6 Players - 6 Months

We'll, Leonardo bunny has joined in a little Round Robin with six other folks. They are making a set of custom pages for each other, one a month for six months. Each player chose their theme and format and the others make them pages for their books.

Leonardo started the round with one if his favorite people, Elizabeth and her theme was Rust. Now if there is one thing we know a lot about living below the ground it is the effects of oxidation on metals.

So Leonardo was casting around and found a great little rusted tin can that was all falling apart and knew he had to include that in his art work.

Here's his description of what he created:

"I love the colors in rust and metals in general, so it was a great gift that E wanted rust pages. I started with a half sheet of Arches 300 lb cold press rough watercolor paper. I tore it down to the 8 1/2 by 11 size and painted it with acrylics. I used raw sienna, burnt umber, mars black, iridescent copper and iridescent b ronze paints to create a basic underpainting on all sheets. Arches is such a fabulous paper, 100% cotton rag mould made in France on machines which have been in production since before the US was a country. The 300 lb (640 g/m2) paper is somewhat like the thickness of multiple cereal boxes combined, but the texture is pure heaven to an artist.

On the sides where I knew I would be including the rusted metals I added a fine coat of a gold glitter acrylic polymer is some sweeping strokes.

I love the Chicago Poems by Carl Sandburg and I remembered the one about the hydrangeas, so I painted the turning hydrangeas on the front page to embrace that. The petals were painted with some tiny poly 'berry' brushes and they really came out neat. I bronzed up the leaves a bit to echo the turning of the petals.

Whenever I think about rust I think about diamonds - thanks to Joan Baez. So I made the inside two page spread for the first part of the quote from her song. Using a heavy coating of acrylic polymers I glued the rusted metal to the recto side and used the verso side for the quote. I embedded a few of the crystals on the metals page, but saved most of them for the final verso.

The song chronicles a time in her life when Bob Dylan (a former lover) called one evening from a booth in the Midwest. She originally ended the song with the phrase, "if you're offering Diamonds and Rust, I already paid." In the past few years she has changed that lyric to read, "I'll take the diamonds."

So my pages take the best of some wonderful poetry and include a simple composition, but complex media choice to bring some diamonds to a good friend I have never met.

I also included one of my signature ATC type cards which are painted on retail store gift cards and a candle shelter made from handmade batik papers.

Thanks E for inviting me to participate in the group."

Leonardo Rabbit

(click the pictures for a closer look)

Zig Zag Binding Tutorial

Dymphie has been kind enough to share her video on completing the Zig Zag binding. Subtitles are in English and Dutch. I'll post a stitching diagram later.

Giveaway at A Red Pumpkin Studio

Wow, 100 posts to her blog! Geesh, I have good intentions and suddenly three months have gone by.

Anyway Jennifer at A Red Pumpkin Studio blog is celebrating her 100th post with this giveaway. Although I want to tell you about it, I don't want you to sign up. That's right, because then you might win and I might not!

Her work is beautiful and Phred and all the bunnies here would love to have this piece hanging in the book makers (opps, sorry Phred) BOOK BINDERS Atelier.

Check it out here

Spirit of the Trees - handpainted purse/netbook/iPad carrier

Spirit of the Trees is a vintage purse which has been upcycled with original acrylic art to make your statement about Earth Day. The classic pigskin leather has been carefully prepared and then lovingly embellished by Frida with the Tree Spirits. The front of the purse shows a loving sun shining down on a large tree and a small grove. The back shows a single large tree in all its wondrous glory.

This purse originally had a strap which ran through it to make an extra closure. That strap is missing, but the magnet button closure on the interior is as good as new.

An extra bonus with Spirit of the Trees is that it not only holds the normal purse items, but it can be used as a carry bag for your netbook or iPad(c)*. We show it accepting the Dell netbook in either vertical or horizontal position. Plenty of room for the electronics and it still can hold your keys and wallet and that urgent hard-copy report.

Frida used artist quality acrylic paints for the trees, on a gesso prepared surface. The paintings have then been sealed with a polymer acrylic coating. This coating means you can easily wipe off any spills or errant dirt. We do recommend gentle handling overall as this is a piece of traveling fine art.

The inside of the purse contains one small zippered pocket and a quality lining. There are no signs of wear on the purse body, the shoulder strap has very slight fraying on the end. You have Surfbunny's satisfaction guarantee - see our ETSY shop policies for details on purchasing Spirit of the Trees and our guarantee


* iPad is copyright by Apple Computers

Palm Leaf Structure Book

Phred was into his meditation one evening last week and although mindfulness was not on his mind, this book came to him. He tells me "Spirit Guide" is a palm leaf structure book like the Buddhist texts in Tibet and Nepal. Each leaf (page) is a separate sheet of handmade paper. The paper includes recycled mail bits, rose petals and Darjeeling tea leaves.

The cover is hand lettered by Frida with the Tibetan script for the Om Mani Padme Hum mantra. Each leaf contains one of the names of the Dalai Lama and the Om mantra. Turning the leaf is expressive of releasing the mantra into the air and contributing to the betterment of the planet.

The book is bound with auspicious red silk cord adorned with pearls. It is really quite beautiful in person. Phred did an edition binding of 4 to share with some friends.

Tools of a papermaker

We have some inventive souls here in Surfbunny Warren. Last week young Alexander was twiddling his thumbs watching Phred and crew go through all the gyrations to cook some vegetable matter to make some paper pulp. After soaking the goo in lime water and soda ash it needed to be rinsed, BUT the rinse water couldn't just go out in the garden or the stream as it was far too alkali. So Phred was taking little bits at a time and using a cast off kitchen strainer from Mrs. Farmer Brown's trash pile. Well, next think you know Alexander has hopped on out to the used stuff pile where Farmer Brown keeps things that might one day be useful and low and behold he ups and invents an industrial strainer for Phred and company. Two buckets, some leftover curtain material and a few clamps and now Phred can strain 5 gallons of goo at a time with the rinse water all captured to take to the proper part of the field. Needless to say, Alexander is the current hero of the papermakers.

Accordion Books in Kalamazoo

The Kalamazoo Book Arts Center in Kalamazoo Michigan has a call out for artist accordion style books.

Phred made up just the thing today and we have inserted it into the mail system. The paper is all handmade right here in the warren. Banana fibers from the plantation were cooked and chopped and formed into the luscious cover papers. The pages are a mix of banana fiber and recycled office paper from Farmer Brown's recycle box. A small bit of blue construction paper was mixed into one batch to make the pale blue pages.

The book is bound with three pamphlet style signatures totaling 96 pages. Phred calls this Canoe Notes and hopes it will receive a warm reception in Michigan.

Art Art ART

Seems the artist warren over the hill has effected more than just Phred. Two of our youngsters are getting up to some real craziness with colors. I guess it was partly in their blood and partly enhanced by some visits over that hill.
Little Diego is doing some great flowers. Seems he likes to just focus on the blossom part and usually presents a macro view. Color rendering seems to tend toward the wild and bright, but I must admit he sure can make them look yummy.



Frida, the young lady who seems to always be by his side, is doing some great stuff too. She seems to be focused more on watercolors at the moment. Not sure where she got this idea of a tree, but it works for me.

DIY Postcard Swap from iHanna

The most amazing postcard swap is taking place around the globe right now. Hosted by iHanna there are well over one hundred people sending ten postcards to others. That makes over 1500 postcards flying around the world - ALL IN THE NAME OF ART!

My postcards went out Tuesday the 16th and since then I've received three. The first was from Tari in Germany with a cute little pretzel surprise. The second from Shannon in Burnaby BC, Canada and the third today, complete with glittery tidbits from Tracey in Denver Colorado, USA.

It's now 2/22 and today I received cards from Jenny in Salem OR, Robin in Fairfax, VA, Jennifer in or near Fairbanks, AK all in the USA and Jaana in Sweden

And now on 2/23 two more cards - Melissa in or near Lansing MI, USA and a great fabric art card from pippa in Ausralia.

You can see hundreds of the cards at http://www.flickr.com/groups/postcards2010/pool/show/

I hope my cards get around, let me know if you receive one! Thanx, Surfbunny

Pantry Collection - Wasabi Blank Book

Here's the next offering from Sinister and Phred - a Wasabi Blank Book.

Just the thing for hot haiku, shopping lists or just to jot a quick note.

This small book measures barely one inch by three inches but contains a fair number of pages. It is bound with hemp cord using a traditional Japanese Stab binding technique.

Hot stuff, don't miss out.......

Pantry Collection Books

Well, I guess I've been replaced. You may remember my post on the moving game . It seems while I was gone there was some serious moving to do and that young scalawag Sinister up and took my job.

Now his name makes him get teased a bit, but he's no Darth Vader kind of bunny.

Seems his dad was a big Olde Englishe Historie type fan and when young Sinister was really tiny it was noticed he much preferred his left paw. So instead of a nice sporty name like Lefty, old dad up and gives him this highfalutin baronial name Sinister.

Don't know if he's trying to make up for the teasing, or if he's just quick witted as well as handy, so to speak, but anyway he's taken up the moving game and seems to have done just fine.

Of course moving at this time might be a little easier, it wasn't packages or things which someone might have been interested in, but rather things that Mrs. Farmer Brown was throwing out. It's been the season of cooking up at the farm house and we've noticed lots of coming and going and toing and froing among the farmer folks. Mrs. Farmer Brown has been particularly busy in the kitchen side of things what with taking casseroles and baked goods out to who knows where. She'd lightened the pantry quite a bit we think and the pile of recyclables was getting bigger and bigger.

Of course that was sure to attract the notice of the Baker's Feet Irregulars and they pointed out to Phred that there seemed a lot of cardboard and other stuff just laying there waiting to become something.

Phred of course saw books. So young Sinister volunteered to try his paw, so to speak, and soon Phred had all the chipboard he could want for testing some of his book binding theories.

Here's the result, we'll call them the Pantry Collection and present them over the next few days.

First off, one after our own heart and we are assured there were no rabbit casualties: The Pantry Collection Annie's Pasta - Bernie the Bunny of Approval Note Taking Book with bonus:

Happy Holidays to Everyone

The beach has been great the last few days. We had a day with small surf, but big boats moving through the jetties into the shipping channel. Even an oil rig coming in for repair. Then later the winds were a little better and the surf was too.

Now it's time to head back to the warren and see what Phred and crew have been up to.

I hope you all had a pleasant and joyous Holiday and may your New Year be bright and surfingly awesome.

Surfbunny

Surf's Down - Winter's UP

Well, we had quite a run during late summer and fall. I can't tell you how many waves were ridden, garden patches harvested, or jars of produce were canned. Let's just say it was tons!

Phred and the youngsters continued with the book and paper making and they have some really neat stuff they will be showing off this winter. The artists colony were all invited over for a great Thanksgiving Feast and let me tell you, artsy types can sure party. Truth is though, they still get up (okay, maybe not exactly IN THE MORNING) and get some serious work done. We got some marvelous batik paper out of them and this is Phred's first book of December.

They'll be plenty more coming because he has agreed to do an exhibition of Art Books for a poet friend. The whole thing will be a gallery show in January.

Right now here's the Lady Bug Lady Bug book.

Our Chop

Surfbunny (c) 2009

Here is our chop, I had this made up years ago while surfing in the Orient and have used it on many boards. Now it seems Phred wants to put it on bookboards of all things. Can you believe it? He uses good wax on thread! and GLUE on boards...... He'll never ride a wave off Maui......

Paper on books and books on paper

Well Phred has me really going here on all this paper making and book making - oops, sorry Phred, "Book Binding" - stuff. Seems a day can't go by now but Farmer Brown is walking down the lane to the mailbox and coming back mumbling to himself about where in tarnation are these packages coming from and why?

He mumbles into the dooryard and places the packages on the little shelf in the mud room and calls out to Mrs. Farmer Brown, "Here's another one Hon. What you think these crazy people are up to?"

She just kind of grunts a reply and then everyone seems to forget about the whole thing.

Phred meanwhile has his ear peeled for the sound of one of his Baker's Feet Irregulars to come charging down the warren and into the book binding shop to give him the breathless news that "another one has arrived."

Then they call me down from whereever I'm contemplating the proper wax to use for the current temperature and humidity level and give me my orders to go up to the house and bring that package back here where it belongs.

Well I guess I've carried a few things in my life and perhaps helped an item or two move from here to over there without too much attention called and so I must be the perfect stooge for this ongoing game. I'm noticing though that a couple of the youngsters are watching my every move and it's almost like they are in pantomime of what I'm about to do or just have done. Got to watch them or they'll be trying their hand at the moving game perhaps a bit before they're ready.

Anyway, back to the packages. Seems like they all are coming from the Amazon or some such. Not so big, but solid and heavy, like there were books or something.

So one day I just stood there after handing it to Phred and seeming like daring him to not rip it open while I watched. He couldn't hold out very long and soon enough he showed me that I was indeed hauling coal to Newcastle so to speak. Yeap, I'm bring books into the bindery, the place where Phred makes books, the place where he tells me books are flying out to new homes all around the world.

I do admit he had me haul two packages down to the mailbox where the postman made them move from here to somewhere else, but seems as though we are getting more books in than books are moving out.

Oh well, I guess some fella named Keith Smith must need to get some lettuce too, he sure packs a wallop in his books for shear numbers of diagrams and curlicues and needle in and needle outing he describes in his books. Guess we've got Vol 1 and 3 now and Phred seems pretty keen to find vol 2, 4 and 5 soon it seems. Real catchy titles too. Non Adhesive Binding - Books Without Paste or Glue Volume 1 - now there's one sure to keep you up at night until you get it finished!

As for the outgoing? Well if the books coming in are about paper, the books going out are on paper. This week we shipped a set of ten to a gallery down in LA. ECO-logical Gallery I guess they call it. They specialize in reusing things in new ways and I guess Phred's Digital Journals with the computer disks and funny parts were a big hit in the recycle-reuse-repurpose world.

Also one of the painter rabbits' little canvases went off to a new home up in the cold weather country.

So, paper in and paper out. Not as catchy as wax on - wax off, but hey I can only supply one memorable quote per lifetime. Wonder what ever happened to that Okinawan guy I used to surf with. He sure was into those tiny trees............

Surfbunny

Here's the pics of one of Phred's Digital Journals:

Paper making 101

Phred asked me to tell you a bit about paper making and the problems I've been having. I have been learning from scratch, pulling my whiskers out with worry - why wont it work?

I guess I better start at the beginning.

Paper is made of fibers, and being on a high fiber diet we have lots of fibers in all the warrens, the fine linen Linum usitatissimum the ladies have been weaving has wonderful long fibers, but it is way to valuable to experiment with. Carrot tops are OK but there is a lot of work and little paper making usable fiber. One thing that is in abundance is corn husks, guess humans and bunnies alike don't eat the husks of corn.

So following the directions from one of our tomes I found I had a lot of steps to go through to get usable paper making fiber from corn husks.

First you have to cook the husks, 12 hours later they were still too tough to do much with. Well back to burrowing through the library. Ah, you need an alkali to speed up the process. Soda ash from burnt wood ashes works and Farmer Jones heats his house with wood and has this big pile of ash...

I won't go into all the detail on how we finally made the stuff except to say it was a long hot day.

Cook the husks in soda ash and water, 3 hours later the the husk fibers are soft and pull apart.

The liquid went from being crystal clear to dark brown and smelt a little sweet, but what to do with it?

Well that started a long discussion among the brew bunnies, the baker bunnies and Aunt Aretha, our resident canning and pickling maven. It ended up we neutralized the alkali with acid - vinegar to be precise - if we keep this up Farmer Jones and his wife are going to wonder where all the pickling juice went, Aunt Aretha warned me she'd be making more than paper outta my hide if the pickling storehouse ended up getting a lock down right before cucumber harvest!

After you cook the fiber you have to rinse, then rinse again until the water runs clear, the underground stream the washer bunnies use was excellent for this step - those bunnies are pretty smart too, they had little grove shelves all worked into the stream bed and bank for sitting and holding pots and even a spot to keep their "refreshments" cool. I think I have to come back down here sometime and see just what those bunnies have found to need cooling.

After rinsing you have to beat the fibers, with all the energy the youngsters have you would think that was an easy thing to do. It took a little creative thinking but we put the fiber between some plastic and had them youngsters run and jump and hop 'til it was beaten to a pulp.

Then take the pulp and suspend it in water and use an old window screen to make sheets. Getting the thickness right took a little practice.

After forming the sheets they had to be pressed to get the water out and then dried. Took some thinking here too to get the pressing figured out, but the carpenter crew had an extra couple of barn boards and there was a rock or two we rolled on top and then the whole thing kind'a blended into Farmer Jones ol' "someday might be useful pile" out behind the machine shed and the sun did our work of drying.

From 1 pound of corn husks I got 12 thin sheets of paper.

I'll get Colin to take a picture and post here this afternoon. Not sure what we're going to do with the paper yet. Seems like it would make a great painting surface, or maybe note cards. Real pretty gold color and nice texture. Boy, it all makes me hungry for some of Juanita's tamales, maybe I'll hop over to the cooks den and see what's on the stove.........

BB

Books and ETSY

We are having a great deal of fun with our bookbinding endeavors over on ETSY. It is surprising how the bunnies in the bindery have been able to create a book out of these endlessly interesting items.

I don't want to call it bookmaking - that's what they do down in the teenagers' warren. Seems there's a regular club of racing bunnies and an endless supply of the desire to bet on who can be first out the rabbit hole and into Farmer Jones garden.

In the bindery they are book binding and paper making. Wonderful activities for the hot summer nights and the cold winter days. They have a bunch of specialized equipment and seemly an endless supply of imagination.

Most of their works are currently in the "popular culture" genre, but I have seen a whole table laid out with ancient bindings of many of our most precious codex. I believe we are about to see some medieval style books appear.

The reason I found out about these activities was one day I went into the surf shack to wax up a board and confound it, I couldn't find my best carnauba wax block. I'm rummaging around in my traveling pack and tossing gear here and there when Phred sticks his nose around the doorway and and tries to get my attention without drawing my ire. Okay, so no wax anywhere, I guess I'll see what Phred's all whisker twitching about. He leads me to the bindery and laying there in the middle of a table, like in a place of honor, is my wax block. 'Cept now it has all these lines indented in it. Seems like it is the end all and be all of waxing the linen thread that some of the girls over in the spinning room have been making from Farmer Jones' Linum usitatissimum.

Who would have guessed!

I couldn't really be mad at Phred or the others, they were so excited about what they'd been up to. And darned if the books didn't strike my fancy too. So I slipped a small Pepper Journal into my pack after making a note on the first page to find another block of carnauba wax.

Here's the Pepper Journal.....