Oh dear, I’m not awfully good at blogging. My main problem has been having to prioritise and the time I would have taken to write a post has been used for printing or urgent admin. It has been a really, really busy summer and I’ve been working pretty much every day and night apart from when I took two weeks off to go on holiday with Brian. We just jumped in the car and headed north to Scotland complete with Harry the wonderdog and our tentipi. With no plan but some good ideas, we visited Glencoe, the Isles of Skye, Harris and Lewis, Loch Ness and Fort William (for a quick scoot up Ben Nevis). We ran everyday, swam in the sea and visited artist friends in the Outer Hebrides. It was brilliant.

I came back with lots of ideas for prints and feeling refreshed. I then had  time off with Mum on her recent visit. Both of those ‘time outs’ were just what I needed and I feel almost sane again 🙂

The upside of being so busy is that I am also selling lots of my prints and my work is reaching a wider audience which has led to some exciting invitations for exhibitions and some new galleries selling my work…more on that in a future post.

I promised that I’d show some of the other books that I’ve made as a result of Joan Newall’s excellent bookmaking course and as I am about to begin year 3, here they are.

This is a star book and is called ‘The Rookery Book’. It has a photopolymer print cover and the inside is cartridge paper with photopolymer and relief printing.

This book is a concertina book and is called ‘Seven for a Secret’. It is collagraphs printed on hahnmuhle paper with a monotyped cover and blind embossed text.

And finally, here is my favourite book of the trio, ‘As the Crow Flies’. It is a gallery book and has a monotyped cover with block prints on hand dyed paper inside plus the text is of haiku that I wrote about members of the crow family (jackdaws, rooks, crows etc) over the course of a year.

Well, I hope you liked the books. This year’s theme for our course is ‘inside’ and we are going to explore dying papers, bleaching, rusting and wax as well as pushing some of the book forms we’ve already learnt in new directions. I’m really looking forward to it.