More paper lust

It's paper pornography, but since I was busy unrolling them and putting them in a big flat case for storage I thought I should photograph them as I go! Except for the beautiful French paper with the flowery inclusions in the final photograph which I bought in London, all the papers were picked up in Italy.

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!

Codex 6 - the second book

I'm not so sure I like the text on the covers of the second book; I should have made it chunkier



I've finished the second of the two books resulting from my residency and I'm pleased over all with the results despite my misgivings about my 'font size'! The words on the front and back covers come from the Greek roots of the words hegemony and antithesis (which is a form of resistance). Hegemony and resistance are words used in the pulp-printed pages in the book. Again I cut into the book board and used a bone folder to push the book cloth into the covers and reveal the embossing.



In some places on the papers we made during the residency I used pulp-printing to 'join' two newly formed sheets

Codex 6 - the first book

You'll remember that I went on a residency, Codex 6, at Southern Cross University in Lismore in January...? Well I've finally been able to start putting the resulting handmade, pulp-printed paper into book form and have bound the first of two accordian books. I promised to show the results, so here are some photos:


The books are in a simple accordian format with two hard covers




The pages are made from sheets of hand-made pulp-printed paper




The theme of the work was 'Resistance' and the motifs evolved into spiky viruses, prickly cacti and cogs







I've cut into the book board to create impressions of cogs, which are a recurring motif in the pulp-printed paper




Eventually the full set of 16 books will be boxed together in a slip-case although I believe that they will all be individually for sale. I hope that the set will be shown at the Southern Cross University Acquisitive Artists' Book exhibition later this year.