ORIGAMI SCREEN STRUCTURE

At the June workshop Kenzie Mullen will teach us how to make an Origami Screen Structure that was designed by Margo Klass. This is a great structure to display beautiful photographs or art work.

NEWPORT PAPER & BOOK ARTS FESTIVAL

The 2023 Newport Paper & Book Arts Festival (NPBAF) was held April 13-15 in Newport, Oregon. Of the almost 100 attendees, 21 were members of NORBAG. We were lucky to experience beautiful sunny (but still chilly) weather for all three days. Seven instructors taught 11 different classes that included book and box making, paper embellishment & marbling, animated pop-ups, and using different plant matter for inks and dyes. The Instructor's Exhibition and talks by some of the instructors were very inspiring. It's not too early to start thinking about next years festival which will take place over three days between April 11-14, 2024. For more information contact Sara at ssiggelkow@coastarts.org.

Here are some photographs from the festival. The first group of photos are from the Instructor's Exhibition at the Visual Arts Center.

Margo Klass - Solstice Moon, Unfolding Box Book

Connie Stricks - Birch Journal

Connie Stricks 

Randi Parkhurst - Rainbow Boxes

Moe Snyder - Three Tiers

Moe Snyder - Picture This

Some of the instructors and local artists shared their work at one of the evening events.

Shawn Sheehy

Shawn taught the animated pop-up classes

One page from Shawn's Fresh Cut Xmas book

The Popbox Cabinet

Cheri Aldrich is a NORBAG member from Newport who also had an exhibit at the Visual Arts Center during the festival.

Cheri described some of her pieces
 in her - It's Just My Nature exhibit

Another view of Cheri's wonderful creations

The following photographs are from one of the classes and also include some of the items made by class participants.

Busy making pop-ups

Shawn Sheehy's Pop-up class

Bonnie Julien took both of Shawn's classes

Three days of classes = two books of pop-ups

Dolores Guffey's beautiful dragonfly display box 
made in Margo Klass' workshop.

STILT BOOKS

Our May workshop will be taught by Edge Gerring. This will be a very different structure for us, but it should be great fun to make. Edge uses the term, stilt, for books that are mounted on sticks. The sticks, or stilts, can be any material from natural branches, dowels, skewers, popsicle sticks to blown glass, chopsticks, or straws! This class will introduce you to a variety of ways to mount panels on sticks with show and tell presentation. Then we will make a stilt book!

This is the size Stilt Book we will make.

The other photos show different sizes and ways to attach the panels to the stilts.

Tools:

• PVA (or other white glue) and toothpick
• Waxed embroidery floss, waxed thread, etc. for tying the panels to the stilts
• Scissors and awl or very small hole punch (1.0-1.5 mm screw punch)
• A piece of thick paper to make a hole punching template
• Pencil
• A needle with an eye that will accommodate the thread you are using
• A small weight is helpful, but not required to hold things down while you tie knots
• Optional: a straight edge and clamps to make a bumper at the edge of your work surface. This is helpful in making sure all the stick bottoms are lined up with each other.

Materials:

• Four (4) panels of heavy card stock, playing cards or thin cardboard 3-1/2" high by 2-1/2" wide. You can use a larger (or smaller) size, as you wish, square or rectangular
• Decorate your panels before class, or use them plain and this can be a prototype
• Five (5) sticks (Edge will be using thin skewers that are 6" long. The length of yours is up to you, but they should be at least 2" longer than the height of your panels.
• Beads or other decorative stuff if desired

When:   Saturday May 13 at 10 a.m. PDT

Where:  On your computer, tablet or smartphone via Zoom

RSVP:   To Dolores Guffey by May 8 to receive the password

Workshop Questions: Edge Gerring

Zoom Questions:  Bobbie Hayes

Contact information for everyone is in the newsletter

ROOMS, SCRIBES AND SCRIBBLES

Many thanks to Diane Williams who taught us a very clever and adaptable one page structure at our April workshop. If you enjoy decorating rooms, like for a dollhouse, then this structure is for you! All you need to get started is a square piece of paper that you fold into 16 even squares and you're halfway there. Of course you don't have to use the four spaces as "rooms", but many of us were intrigued by how Dolores Guffey decorated hers using photographs of dollhouse rooms. Here are photographs of her "rooms".

Dolores did not glue her "rooms" together
so that they could also be displayed in an
accordion orientation.

The kitchen

The Living Room

The bathroom

The bedroom

The structure can still be arranged together for display.

If you would rather not decorate your structure as "rooms", here is an example from Margaret Beech.

Margaret also left her book in accordion format
so that it can be displayed different ways.

Scripts, Scribes & Scribbles

Those of us who live in the Pacific Northwest are very lucky that book art and other endeavors relating to the making and sharing of books and zines is so prevalent. There are multiple book art organizations, museums and libraries with wonderful collections and various exhibitions showcasing the art. One can almost always find an exhibit to visit.

Currently, until April 26th, Scripts, Scribes & Scribbles is on display at Collins Memorial Library on the campus of the University of Puget Sound. This exhibit "brings together examples of handwriting and illustrates how handwriting has been taught, reproduced, and reimagined over the past five hundred years. Displaying a range of books and manuscripts from the Collins Memorial Library collection and many private donors and collectors, the exhibition makes the role of handwriting in the age of print, newly legible.

The exhibit also includes artifacts and tools used in the act of writing, including a central part of the exhibition, a 19th century ladies writing desk (Bonheur du jour), inkwells, pens, quills and much more."

Here are a few photographs from the exhibition.

Changes by Bonnie Larson

Pocketbook by Nancy Brones.

 This book was sized to fit into a typical pocket

 of a women from the 18th century. The text is

 from the nursery rhyme "Lucy Locket".

ONE SHEET HOUSE BOOK

Spring is here and our April workshop will provide us with the opportunity to decorate a little "house" book. Diane Williams will teach us this quick and easy structure, but the "decor" will be up to each individual. It doesn't even have to be a "house" although the structure does allow for four different "rooms" or spaces. It could be garden areas or decorate for each season. It lends itself to many great possibilities. Below you will see Diane's example.

Diane will be demonstrating using a 12" x 12" piece of medium weight cardstock. This size will create a 3" square book. You could also use an 8" x 8" piece of cardstock to make a 2" square book. Other materials needed are:

• Scissors or a craft knife
• Ruler
• Your choice of glue: glue stick or liquid glue
• Cutting mat (optional)
• Scoreboard (optional)

As you can see from the photos, this will be a quick structure to make, so consider one to use as a model and make a second one to decorate the "rooms" or divided spaces. It stands up nicely to display the four different spaces.

Here are two more examples by Dolores Guffey.

Decorated rooms

Stamped dragonflies

Itty Bitty Workshop Review

Miniature books are so much fun to look at and to make. We would like to thank one of our newest members, Miss Amy Hand, for teaching us her Itty Bitty Book structure. This cute little book can easily be reduced or enlarged depending upon the size of paper you use. The fun part is how one changes an accordion folded strip of paper into a case bound style of book without doing any stitching. We enjoyed this so much and the structure was so easy, that some members made several books during the workshop. I suspect we'll be seeing more of these structures in upcoming exchange books.

Amy gives a "thumbs up" to the participants in the workshop.

The following photos show some of the books made during the workshop.

Margaret Beech made these three books.

Sherril Story also made three books.

Beth McIlraith shows her book with the belly band she added.

Three little books from Bonnie Julien

Michele Kamprath's book

The inside of Michele's book is a gelli print.