I like the process of making these designs because it’s loose, flowing and spontaneous. I grab a piece of paper, decide upon a single shape as a starting point for the design, and then start cutting. I try not to over think things and just let the design flow across the page. It’s a wonderfully meditative process.

All three of the paper cuts featured here are 5″x7″, and took between one to two hours to create. I want to go larger with these and also play around with layering a few of them together within a frame.

The flowers are made from colourful tissue paper and masking tape, with cloth covered wire as the stems. They’re a mix of torture and enjoyment to make because it’s not easy wrapping thin paper around a tiny wire and ending up with it in the resemblance of a flower.

At the moment I have less than thirty flowers completed, and hope to make twice that many. I’m really hoping this installation idea is going to look as magical in person as it does in my head. It’ll definitely give visitors a pleasant blast of colour when they stop by during the Culture Crawl.

And if you’re wondering, all the flowers will be available for purchase – in case you want to take the magic home with you.

I am very pleased with my work on this because I had no idea how it would go when I first started putting pins into the wall, and I was winging it all the while. I love it when an experiment in a new process/medium comes together.

My plan is to create one of these on a wall of our apartment and have it as a permanent installation. I’m aiming to have it completed in time for the Eastside Culture Crawl so it can be yet another thing for people to see when they come by.

Materials used: 1.75 balls of sock yarn, 407 pushpins, and artificial leaves (I didn’t count them).

The Foodtree office is nicknamed “the treehouse” so of course I wanted to make a tree. I’d been thinking about making more trees from cardboard, but then came across this tutorial about how to make a tree wall mural from yarn and pushpins.

I bought my supplies of sock yarn from Dressew and pushpins from Yoko Yaya and dove right into making the tree. I’m doing it without having first drawing an outline. It feels like I’m drawing it with the yarn as I go along. It’s been amazing and fascinating to see the tree slowly take shape in the corner of the room.

Once the tree is completed I’m hoping to attach red leaves to the string branches, and then voilà(!) the Treehouse will have a tree.

I’ll share more photos once the tree is complete. I’m considering making one of these at home in our livingroom…

It took me forever to fold the first sheet of paper, and I’ve gotten faster over the last few I’ve done. Folding pleats is both simple and harder than it looks, and you can’t be afraid to push the paper the way you want it to go.

I’m not yet sure what I’m going to do with this new technique, but there are interesting installation ideas developing.

I was drawn to the elegant simplicity of these book bursts, which are made from cutting a book into sections and then folding the pages. I chose a fairly thick book so it took quite a long time to do all that folding.

Each one is done in a slightly different way, and it’s interesting to see the patterns and texture that emerge in each. I’m going to experiment a bit more with something different again with the remaining section of the book.

It feels really good to be exploring books in a different way than usual and I’m curious to see where this will lead.

When these are hung together the wolf will flow around them, from the left side to underneath them. He really completes the whole picture. I decided to treat this more as an installation piece to better tell the story, and I’m saving the final view of everything together for the show.

The piglets I’ve used are toys I bought from Michael’s art supplies, which is not a store I normally visit, but I figured they carried this sort of thing. I painted two of the pigs and left one of them clean and pink so they would look different from each other even though they are exactly the same. The book houses are covered in raffia, dried stems from a lemon balm plant, and paper I hand cut to look like bricks. A special thank you to Horst for cutting the corners off the books with his bandsaw and making them look like houses.

Materials used: three books, raffia, dried lemon balm stems, Japanese paper, white card stock, three plastic pigs, acrylic paint, white glue, and gel medium.

I’ve always loved the line from “Sing a Song of Sixpence” about the “four and twenty black birds baked in a pie” and wanted to attempt to recreate this as an altered book. I thought, “how hard can it be to make a book look like a pie?” Apparently, it’s kind of hard.

This is the second book I folded to use because the first one didn’t work out the way I’d hoped. I did some cutting after the folding that ended up looking more like a mushroom than a pie, and it was then I gave up on that detail of the rhyme. Four and twenty crows flying out of a book is pretty awesome all on its own, thank you very much.

I sourced the bird outlines from google images to make three templates to trace onto black card stock. I then cut out twenty four black birds from the paper using an xacto knife. It was fun to have a small pile of crows on my desk before they were attached to the pages using glue. Yet again I could not resist incorporating paper cut work into an altered book, because I am a little bit obsessed with the process.

The only splash of colour to this is provided by the patterned paper I added as end pages, and I’m really glad to have it there.

Materials used: book, black card stock, scrapbook paper, glue, and gel medium.

This is what I came up with and I love it.

I foolishly cut it from paper that was too flimsy and it curled in a very unhelpful way. I had to back the whole thing with a thicker paper and then recut the shape. I decided to paint the whole thing to make it more dramatic, using black and white acrylic paint. I’m relieved that part went so well because painting, like drawing, is not my strongest artistic skill.

I cut through the cover and then removed pages to about half-way through the book. I actually cut a smaller opening inside the larger one to create a “shelf” of pages for the inner level of paper cut leaves to rest upon. The book cutting was probably the simplest part of making the whole book and the least amount of cutting effort.

Creating the wolf for the Little Red Riding Hood book started a new obsession with the art of the paper cut, so with this book I chose to incorporate more of this type of work. I like this idea because instead of trying to find something to use, I’m making it myself.

The leaves took a REALLY long time to make because I first had to draw it all out and then go back and carefully cut everything piece by piece. I did the lower level of leaves as one piece and the upper level as four separate pieces to maximize the cardstock I had on hand. I don’t do much drawing but leaves are one of the few things I am aces at.

The delicate little red and white roses are also made with paper and were a very lucky find at Michael’s art store. I wouldn’t normally go there for supplies but I really wanted roses for this book. I’m very grateful they not only had the two colours I needed in one package but they’re also exactly what I was hoping to find.

The bear paper cut is made from a black patterned cardstock to suggest the enchantment he is under. I used a photo of a bear I found in google images as my template for the outline and I freehand cut all the details to create the facial features, and fur. I’m really happy with how well the bear turned out.

As with the Little Red Riding Hood book the two figures are cut from photo prints, and come from the same photo shoot I did with Monique and Siobhan to kick off this series. They and the paper bear are resting on top of carefully placed wooden sudoku tiles to raise them from the background and create depth.

I’ve already started and almost finished the third in this series, which actually consists of three books. I have yet to finalize the last two stories I’ll be interpreting so let me know if you have a favorite fairy tale you’d like to see as an altered book.

Materials used: book, recycled wrapping paper, mulberry paper roses, cardstock, sudoku tiles, photographs, glue, and gel medium.

As mentioned previously, I was hoping to combine photography and altered books in this work so the first step was photographing models as fairy tale characters. This led to a hilarious shoot with friends Monique and Siobhan playing pretend and wearing costumes. I made some of these images into paper prints to figure out sizing, which amused me because I realized I’d made friends into paper dolls. With the size figured out, and poses selected, I had a set of photo prints made and this is what you’re seeing as the Red Riding Hood figure in this book.

I should mention those are real tree branches standing in for a full sized forest of trees. I gathered these along the ground from a nearby park, cleansed them of dirt and applied a coat of gel medium to each.

I used a large encyclopedia volume as the canvas for this altered book, and decided to cut the niche about half way through the thickness of the pages. I used two crumpled up pages from the book to create the ground for Red Riding Hood to stroll upon.

The flowers were added for colour, and I made them using a paper punch. The leaves were actually the last detail I came up with. I felt the forest looked too bare and decided to make leaves using another paper punch and recycled wrapping paper. It’s the right bit of whimsy and warmth even if there is a big scary wolf out to get the little miss.

When I started this I wasn’t going to include the wolf, but then as things came together I realized he had to be in there. I decided to create him as a paper cut figure and went searching through google images for reference I could use to create an outline because my drawing skills aren’t very good. I printed out this wolf to use as my template. I traced it onto a piece of black paper then modified and added details by cutting freehand.

I was pleasantly surprised by how well this worked out because it’s not a technique I’ve worked with much before. It’s inspired me to try and incorporate paper cutting into the rest of the Fairy Tales books.

I’m really excited by this series because it’s allowing me to try new things and push boundaries with my artwork. I’ve already selected the next few Fairy Tales and will be starting another altered book this week.

Materials used: book, Japanese paper, recycled wrapping paper, photograph, paper punch, tree branches, straight pins, book pages, glue, and gel medium.

This is a selection of the many photos I’ve shared through Instagram over the last few months. I generally strive for sharing interesting and beautiful things – sometimes art, often graffiti, and mostly nature. The app reminds me of the early days of Flickr when sharing photos with a community felt really exciting and inspiring.

Papers

Antiquarian Books

Late Winter Sunny Day

Big Lou’s Butcher Shop

Boris

Vintage Dress

Cherry Blossoms

If you’re on Instagram, come and find me. My username is simply Rachael Ashe. I’d love to share photos with you.

My initial thoughts around the work I plan to create is to combine altered books with my figurative photography. On Tuesday I sat down in the studio to explore some of the ideas I have about bringing these two mediums together.

I want to combine photo-based figures with found objects within a book. I plan to shoot new material (read: models) to use in these fairy tale themed books, and first steps involved figuring out how best to photograph the models for what I need. The book pictured here was an exploration of materials because I wasn’t sure what format the final output of the photo-based figure should take. I played around with an inkjet print on plain paper and then pulled out a photographic print to work with.

The photo I used in this was a self portrait I shot down at Kits beach two years ago. I purposely did not worry too much about composition or selection of materials with this mixing of media because I just wanted to explore the idea. My biggest concern was finding a print material for the photo-figure that would not be difficult to cut out, and it looks like photo paper works just fine.

I’m excited by this new work and can’t wait to see where this series will go.

Materials used: book, tissue paper, small stones, small shells, photograph, wood tiles, and gel medium.

I don’t feel I do this random style of composition well, so I was finding it tricky to know when to stop layering things. It’s just on the edge of having too many things going on and becoming a mess. But I love the papers overlapping and the colours are fun.

As with the previous collage pieces, this is available for purchase through my Etsy shop or in person.

I recently brainstormed a few ideas for the rolls and today did some playing around with them. I was less focused on making a finished product than I was on seeing the reality of roughly sketched ideas. These are crude unfinished pieces but I learned much from the doing. I can see I’m going to make something BIG out of these.

Exploring and experimenting with new ideas, materials, or processes is unbelievably important, and yet it feels difficult to justify the time because it seems like play instead of work. I’ve frequently struggled with different aspects of this mindset in my first year of being a full time professional artist.

I have much more to say on the topic, but for now, let me ask you: how do you distinguish between play and “real” work in your life or daily job?

I wanted to shoot a fun portrait of Boris and myself to send out as a digital Christmas card. We finally got around to doing this the other evening but I wasn’t quite happy with the results. The portrait wasn’t creative or fun enough to suit me so I decided to take seven photos from the series and make them into an animated gif. I’ve never done this before but It was really fun figuring out how to put it together in photoshop. It was relatively simple too. And now you can watch Boris and I kiss over and over and over…

The tutorial I used is for Photoshop CS3, if you want to make your own animated gif.

The top book is one of the test encyclopedias I experimented on to come up with ideas for the Forgotten Knowledge project. The scrap pages are ones cut from other books along the way. I save these because they can always be made use of. The stack of books and random objects are items I’ll be using in future books.

This was the best way I could come with to capture my process because I don’t do sketches or some other form of brainstorming. It all happens very spontaneously for me.

Pictured above is the finished project I made the other day. Below is the simple inner workings of the pull mechanism using cardstock and part of a resistor. The pattern I learned from uses a washer/lever system that comes through a hole in the background paper to attach to whatever should be moving on the front. This method is better suited to moving something back and forth, but I wanted to move the butterflies up and down. I decided to make slits in the background paper for the wires to run along when the tab was pulled.

The tricky part was figuring out how to position the wires correctly through the background paper to match up with the butterflies, and then slip the resistors through the paper once they were glued.

The finished movement isn’t dramatic (pictured below) but I’m satisfied with having figured out a new approach I can apply to something else.

Here’s the top view of the project so you can see that I actually did all of this inside a real book.

Last Saturday I was playing around with coriander seeds Boris had brought home from his food shopping trip. There were a few scattered on the kitchen table and I started to wonder what they’d look like in the tiny bottles I’ve had waiting in the wings for their own altered book to call home. I loved how they looked in the bottle so I went searching through more things for different items to try. The photo above shows what I came up with: coriander seeds, feathers (thanks Jess), dried rosemary, and salt. As I’ve mentioned before, playing with materials is the best way I’ve found to come up with ideas for my altered book art. It moves me from abstract thinking about objects and the vague ideas I have, to playing with them and clarifying what works and what does not. Now I know I do want the bottles to contain things, and it makes me realize they’ll need to be sealed. I have an idea about that too which I need to explore.

The paper flowers in these two photos are from the altered book I just finished this week. The flowers were created using a flower-shaped paper punch on the book pages. It was an experiment because I wanted to see what the book would look like with pieces of the pages removed, but it wasn’t a very effective technique this attempt. It did leave me with piles of flowers and I decided to string these together and make them part of the composition in the book.

More on the finished book later this week. I haven’t yet had a chance to photograph it.

I’m not sure about other artists, but I always seem to have a bunch of ideas in the back of my mind that resurface every once in awhile, but never quite make it to reality. I think some of these ideas aren’t meant to be, while a very few seem to be biding their time waiting until I eventually have the right knowledge and skills to make them happen.

I’ve wanted to create art from old books ever since I came across Tim Karpinski’s illustrations painted in a book in a Portland art show two years ago. I made a few attempts at using heat transfer paper to print my photos in books, but the paper was too delicate to take the high temperatures needed for the process and I wasn’t satisfied with the results. Since then I’ve taken up collage which has involved figuring out techniques and exploring an art form that is an alternative to taking photos. It is also more hands-on than photography tends to be these days. I think it was a direction I needed to take in order to learn how to work with the books in the way I wanted.

On the weekend I went to the grand reopening of RubyDog’s Art House and bought (among other things) “New Directions in Altered Books” by Gabe Cyr. It’s full of ideas for turning old books into interesting pieces of art and has inspired me to finally explore my thoughts on creating things from old books.

Today I experimented with my first one, which is featured in the photo at the top of this blog post. It’s pretty basic, and is really more of an experiment than anything, but it was oh-so-satisfying to make, and I want to do more more MORE! (Colour me excited.) The collage contains sewing pattern paper, a silver coin, locking mechanism parts, a metal bird, and a watch face. The red spiral pattern was created with a rubber stamp and ink. I also used gel medium to glue the edges of the pages, and wash of gesso along the edges.

When Boris and I were in Victoria earlier this year I came across the motherload of medium format expired slide film in a small camera store in Bastion Square. At first I was hesitant to buy it all because most of the film was 220 and I wasn’t sure I could shoot this in my holga. For those not familiar with film formats, medium format film come in 120 rolls which allows for 12 exposures or 220 rolls which allow for 24 exposures (this varies with the type of camera). The larger roll also doesn’t work with every medium format camera, at least that’s what I’d been led to believe. I went ahead and bought the lot deciding to take my chances because of the cheap price of four year expired film.

The shots I’ve included in this blog post were the first taken on the roll of 220 with a holga. As you can see, I had a lightleak and it went through the entire roll. With 220 film the whole camera has to be taped up, including the window at the back of the holga, because the film doesn’t have a paper backing the way 120 does. I’ll add more tape for next time. The trickiest part of shooting 220 is keeping track of the number of exposures because you can no longer see the numbers at the back, as well as being careful to count the number of clicks between frames.

For more detailed instructions on shooting 220 film go read “How to Use 220 film in a Holga.”

I love this piece. It actually started out as a test to see how a particular Japanese paper (I don’t know the name of) looked layered over the gel medium transfer I’d done of one of my tree photos on wood. I did a test of each colour of paper – green, blue, and an off-white – and suddenly it was becoming a composition rather than just a “test piece” for collaging techniques. The leaf skeleton, splashes of watercolour, bird stamp, and coating of gel medium were further additions to make it complete.

On another note, I’ve been having doubts about making Christmas presents versus buying them. My thoughts are whether handmade presents are less valuable, or maybe less valued, than something store bought, and is it cheaping out to do things myself. I know this isn’t true, and I love it when friends gift me items made with their own hands, but not everyone appreciates a handmade item. I’d love to hear your thoughts on this.

A few weeks ago I came up with the strange looking portrait of myself for my 52 weeks series. The idea was inspired by double-exposure shots, which can’t be done with digital as far as I know. I decided to take four shots of myself, one sharp, and the others as I shook my head from side to side, and then overlay them in photoshop. I liked the resulting surreal effect so much I’ve decided to shoot other people in a similar manner and create a series of these portraits. Kirsti was my first model, and she looks just as strange as I do. Who shall be next…?

My light painting session at Northern Voice was a big success on Friday afternoon. Everyone seemed to really enjoy themselves, and hopefully they learned something too. For me it was incredibly fun and inspiring to see such a large group of people creatively collaborating together, and I think we did some really great stuff. And to think I almost decided against doing light painting at all because I felt I didn’t know enough about it. My original intention had been to pull people aside throughout the day to pose for me one at a time, but I think the group session was a much better idea.

The whole thing was inspired by Julian Cash, and the fun shoot we did when I was in San Francisco last October. He’s done this sort of thing at conferences, like foocamp 2007, and I think it makes for much more interesting photos than what you’d typically see resulting from such an event. My purpose for doing it was to come up with creative photos, and I definitely did it.

If there are enough people interested, I’d really love to do this again in the near future. I just need to find an appropriate venue that is both large enough and dark enough for long exposures.

Sharen Burns

Arieanna

I will be at Northern Voice for the next two days. It is the third year in a row I’ll be in attendance, and this year I’m involved as an assistant organizer of activities for Moosecamp. I’m hoping to revisit the meatspace mashup people graphs I did last year with Zak, take light painting portraits throughout the day, and maybe, possibly, participate as a speaker during the photocamp session – but only if Kris makes me. (I hate public speaking…)