The big move

I've decided to move this blog over here mainly because I changed email addresses and didn't have a clue how to move this blog over, and also because I'm trying to go freelance in a variety of ways and needed a blogname that coincided with my business name. So I will probably shut this one down over the next few weeks. Anyway, go visit me and leave me a comment (I will like that)

Also thanks to everyone for the lovely comments about my book sculptures, there'll be another chance to see them in a new light sometime in September at a gallery in Heaton, so I'll post details over at the Paperfaerie blog as and when it happens.

Librarians really are dull, but books still rock

I've been working in a library these past two days. I thought I would love it, that I would fall madly in love with books all over again, but I really didn't. It was tedious mundane boring work. It made me miss filing and stuffing envelopes, I was really just a shop assistant in a library standing around for hours on end pretending to look busy. Sometimes I got to repair a book cover (with sellotape and copydex... my bookbinding tutors would have died) that was good, but it really just made me think of my unfinished projects at home, and my bonefolder. So today I am free again, to tidy my flat and revisit my collection of papers. I might go to paperchase today and go and smell the stationery.

I also have a new lodger. He's staying with me for 6 weeks until his house is sorted. It's nice having someone about the place again, he's going to help increase my alcohol tolerance, I think it could be dangerous.

Now what do I do?

I still don't know how this blogger thing works, or how to set my photos right, maybe one of my first post degree things is to learn?

Anyway, the night was a huuuge success, we had over 2000 people come through our doors, when we were only expecting (and catered for) 300, so I got my free glass of wine and two bruchettas and it was lovely to finally relax, though there were some rauchous kids running about the place treating my books like a playground and I had to tell them that they were not toys, and that they would actually fall down if they were swung on, but a part of me wanted to make a book themed playground that could be swung on, only my fishing wire wasn't strong enough, perhaps I have finally found a possible commercial niche.

I received my results the other day, a very satisfying, slightly ecstatic 2:1, well done me, I like to call myself nearly brilliant now.

I've also been in limbo all week, waiting to dismantle the show has meant that I can't go and get my obligatory summer temping underway, and my recent breakup with my boyfriend has made the end of my degree the end of an era.

However the future is bright isn't it? I am particularly excited about getting down to some serious bookbinding, poetry writing and general creativity rushes, and I am preparing to give my first gallery workshop in a few months time, which is scary and really brilliant all at the same time. I think this will turn out to be a smashing year.

Degree Show

Oh well it's been ages since I was on here. I'm going to try and be a better blogger, but then I have had an excuse. So i've pretty much finished my degree now, just waiting on the marks and the small fortune I will be spending on my graduation gown and photos, which I have decided I do need to go to, to get closure from my studying days, and that I actually like the people who I am on the course with and a final knees up would be lovely.

Unfortunately, I haven't yet got my photos back from the degree show night but here are a few I've took since my last post.

I have nearly reached

100 folded books. It's going well I think. I just have to decide what to do with them now. Something big and structural. I also have plans for a new folded thing, which I will start today and maybe post tomorrow.

Then we sat around

and drank a lot...

Here is where we spent the festivities. We were treated to champagne and canopies followed by a three couse meal which included a seafood platter, thai green curry or venison and a cheese board and wine, all privately catered.

Birthday Party

I've just got back from a lovely weekend in Norfolk, where I celebrated my friend Judiths 60th Birthday at her converted Barn. We got to stay in a lovely flat which was once a garage, which Tony her next door neighbour offered.

Bookery

Things are going so sooo well with my show. I've hit upon a lovely idea that random people passing through my studio keep going oooh at. I like it when they go ooh, it makes everything all worth while. Still I have a whole lotta ground to cover, and I'm still collecting books, it looks like I will be spending a small fortune at the charity shop, which is good because I can get really cheap books as well as helping people. I also had my mid term review, which was very rushed but also very positive and thought provoking in terms of presentation and trying new things. Things are going well, I am annoyed that I have caught a hideous cold which makes me go through phases of extreme hunger and extreme non-hunger. Right now it's the non hunger phase, which is really annoying when you've just defrosted some spag bol.

I haven't spent any time on my craft business though, except dreamt about it to help me get to sleep, though I did make some things for my mail art swap, which I can't post here in case she sees this, but I'm loving the fact that any day now I'll get a lovely handmade suprise in the mail.

Making and doing

Well it is done. My job is no more, I couldn't be happier. I had random pangs of excitement throughout this week, of never having to answer the annoying buzzer, file another DLA form or input random codes on the database. It just feels wonderful. To focus completely on doing creative work all day everyday. It's just made me see what makes me happy and I wake up every morning wanting to get up, not waiting for the last possible moment to drag myself out of bed to pretend I give a damn about my job. So now that I have this free time I'm going to start thinking about my business set up, and make lists and action plans and dust off that sewing machine, part of me thought it wouldn't start when I plugged it in from neglect and abandonment, but it did. I thought spending an afternoon maybe a week to focus on making things for my etsy shop would be a good start and I can see how this pans out in the coming weeks up till my show.

I had an interview for a gallery too, it wasn't to be but it was at that point that I really started to assess what I really wanted to do after art school, and I decided that making and selling my work as well as running workshops is what I want to do. So I'm going to focus on this and hopefully by the end of the summer I'll have done some work to really get things off the ground. I'm already in the process of making some bags and fabric brooches and maybe some book style greetings cards to put in my shop. I'm going to wait another few weeks before I list anything though, because once there's some things in there I probably won't make anything else until Easter, when I have more time.

Sushi me

I've been making sushi for the art cafe to raise funds for the degree show. I made folded the boxes after typing the sushi recipe on rectangle pieces of paper. Hopefully they'll be well recieved. Yum.

Openings

I have joined a fabulous new mail art collective, I'm so excited by this, I've always wanted to do this, ever since I discovered Fluxus when I was researching for my dissertation, so now I have until the 19th of February to make and send something. I already have something in mind. Something suprising and new and air mail friendly.

It's also been quite a topsy turvy week. Lots of disagreements, life changing decisions, broken picture frames and lots and lots of book folding, which in some way has been my therapy. I've left my job, to focus on my art, I never thought it would ever happen, it's so easy to get comfortable with a regular income but there are lots of opportunities open to me now, it's funny how one door closes, another one opens.

Here is a poem because It's also a time to remember I am a poet as well as an artist and I haven't written one in ages. This isn't new, I'm only posting it to remind me of myself and what I do, and also what I am not.

Openings

I open the bill
but don’t pay it
I never pay it
It is more than one pound
which is all the money
I have in the world till Friday
in silver coins
but not fifties
(I always feel slightly rich when I have fifties)

I open your front door
with the keys you had cut for me that
I never use
there are cats darting other ways
but I am drunk and
you prefer dogs which I don’t like
and I feel the bill is my compensation

I open my mouth
to taste the red liquor kissed
cigarette stained tongue
with a toothbrush that I didn’t buy
it is pink
(for a girl I suppose)
you open out the shower curtain and leave the
toilet seat up

Tomorrow it is Friday and
I think about all the fifties in the world

Be nice to the trees

I am so in love with this print. It's by another etsy seller. You know how I love etsy. This one is by Manymuses she is a superstar. Anyway, I have been completely obsessed with trees for years now, I went through a huge tree photographing phase one bitter winter when I discovered how amazing naked branches are, especially when there are lots of them layered on top of eachother. Maybe that's why I like repetition so much. There's some particularly eerie ones at the bottom of my street, they intertwine in a fluid, non stick like way, that make me think about the blair witch project and a german folktale I once read about two children who wound some string through a wood so that they wouldn't get lost but they did and were eaten by a witch with a wart and a really bad mood swing. There's a badly drawn boy song that I like to think is about that folk tale, but is probably about the adventures of a tea cosy or something.

Bunsen burners not included

This week has been the most eventful of this year so far. Without saying too much, things are gonna change a bit around here. There'll be an urgency to make more things, experiment more and start thinking about my business more, though not too much, a girls gotta degree to finish y'know. The book sculptures are becoming bigger, better and more experimental too, and I've fallen back in love with the visual aspects of the written word. Also after much patience I've finished making my two notebooks from my bookbinding class. Here they are, not bad for my first go.

Suezybees

Todays special find on etsy is this lovely embroidered purse by Suezybees. She has some really original designs and they are just a gorgeous to look at.

Folding pages

Coned book

Paper conch made out of a folded book

Altered books

I heart etsy

I've been spending waay too much time on Etsy.com lately, it's just so beautiful. I've set up my own shop but there won't be anything available for quite some time while I finish my degree, damn those priorities. I would however like to show the world how wonderful it is, and that supporting the artists and designers on there is really important, so I've made a note of buying handmade gifts for people this year instead of being a corporate whore and buying consumerist tat. One of a kind is where it's at. Anyway, I just had to share this lovely book which you can find here it's inspired me to return to bookmaking which I've been doing non stop last weekend. I've also returned to my book making course at my local library and will have something to show for it very very soon.

My final show is stressing me out a bit though, too much to do, too little time and missing tutors and mispaced pritt stick has got be all in a bother. So I decided to spend a fortune on Amazon instead so that I could buy some books on paper engineering and it's given me so much inspiration. I decided that what I really wanted to do was revisit an old project I did on lace making techniques and paper sculptures, it sounds very strange doesn't it? I tell you though, I'm having so much fun with it. The only thing I'm feeling rather guilty over is tearing, dismantling and generally destroying a couple of books I bought at the local charity shop. If anyone on my book course found out, I'm sure ther'd be a few gasps.