Hey everyone! I'm back today to share a couple batches of my handmade bookmarks. I'm being painfully honest with you by saying I was never much of a reader. I just never took time to read books and even with art articles I was interested in, I would generally skim them over. What a pity, I know! Well, several years back I decided to truly become a REAL READER. After a while, I decided to start documenting my reads in an Excel spreadsheet. Long story short, we went to Mall of Georgia to the massive Barnes and Noble for my son's birthday this past weekend and I was perusing the isles, I kept noting, "hey I've read that!" I was really surprised and happy! It got me to wondering just how many books I've read these past few years so I did a quick tally and the grand total is 99 books! <insert happy dance>
It's no surprise that I've also found a small addiction to making handmade bookmarks because I am prone to read about 3 to 5 novels simultaneously and have several art books in process as well, so I need a good many bookmarks, plus I love to give them as gifts. Yes, that is definitely me showing why I was never a good reader, because I am totally ADD. But actually reading has helped me a lot with focus and minor memory issues.
I recently posted on IG my latest watercolor bookmark collection. I like to take a 9x12 sheet of Canson watercolor paper and use it for practice, you know to get my hand warmed up to fluid motion and control.
I simply paint one type of flower all over the page, then repeat with another and another, some leaves, berries, etc. until I have a nice full composition. I then cut the sheet into 2.25x7" strips. I use a corner rounder for the edges and add tassels. I love the serendipity of seeing what sections appear in the cut apart pieces and the general looseness of these play pages. I recommend THESE tassels from Amazon. They are much nicer than others I've ordered and quite reasonable.
Well, I also love love love do dabble in gel printing, especially with botanical elements, but also with stencils and my beloved PaperArtsy Fresco chalk acrylic paints.
I have piles and piles of prints and thought it time to try out Susan McCreevy's technique for transforming them into beautiful artsy bookmarks. I did not use matboard, as Susan did in her video HERE, but used an Avery permanent glue stick and adhered my pieces to black cardstock instead.
Actually, these were some of my least favorite prints and maybe just one part of the page was worth using. This made the process even more rewarding. I love a good trash to treasure project indeed!
I hope you like my bookmarks and my little story of overcoming an obstacle in my life, resulting in a truly beneficial pleasure. Please let me know in the comments what some of your favorite reads are. xx, Autumn
No comments:
Post a Comment