More Journal Pages

Finished the next page in my prayer journal: watercolor, ink, acrya gouache

Travel Books

Tomorrow morning (Sat) I'll be driving out to Chelmsford MA public library to teach a children's bookmaking workshop. We'll be making a 4x4" rubber-band book and decorating them like world citizen passports or travel journals. We'll also make a diamond pouch to hold our books. Then we'll write and illustrate stories about a trip we took, real or imaginary.

Here are some traveling books that I have made...

Sweet Journey--an artists book with see-thru windows, wheels that turn,

a magnet-closure in the bumper, 

and a glove compartment that opens to reveal a mini-book.

Memories about childhood trips to Canada to visit my grandparents.

Car book open 

 Spread with my dad napping in the back of our station wagon while mom drives

Dashboard, with mini-accordion book hidden in the glove compartment (set into back cover)

Fold-out suitcase book with 4 pockets for mini-books, letters etc.

A "museum book" with 4 galleries and pop-ups 

that tell a story about weaving in Guatemala.

Mama is making tortillas for breakfast

museum book folds up

Simple car book -- cut and folded from one sheet of paper.

spread from an illustrated story book about my trip to Guatemala

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Below are drawings from my travel journals to Guatemala...

fountain in restaurant

church

woman weaving on back-strap loom

study of textile art

map of Panajachel, town where I stayed

another paisley

Years ago I found a book at my public library about paisley designs and the history of paisley shawls. Ever since, whenever I am between projects, I play around with more paisley.

Paisley

A little fun with Paisley. Acrylic paint. Fold out page from mini-book.

Journal Pages

I took a brief online video class with Valerie Sjodin about cutting and embellishing edges of fold-out journal pages. I've been having fun and experimenting, learning about using acrylic paints, designing some prayer pages, and sharing artwork with other students in a special facebook group. It's my first experience with an online class and I'm enjoying it. I'll be sharing some of my learnings with the participants at Spirit of Children conference in August at Green Acre.

So far I've been working in two handmade journals. Here are some shots of a page from the larger journal (8x10") using watercolor paper, acrylic paint and rapidograph pens. This journal is not sewn together yet--it was easier that way to work on the pages. So this is the left half of a two-page spread. The singing bird on the left will fold under the stronghold page. The text is from the prayer for humanity.

In the smaller journal, I used different watercolor paper and tried watercolor paints. This journal is 8x5.75". Here is the cover.

And here is my first fold-out page with a quote from 'Abdu'l-Baha. The trees on the right fold under the fountain page.

Passport Workshop

I recently won a give-away copy of a wonderful book called "The Poetry Friday Anthology: Poems for the School Year with Connections to the Common Core" compiled by Sylvia Vardell and Janet Wong. It has many great poems, organized by grades and themes (K-5). There is one poem for every Friday of the school year and many creative suggestions for teachers about how to make poetry reading a regular part of your classroom. The book is published by Pomelo Books and is available here: http://poetryfridayanthology.blogspot.com/

I'm not a classroom teacher, but I do visit classrooms and libraries to share bookmaking with children. Yesterday, I had my first opportunity to share some poetry from the book. I gave a Passport-Journal bookmaking workshop at my local library. I shared some of my own travel journals with the children and some of my illustrated stories of journeys I have taken. Then I shared two poems from the book "No Way!" and "Family Vacation". Both poems are about what we take with us when we travel, and both poems were rhyming verse. The poems were a big hit! Then we made our passport books, decorated the covers and filled our books with words and pictures.

One boy was inspired to write a series of rhyming poems about pigs that fly in his book. Another boy was in the middle of his own journey and he made a book about his adventure. He was from New Jersey, but had no power at home due to hurricane Sandy, so his family travelled to MA to stay with relatives until the lights come back on. Matthew and I worked together to write and draw pictures to tell the story of his journey and the excitement of sleeping and eating and playing at his cousin's house.

One of my travel books about childhood trips to my Gramma's house in Canada

A page from my travel journal -- a fountain in a restaurant in Guatemala

We made a passport journal 

with a rubber-band and stick binding

that fits into a diamond pouch

More poetry books

Here are more photos of the poetry books from Hilltown Charter School. Most of this batch were made by the younger students.