ve done with some of my “rainbow” paper. Yes, I know that the rainbow really has seven colors, not six.  These are actually the primary and secondary colors on a color wheel, but rainbow sounds better.  Anyway, here is my newest plaything.

I’ve already cut the paper for a second one and have been marbling a lot of interesting vintage paper to make more.  Now that I’ve finally gotten the ribbons working, it’s fun.  I admit, I still have the 28 step instructions right in front of me every time!

 

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Monochromatic Rainbow

I suppose that’s actually an oxymoron, but it describes the marbling I did this weekend!  I was so impressed by the “shades of grey” piece I did at the beginning of January, that I decided to expand the repertoire. Now I have monochromatic pieces of all the primary and secondary colors; red, orange, yellow, green, blue and purple.  All I need now is to figure out how to use them!

Here’s one of each on the line.

Rainbow3

and a quick gallery of them all:

There are four sheets of each color except the blue.  I really like the fresh, clean look of these.  I plan to do more this week, but I also have other ideas. Today I also did some marbling using masks to cover portions of the paper so they don’t have paint.  They can either be left plain or overmarbled.  I hope to have those results for you by the end of this week.

Sometimes there are too many ideas for the time I have.  Decisions, decisions, decisions. As much as I love having piles of paper around, it does help if I can actually sell some or make something from them to sell.  At least it gives me money to buy more supplies.

 

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It’s Material

The local Arts Center where I display my books and paper, changes their exhibit about ten times a year. Each exhibit has a theme and artists are invited to submit works centered around the theme. I received the listing for 2013 a few weeks ago and the February exhibit’s theme is “It’s Material”.  I was puzzled how I could make my books reflect the theme.  I was thinking material goods, money, bling, flash – you get the picture.  I finally hit on something and then, after I had started the books, discovered they were featuring textile artists!  Oh, well.  I’m still going with my idea although I have covered books with fabric in the past and may take in those also.

So what was my idea?  Just these.

Material coins

I’m a collector (that’s a polite word for pack rat) and when I came across these, they clicked with the February theme.

I generally don’t care for embellishments on book covers.  The cute seashells, the fancy ribbons, or little doodads leave me cold.  Besides, it makes it almost impossible to put the book on a shelf without damaging it or its neighbors. My idea with the coins was to inset them into the cover so they would be flush with the boards. To accomplish this, I excavated circles on the covers about the thickness of the coin.

The Eisenhower dollar was about the same thickness as the Davey board, so I backed those covers with a piece of mat board.  The edge-on shot shows the plied covers.

I then added the spines and marbled paper covers in the usual manner and glued the coins into the depressions.  I should have made them a bit deeper to allow for the thickness of the paper and adhesive, but I’m very pleased with the result.  I adhered the coins with PVA, so I don’t know if they will stay.  So far they seem to be holding well, although I’m sure they could be pried off. 

 

These books were great fun and I’m happy with the results!  What more could I want?

Maybe to get to overmarbling tomorrow?  Stay tuned, it might just happen!

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Quick “show and tell” of my last overmarbling

Why is it that when you really want spectacular results the souffle falls? At least it seems that way.  I was hoping that the few overmarbles I did in the last batch would be good demonstrations of how the technique can work.  Instead they are just some more examples of not-quite-hits.  It happens.   Next time …

Anyway I did promise to show you and here are the results, side by side.

Example 1:
The original paper is on the right, overmarbled on the left.

No alumNo alum - over

The original sheet either was missed in the alum process or was flipped and I tried to print on the wrong side.  Most of the pigment and pattern washed off in the water bath.  You can see a few traces of a nonpareil pattern on the left edge.  The remaining pigments left a pale wash over the paper.  The overmarbling used similar color in a wide, looping pattern that gained some resonance from the under pattern, but nothing outstanding. It’s a pleasant piece, but not what I hoped for.

Example 2:

Washed outWashed - over

This original piece was in pale, almost washed-out greens. This photo makes the piece look worse than it was.  It was nice, just rather wishy-washy.  I thought it might be a good candidate. I over marbled it with yellows, burnt sienna and oranges. Unfotunately, the burnt sienna granulated a bit and didn’t give the strong lines I was expecting. The undercoat gives interesting shadows and reflections, but not the “wow” factor.

Example 3:

PurplePurple - over

This piece was quite successful in bringing a rather namby-pamby piece back to life.  I’d had a problem with the yellow in the first piece pushing all the other colors and then disappearing when printed. For the over coat, I used the same colors in the same stone pattern without the yellow and obtained a very nice colorful piece.  This one is the most interesting to try and trace the under and over patterns. If you focus on the black, almost triangular shape a little to the left and above center in the first piece, you can see the same shape in the middle of a large purple stone in the second.  From there, you can trace many of the black veins and colored stones.

Example 4:

Green Green - over

This was my most successful piece of these four.  At least I think so!  The original piece was nice with a little bit of a ripple going on, but it had some flaws that would have made it hard to use.  For the overmarble, I used similar colors, but made them more intense.  I tired to echo the under pattern, without the ripple.  The ripple shows through and gives a very subtle motion to the piece.  The flaws tend to blend into the new patterns and make the piece very usable,

I’m hoping to start another marbling session this weekend and I’m excited to have just received a shipment of lots of new colors in my new paint.

In the meantime, I’m frustrating myself making some more Jacob’s ladders.  Preparing the blocks is a piece of cake.  Threading the ribbons is a whole different matter!  There always seems to be one that is not right – usually the broken rung is in the middle.  Will post more pictures when (and if) I get them right.  Doesn’t matter, I’m having fun.

Later posts on overmarbling:  Playing  Addendum

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A Book or a Toy?

It’s been a very busy time since my last blog!  I had a number of calls from local outlets for more inventory – cards, books, towers, note pads –  just everything.  It’s all good, but it does create time pressure on everything else.  I didn’t even have time to take pictures!

In the middle of all of this, I decided to play with a little “book” I found in a bookbinding manual that is based on the old toy “Jacob’s Ladder.”  You know, the little pieces tied together with cord or ribbon, that clatter down in one direction and then the other.  My version, naturally, uses light-weight board covered with marbled paper.  My first attempt (the prototype) failed miserably when I misread the instructions for the ribbon placements.  The second, (beta)  was strung incorrectly  but I was able to fix it.  My first “real” version is under weights right now.  I’ll see how it goes tomorrow morning.

Here are the prototype and the beta version.

Jacobs2 (1)Jacobs2 (2)Jacobs2 (3)

Here’s an attempt at showing the Jacob’s Book in action.

Jacobs7Jacobs5 (1)Jacobs4 (3)Jacobs4 (2)

Click for a real video of the Jacob’sLadder

If I become inspired, I’d like to try making it a real book with a poem, a story or even just words.  Don’t know when I’ll have time.  Soon, I hope.

 

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