HANDCRAFTED
I have a real passion for creating things with my hands. In college, I took many fine art classes focusing on printmaking and book arts. Over the years I have established a sort of personal aesthetic with my prints; I manipulate images over my photocopier then gelatin print on top of those. I save all these prints and repurpose them as cards or pages within my hand-bound notebooks. The process of working through something with my hands is very important to me, which is why I continue to develop my skills and incorporate handmade elements into my designs.
October 25: Signatures assembled and ready to be bound, the new notebook process continues.
October 26: A notebook is very important to me, I carry it with me at all times and am constantly jotting down thoughts, doodling, etc. Over time I have established a certain aesthetic, but each new one grows out of the previous.
March 22: Happy Birthday David Laskowski!
May 18: Embroidering the beautiful F37 Bella lowercase g.
May 19: Finished the outline of my embroidered F37 Bella g and have decided that I liked it better as a simple running stitch.
June 18: Another little card.
May 6: Tonight I am playing with paper. I wove together this little thank you note from a couple of monoprints I made earlier this year.
May 12: Xerox gelatin monoprints.
October 17: It’s almost time for a new notebook, thus I plan to create some new prints and such to fill the signatures with. The monotype methods I use lend themselves nicely to linear drawings, so I doodled this today.
October 18: I manipulated yesterday’s drawing over the photocopier which resulted in many new interesting patterns.
November 18: I manipulated a line drawing, which I created about month ago for a previous project, over my copier and then printed yesterday’s map in reverse on the back. I cut out each state from various prints and then pieced together the puzzle.
December 24: Established a color palette and design scheme for my holiday gifts. I am noticing a lot of design elements that I have used recently; guess I branded my presents this year.
September 1: Added some color and texture using a gelatin printmaking method. I was hoping to make some other prints to use for cards and such, but I bought a different brand of gelatin than I usually do and it started to fall apart rather quickly.
October 20: Using a couple of the prints from this weekend, I made my friend a happy birthday/happy fall card.
December 29: With only a few days left until Significant Nonsense’s one year anniversary I thought I should get movin’ on a concept for the finale post.
December 30: Still need some cursive practice, but I like where this is heading.
November 10: A sneak peek of what I am working on. Using a laser-print transfer method, I am attempting to transfer prints onto balloons.
November 11: My goal was to laser transfer onto balloons, but the method I typically use was not reacting well to the rubber. In order to get the toner to release from the paper, I apply a natural solvent to the opposite side of the paper and press it onto the desired surface. I tried transferring the design before it was blown up, also after, but more often then not, I popped the balloon. After a lot of trial and error, I was able to get a few to come out somewhat well.
November 4: I saw some packaging design a while back that used a similar stitched method and I have been wanting to employ it myself for some time. It seemed to go along with the idea, so I seized opportunity. I tried a few different papers, and would have liked to try a thicker thread, but this was all I had.
June 17: A little card for my boss to congratulate her on her graduation.
