celebrate love today and always!

happy love everyone!  i thought i'd share what i made for my love for valentine's day.  hopefully it will inspire those of you who are tired of v-day cards from walgreens and red construction paper hearts. i made lucky stars and wrote love poems, song lyrics, and quotes inside!

i listed some sources for good poems and quotes below but you could always write the typical "candy heart messages" in yours if you wish.  click here for some really good instructions on lucky star folding.

These lucky stars are known to have special meaning and the meaning can be tied to how many are given or received...

1 star: The only one 2 stars: Happy Couple 55 stars: Love you with no regrets 99 stars: May the friendship/love lasts forever 365/366 stars: Whole year blessing 520 stars: I love you 999 stars: Endless love

it is also said that if you gift 1,000 of these stars to someone their wish will come true!  i think just a few of these guys would make anyone happy though.

if you are need of some love inspiration check out these beautiful poets...

Tyler Knott Rumi Pablo Neruda Bob Marley Khalil Gibran Antoine de Saint-Exupery

"Love is a fruit in season at all times, and within reach of every hand. " Mother Teresa

poetic alterations

last week i led a workshop at Urbana Free Public Library for a group of 15 or so high schoolers.  i wanted them to pick a children's book and remake it into a a small book of 5 - 10 pages.  i decided to crop the pages down to 5" x 5" and rearrange chosen text to create a short poem.  other options for page alterations were collage, drawing, and writing but i wanted students to try to include text somehow. unfortunately i didn't get any pictures of the high schoolers work but here's my sample for it!

when the pages were finished we bound them together using a japanese stab bind that ended up looking something like this...

book arts at Hook Pottery Paper

for the past couple days i've been working in Andrea Peterson's studio finishing a book, Anamorpho.  yesterday we beat a cotton rag and recycled paper blend and added pigment to warm it and a denim thread for hints of blue.  the original color was a pale gray and after we added the pigment it became bubble gum colored!  we mixed the two and got this pale purply pink... garbage can of fiber!!

We poured big 22" x 30" sheets and made them thick for the cover...

remember my "pink pages" post!?  the pink pages will be bound into a book soon!  i've been going back into some of those with water-based markers and wheat paste.  here they are drying... we're emptying the dryer tonight and i'll be adding text to the pages this afternoon.  tomorrow will be binding and finishing the cover!

pink pages

the paper is cotton rag with a handful of blue jean and colored pink with red and burnt umber pigments.  the images are recycled from another project involving collage and image transfer onto white cotton rag paper.  i used natural dyes made from elderberries (purplish ink) and beets (pinkish).  i also used some cheap, washable markers, which is the bleeding color that you see.

still deciding how to assemble the pages into a book...

many more pictures to come!