Countdown!

Time is ticking away! I'm off to Europe on Tuesday morning...

















Nelson Ball Clock available from Haus Modern Living

First Bristol, UK, for the IMPACT printmaking conference, then a rail trip from London to Brussels via the Channel Tunnel rail link; Brussels to Paris for a weekend of high culture (and hopefully a rendezvous with my former tutor John Ashton), and finally on to the Veneto region of Italy on the sleeper train (I want to wake up on a moonlit night and see the Alps sliding past the window!), where we're picking up a hire car to spend a glorious 10 days in a farm house we visited two years ago, plus a few days in Venice proper to take in the Biennale.

Gosh, how awful. I apologise in advance for any delays in Tweeting or blogging. I aim to get my tiny brain around the intricacies of mobile blogging and tweeting but who knows how well I will fare, or how frequently I will have internet access? I promise to try my best, but please forgive me if I'm not as good as I could be...

When I get back it will be full steam ahead! with my Etsy shop (I hope), in time for the Christmas shopping run-up plus lots of blogging on our house building site, since Warren reckons he'll have the house to 'lock up' stage by the time I get back.

Baci baci, ci vediamo quando torni !

Temptation...

Wrapping paper from the Royal Sydney Botanic Garden's shop - very sophisticated photographic images on a black background. Yummy.

Is there a 12-steps program for paper addicts? My name is Sara and I am completely addicted to paper: old, new, clean, raggedy-edged, ruled, plain, graph, etching paper, wrapping paper...



















I LOVE the crimson passion fruit flowers against that greeny background! And on the facing page in my portfolio a selection of blue & white papers

I thought you might like to see my portfolio case with sheets of the stuff waiting to be turned into something beautiful. It will soon be closed up while I go on my grand European tour...




















The left-hand section is a group of hand-blocked papers from Venice, and on the right a lovely black/gold/red reindeer paper that I'm going to use for some Christmas notebooks...


















Elizabeth Blackadder's flower watercolours - I love tulips and can't grow them here because it's too warm and humid

But oh dear, I've found myself plenty of paper shops on the way, including Shepherds on Southampton Row in London. This is a picture of their famous "paper wall" (I'm salivating as I type and wondering how I'm going to pack ALL OF THAT into my suitcase!). They have a 'new products blog' and an on-line shop... now that's dangerous.












I haven't located any paper merchants in Paris or Brussels on the basis that my lust for paper won't overwhelm me while I'm seeing friends and indulging in chocolate, but I'm remembering all the places I've been to before in Venice and thinking that I'll have to drop in again just to check if they have anything I need!


















Hand-made Nepalese kadi paper. The white-on-white flower block print on the bottom with gold-leaf centres I've had for ages but I'm saving it for something special!

The finished Journal

I really enjoyed making this! It's got headbands and a bookmark, about which I am ridiculously pleased



Inside the pages are a mixture of pastel paper, etching paper, wrapping paper and pages from the AA 1955 Touring Guide to Europe, highlighting some of the places we're hoping to go later this year

Learning the hard way

I mentioned I was busy making myself a travel journal a là Jan in a previous post. Well, it's almost ready! I've just tipped in the end sheets and it's drying for a day or so in my little book press. This is my second go at finishing it: I incorrectly positioned the book block within the covers when I first tried pasting the tapes etc to the covers, and while the end result was immaculately neat it unfortunately didn't open properly... I was a bit gloomy until I managed to pull out the book block again (despite the glue having dried) without having to slit the tapes etc off, and I put it aside for a couple of days until I had the time (and the courage) to try again. Fingers crossed that it works this time because now I've tipped in the end pages it will require a major salvage operation to repair any mistakes.

It's been a (slow) adventure making the book: it's only the second hard-cover book I've made, and I outdid my first effort by including a stiff spine, headbands and a ribbon this time, with few instructions on how to do it properly. If it works I shall take photographs to show to you proudly in a future post!

The Horses of St Mark's Square

I find it hard to believe that I started this collagraph plate almost three years ago, before we'd even started thinking about moving over to Australia. The inspiration came from the verdigris runnelled surface of the horses of St Mark's Square in Venice. We'd taken my father over there for a short break in February 2006 and it was cold, sometimes wet and absolutely magical. When we returned to Bristol I dug out a large sheet of really thick card that had, I think, been used as backing for a pack of etching paper and I started drawing on it. By the time we emigrated, some eight months later, all I'd achieved apart from the drawing was the outline of the horse's collar and a small amount of texture from crumpled tissue paper saturated in PVA glue... I've carried the damned thing around with me every since vowing that soon I'd get on with finishing the plate.

Nothing has happened until today, and from somewhere came the enthusiasm to pick it up again. I've always liked the drawing but I think that as usual I've been afraid of failing with it, ruining it, or just not managing to make it properly. I managed to get over myself a bit today and have been cooking on gas: felt made for three flower garlands, washed, spun and hung out ready to dry plus the Codex 6 books are now complete and I've added surface and texture to the horse collagraph plate and I've started applying carborundum dust around the outside of the asymmetric image. In truth I won't know if I want that velvety darkness around the horse until I start proofing the print - I may end up cutting the whole thing out and using it as an element in the print. We'll see. Between now and then I think I've got a long way to go, not least in terms of figuring out HOW I'm going to print it as it is far too big for my press. I think I'm going to have to hand-print it.

Detail of the eye. I've tried to build up the surface so that when it prints in negative there is an indentation in the relevant places on the image. You can see where I've heaped up the carborundum powder over the wood-glue around the ear and mane!


The whole thing is 90 x 65 cms which is very big for me