Sticky Hands

My hands are all covered in dried glue and it's hurting the fine hairs on my wrists as I pull it off, though it is strangely addictive. My brother when he was little, attending playschool, used to  paint his hands with glue, or if that wasn't available, paint, and spend the rest of the day peeling it off. I'm not quite that bad and I have actually achieved something today.

I decided it was about time I tried to bind my Crow Story book. The components of it (the etched pages and the embossed front covers) have been sitting in my studio for a week or so, I've just been waiting for a day off work to buy some board. I'm now back down to 2 days a week in the gallery where I work, after working 4 days for the past month (didn't enjoy that) so I went to Dean's Art yesterday and bought all the things I needed and got down to it today.

As you can see the book is concertina style, but with a regular hard back cover. The cover is made from lovely black Hahnemulhe cotton rag paper which I embossed using a plate made from cut out pieces of card arranged in a feathery pattern.

The plate (below) looks like it is made from balsa wood, but that is just the layer of shellac painted over the card. I actually used the reverse side of the embossed prints in order to get the full wing effect, otherwise it would have been in relief. I have also made a number of embossed prints as pictures in both black and white. I like the effect.