Category Archives: Marbled Paper

May 1, 2012 · 12:33 pm

Finally, Back to Marbling

I’ve been out of commission for a while and have lots to catch up on here.  If you remember the crown I groused about, well, it turned out that the tooth needed a root canal.  Yuck!  Fortunately,  while the temporary crown was still on I knew that all was not well and went back to the dentist.  He checked things out and told me the bad news.  The only good news is that they could use the permanent crown that had already been made.  My mouth is still not back to normal, but at least it has calmed down enough so I can function.  On to better things!

Saturday I decided I had to get back to marbling.  Not that I don’t have enough paper to cover hundreds of books or make dozens of towers, but just because I love doing it.  Marbling does, however, require a lot of setup and preparation time.  I did the prep work on Saturday and started off marbling on Sunday.  Because the carrageenan breaks down over time, it’s most efficient to cram as much marbling as possible into four or five days.  After five days, results of the breakdown begin show on the paper and it’s time to pack it up.

Look for a new page on marbling soon.  (I hope!)

Not the greatest marbling session ever, but there were some successes.  That’s always the fun with marbling.  What looks great in the tray may be a mess when printed or, what frequently happens to me, the process of laying down the paper messes up. I catch a bubble or there’s a hesitation line or big speck of paint I didn’t see.  If it were easy, it wouldn’t be fun!  Above are two of the good pieces from this session.

For a slide show of this marbling, go here.

 

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April 3, 2012 · 9:41 pm

Decision Time Again: Which Box to Make?

I’ve been thinking for a while about making some other types of boxes, but I haven’t settled on any one style.  Here are some of the ones I’ve been considering.

 

These are some of the styles of boxes and portfolios I’ve made in the past.  I’ve probably made at least a hundred calmshell boxes in various styles over the years.  Most were made to fit specific books, papers or other objects and I’ve created many different variations.  I enjoy making them, but they are nothing new for me. Another negative is that they use a lot of purchased materials.  The brown and blue boxes on the top row are clamshells.

The first photo on the second row shows a few of the origami boxes I have made.  They are cute and easy to make. On the pro side, the only material they use is my marbled paper.  They are also great for using the perfect parts of an imperfect sheet.  When I marble, I still catch air pockets or stray hairs which ruin parts of the paper.  On the con side, they don’t require any creativity, just good dexterity.  To counter-balance this, I rarely make the top and bottom from the same paper.  Drives the folks where I sell the boxes crazy!

The next two photos show lidded boxes.  These can be made in any size and shape as well as being able to be lined or partitioned.  I’m leaning toward these for my next project, but I’m still pondering.

The matchboxes with the book inside are cute but rather useless.  I tend to put sayings, quotes or lines from poems or songs in the books, but once you’ve read them, what do you do with it?  I much prefer structures that have some useful function.

The miniature books are neat, but again, not really functional.  I have seen them made into jewelry as pins or hung from necklaces and earrings, very nice but not me.  I rarely wear any jewelry anymore.

The last photos are the portfolios.  They can be made any size or shape and are very useful.  Carrying a hand crafted custom portfolio is neat.  The major drawback is that they use large quantities of bookcloth, especially the 9×12 one.  The outside needs to be cloth rather than paper if  the portfolio is expected to be used.  Paper would be prettier, but it wouldn’t wear well.  Unless I could do the hinges and edges in cloth and the center in paper, like a half-cloth book.

So there’s my dilemma.  What to do?  What to do?

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March 30, 2012 · 6:31 pm

Finished Towers

Finally put the towers together and I’m happy with the results.

Four of them are 7″ and one is 6″.  The yellow one in the front was a particularly hard match.  The orange boxes are a heavy textured brunt orange colored base paper that I marbled in browns, reds and yellows. That paper was too heavy to use for the covering of the tower, but nice and sturdy for the boxes. I thought I would never find anything to go with it since the base color radically changed the marbling colors.  I finally was able to get some complementary colors from burnt sienna, yellows and some greens.

The other box I’m really happy about is the one in the back with the bright outside and dark interior.  I had done a bit of figurative marbling and I had no idea how to use it.  Here’s a closeup.

You can learn more about the construction of the towers on my page, Making Towers and more examples on Boxes & Other Creations.

 

Three of these are headed to the Yates County Arts Center and two to Etsy for sale in my shop, Losing her Marbles.

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March 18, 2012 · 8:19 am

Well, Almost Finished

Took the books out of the press and here they are:

They all looked really nice until I realized that  the back endpaper in the map book was upside down!  My endpapers rarely have directionality and I never noticed.  Sigh.

Towers are in good shape, well, at least so far.  Haven’t finished the boxes for them yet, but have cut and folded the paper so it’s just folding and gluing them into place.

Here’s a look at the outsides:

You can see them all at the page onMaking Towers.

Some of these books and towers will be for sale in my shop at Etsy, Losing Her Marbles.

 

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February 26, 2012 · 10:52 pm

Back to Work

…. or rather Back to Play.

The past week has been spent with insurance claims, car salesmen, doctors, etc., etc.  It’s a relief to be able to go back to the fun parts.

I’ve spent quite a bit of time designing my next set of books and I’ll be sharing the results here.  I’ve also started a page on How to Design a Book, or at least the way I usually do it. This week I’ve been starting by choosing the outside covers first, but at other times I’ve started with a title, an illustration, endpapers or even the paper I wanted to use as the textblock.  Flexibility is a good thing!

I’ll give you a spoiler here. These are the papers I’ve chosen for my next batch of books.  If you want to see the choices I made, just follow this link.

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February 12, 2012 · 5:46 pm

Towers are Fun

Last week I decided to make some more of my Treasure Towers for sale in my shop on Etsy.  I think the part I enjoy the most is picking out the papers to use.  Usually, I start with the outside, but not always.  I find that I prefer to make four boxes at a time even if they are different size.  Doing the same actions “assembly line” fashion just works best.  Not more than four, or I get bored!

But back to choosing.  My first was very uncharacteristic, I didn’t use my own marbled paper.  I had a piece of Italian paper with large butterflies that I wanted to use.  The pattern is really too big for my books.  I had trouble finding papers for the inside since the colors weren’t a good match.  I finally found two papers that had patterns that reminded me of the scales on the wings  of butterflies.  I made the top of the same butterfly pattern as the outside.

The other papers were a bit easier, I knew I wanted to use some maps I’d marbled.  The last tower was a recently marbled sheet that I was excited about.

I have more towers here.  I have a page about making my boxes and towers here or you can click the link at the top of the page that says, ” Boxes & Other Creations”.

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February 10, 2012 · 11:16 pm

February in Black

Last week I was marbling paper again and I was off to a slow start.  Nothing was working right.  Colors were streaking, paints were spotting, worms all over the place –  just a mess.  It took me a day to realize that I had mixed the alum incorrectly and another half day to get everything else into balance.

I pulled some good sheets, but nothing thrilling and a lot that were “book only” – not good enough to sell as full sheets.  As usual, on day three, I switched to a smaller tray to work on card stock for note cards and vintage papers.  I realized that I was getting a very powerful black in the small tray, much stronger than I’d ever had before. I ran with it and pulled the papers shown below.  All of these were done on light colored paper – cream or white.

Enjoy!

The colors become so vivid when contrasted with the black.  Wish I had some large papers like these.

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