With holidays now over I can post about my gift to the new couple that was most certainly a labor of love. Digital images are just fine, but I wanted Juliet and James to have something in their hands, to hold, when they reminisce about their wedding weekend.
Using Artisan State, I made 6 layflat books where landscape-positioned photos (most shot by Fat Orange Cat Studio) each span across 2 open pages. See more details about this project here. (I heartily recommend both vendors, btw, for book making and wedding photography, respectively.)
Once the photo books were in hand it was clear they could use a case, and that's when my project took the unexpected turn of opening up the world of my not-that-distant past (which sometimes feels like a lifetime ago) and re-igniting my interest on that front. In addition to knitting over the years I've had fun making books and boxes to present personal collections of photos and objects. When I left my administrative job at Harvard I intended to focus all attention on these. I don't recall when or how my interests shifted and knit design took center stage – where it remains – but it will likely have to share a little of the spotlight for my attention from this point on.
Venturing into my wedding box project, after all this time I had to remind myself about the technical details. My glue containers, labeled with dates to track shelf life, told me it had been 5 years since I touched them. I also soon realized that I needed to find new sources for some materials. Paper Source, once great for book artist supplies is now more of a gift store. And although Blick carries book cloth, its sheets are very small and weren't suitable for the project. A google search yielded Harcourt Bindery in Charlestown that sells supplies along with fabulous hand bound books for all purposes, and a trip to their studio workspace reminded me why I loved this craft. I walked away with a sheet of book cloth large enough to wrap my dimensions twice, and renewed inspiration to get started. The project also motivated me to take an inventory of where I'd been. Here's some of what I found.
- Let's Walk to Breakfast (2001)
- Betty Box (2003)
- Jewelry Box (2003)
- Familiar Storefronts in My Town (2005)
- What Shall I Cook (2005)
- Magazine Masks (2006)
- Emerson Garden (2007)
- Mossman Park (2008)
- HBS Circles (2008)
5 years ago, I left 2 projects underway – Watch Boxes (a collection of the 24 wrist watches Marlene and I had saved over the years) and Postcards (postcard correspondence collected by my mum during the 1930's and 40's).
I'll aim to get back to these, finally, in the new year.