Book of the Month Club

Via Spoon & Tamago

The concept is a mobile pop-up book shop, and this second iteration was called Numabookcat. 

This sculpture in books is great, but there's more. After a conversation with the bookseller and the exchange of 4200 yen, you would be mailed a book every month for a year based on this interview. Kind of like telling your fortune in books. 

How often would the book selection be just right, I wonder?

Letterheads Paper Doll RR

At long last completed and mailed! This was a paper doll round robin through the Letterheads Yahoo group. The participants began with a concept paper doll and case, and mailed them off to others to add bits and pieces. My doll was a Dias de los Muertos theme, pictured HERE, (Cris' additions to my doll are added there as well), and this doll is the brainchild of Cris P., a magnetic doll housed in an LP album case. Each slipcase was to represent a place that you had traveled to or wanted to travel to, and would include travel ephemera along with magnetic clothing and accessories for the doll.

I chose to have Cris' doll visit "Reality TV" via Project Runway in New York City, and was bound and determined to coordinate the Craft Robo with Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop.

I finally figured it out, the cutting, print and cut, the remarkable importance of "orientation", but there was much ado and a lot of wasted paper...
Sleeve front: The outside of the envelope formed a pocket for the "travel" miscellany, (a map of Bryant Park, an adapted Fashion Week schedule, an invented ticket, and a postcard), with a backdrop of a NYC cityscape, and a foreground collage of Season 5 contestants with Tim Gunn and Heidi Klum.

Inside the sleeve are three components:
1) The Workroom (three dress forms with magnets on the back to hold the paper fashions, and three magnetic PR "challenge" outfits. My daughter pronounced the first one to be an "out", and the other two were modeled after a "garden" and a "museum" challenge.)

3) "Tim Gunn's Bon Mots", which has paper sliders that pull out to reveal some of my favorite Tim Gunn quotes from various seasons. I tried and failed, for various reasons that I cannot even comprehend, to do this completely with the Craft Robo and Illustrator, but the circles, slider holes, Tim Gunn pulls, and the backing sheets, at least, were cut out on the CR. I had to manually match the NY pictures and glue in the quotes so they could be seen in the windows.

The Bryant Park photograph by Sonja Peiper used in the postcard is from wikimedia, an archive of free-use photographs; the NYC image by Roswitha Schacht used on the outside of the LP sleeve and Tim Gunn's Bon Mots is from morguefile, another public image archive.

More or less how...

Anthropologie

Anthropologie transforms discarded books into sculpture:

Pictures are from (1,2) casasugar, (3) apartment therapy through aesthetic outburst, and (4, 5) dreambirdz.

These displays almost make me want to buy some overpriced clothing... or at least a doorknob.

Catrina

For a Letterheads paperdoll swap, I made a Catrina (Day of the Dead) paper doll. This is her traveling case. The saying on the front of the case translates as "When we live with hope, we die happy". The ribbon closures tie at the side, and a pair of eye milagros adorn the front of the case. That's an Acey Deucey stamp - the one with the guitar.








On the side of the case, the words translate roughly as
"There is more time than life".

When the case is opened, there is a top layer with a coffin-shaped piece tied on with string and a heart milagro. Marigolds, flowers of the dead, were constructed of dyed paper flowers and glued to the case and the coffin piece. The hand milagro lifts out the portion of the case that covers the paper doll's clothing.


















The skeleton body was manipulated in Photoshop from clip art and printed on cardstock. Her articulated limbs were attached with the tiniest of eyelets. It was a little tricky making the eyelets tight enough so they weren't floppy, but loose enough so she could be posed. Her makeup was done with Prismacolor color pencils.


















Before she went off to her next round robin destination, I made two outfits for her. They were attached at the back with little bendable copper strips. Her dresses were primarily constructed of decorative paper glued to a paper base, with various trims attached. The trim on her ruffled dress is a lace-stamped tissue paper, her boa is also made of tissue paper. Her bridal veil is fabric trim, along with the pearls accenting the gown, and she carries a simple bouquet of calla lilies.


















Doesn't she make a beautiful bride? She's off on a round robin. I'll post her new duds and bibelots on her return.

UPDATE:

Cris P. added THE most inventive and beautiful items to Catrina's wardrobe!

All manner of tissue paper Dias de los Muertos miniatures, including a little booklet with a sugar skull recipe and the tiniest papel picado banner...

















Queen of the Rodeo...


















The traditional Catrina hat...


















An envelope of faces...













And more! Thanks again, Cris!

Spider Bling

These are spider ring bling. We did these at a Halloween party the other day. The idea came from the beadyeyedbrat Halloween pages online. First painted with acrylic paint, and then sprinkled or dipped in glitter. (A spritz of sealer after the paint dries will keep down "glitter dust".) Jewels, sequins, beads were added with a tacky glue dot ~ (it helps to have a tweezer and a steady hand for the smallest ones).
These are some big spiders that came in the plastic assortment; they're about 3-4 inches from tip to tip though they look smaller in this picture than the rings. Tiny dots of color and decoration can be added with a 3D paint like Scribbles. One could also apply the baubles with one of those fancy tools that heat already-applied adhesive on the back of the jewels. Could also use glitter glue, and I might try a bit of gold-leafing today!