Tuesday, March 20, 2012

Celebrating Spring!

The wind chimes are clanging, the wind whistling, the cats are plastered against the wood stove. Hail has fallen in sparadic bursts landing like pop-its on the green grass. What a strange way to begin the new cycle. I have hurriedly finished up a couple of projects, just in case... something warm and spring-like happens and the out of doors beckons.
These are the projects on the worktable. I thought it was funny that all my projects had that warm rusty brown color. I wondered if I would come back to these colors after attending my weekend workshop?



I took a great bookmaking workshop from Shawn Sheehy on Moveable Structures (wheels and pull tabs). OMG - I felt like a kindergartener on the first day of school - so excited and yet worried if I could listen and measure at the same time, or cut, fold, and glue properly! The best part about the whole thing is we walked away with our very own BOOK with 16 different structures!

This page used a string pulley to move the leaf up and down.


This funny character made from scraps is like a jack in the box.
 He kind of pops open. When the page is closed he is flat.



This pop-up piggy wasn't demonstrated in our class but
 the pattern is on Shawn's website.
 I came home and added pages to my book to see if I could use
 what I learned to create my own pull tab creations.


Here's my design for a moveable arm to move the cloud and
 flying crow up the page.  
And because I am still new at the process my violets slide up.
Matching the right illustration with the right mechanism
may take more time to learn.
But I am happy because the mechanism works!  


With luck, I may move on to first grade!
 Now that is something to celebrate since spring is slow in coming.

3 comments:

  1. Wow! What a grand time you've had! I love your color palette on your desk...show us more! Shawn is coming to Asheville, NC to give a workshop, it might even be the same one. In conjunction there is a call for pop-ups in the gallery - FYI. Love the joy of creating. Well done!

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  2. Love your pop-up pages. They bring out the child within, no matter what age we are. Your worktable looks like you are having such fun immersing yourself in art with your muse.

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  3. I am so loving your pop-up books and all the many details - what fun the workshop must have been - I am totally blown away with your RUST projects - the colors are unbelievable - I must try - gotta slow down soon and of course your little branch people - this obsession must come from the other branch of the family - grin- hugs to my creative,, inventive, sis.

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