A Little Fun Today - and Inky Fingers!

SYLVIA and I went to a new art supply/art project store, Art on a Lark Studio, that officially opened yesterday in our town. They were offering guests the chance to make a free 4 inch x 4 inch book, with their papers, stamps, glitter, glue, etc. So we took them up on it.
We were stamping away on the 4x4 inch squares, using a veritable wall of stamps. Oh, the delight! We glued down pieces of paper and quotations and made one "page" of the book as an envelope that could hold a tag.
Then the books were pierced along the edges with a very amazing took that also crunched the coils together that bound the books. We made these little books in about 2 hours. We can add to them, I guess. The coils can be opened and we can insert more pages. Or we can start from scratch and make new ones and pack them full of pages.
The studio rents art-making time and you can use their paper, stamps, etc. And there are people to clean up after you! Is this heaven or what?
Some of the papers under my little book are ones that were for sale that I couldn't leave without. In winter, who couldn't use these cheerful flower stickers?
I hope your day was a good one and you did something artsy - femminismo
p.s. The quote in the book is from the cartoon, "Sylvia," by Nicole Hollander, 1981. It says "Can you imagine a world without men? No crime and lots of fat, happy women." I guess it's a popular saying for some reason. ; )

Alert! Alert! Great blogspot!

The new year is officially off to a great start.
My newest altered book (a 1941 tome on tap dancing) has a brand new stamp in it thanks to (ta dah!) MelStampz blogspot. (My carving, incidentally, is on top of a printed page from Mel's Web site. Her site has instructions for carving your own. That's her carved bird in the yellowish wood and her own stamps on the paper.)
With encouragement (little was needed, actually, since I've been wanting to do another carved stamp of my own) from MelStampz, I followed along with the directions at the blogspot.
I love crows and ravens; dark birds of intelligence and mystery. My fingertips are now very, very turquoise.
The book on tap dancing (the first page has the "New Year's resolutions" newspaper headline) is now almost entirely painted and ready to become something entirely different.
A brayer - with wax paper for a palette to mix the paint - is now my favorite way of adding color much, much faster.
I want to add many more layers of paint, stamps, etc. and give the pages more depth. This book, which was printed in 1941, does not have very good paper, but I'm hoping all the acrylic paint and matte gel medium will help preserve it and give it a little more substance.
It's probably a big mistake to choose a book so old and fragile, but I just wasn't enough ahead of the game to sew a book together out of more durable paper. I've fallen far enough behind as it is.
Hope you like the stamp. It's carved from Staedtler "Mastercarve," which cuts "like butter." Very, very easy to cut and I can even make a stamp on the other side if I get brave and ambitious.
Good night, and goodbye to the first day of the new year. - femminismo