Fishes, Books, ATCs and That Sleeping Dog Again

Good Morning Readers!

It is morning here anyway. Going on 8 a.m.

Fred dog is still fast asleep on the sofa. I took his picture about half an hour ago and he hasn't budged an inch. 

I'm going to be in a prone position myself before long. My body doesn't care that the sun just came up and I've been awake all night again. I hate this sleep pattern...or lack of a sleep pattern. This up all night, sleep all day routine will not last for long. I'll go longer and longer between the sleep and awake times. I'm running at fourteen awake hours right now. I'm probably good for another hour or so and it'll be time to study the inside of the old eyeballs again. I slept for about 14 hours during the last sleep cycle. I'll crash for at least that many when sleep takes over again. I just wish the old brain would cooperate with the sun when it comes to sleeping. I'm ass backwards from everyone on this front!

While others slept last night I finished off a few fishes and sewed a few books while I was at it.

Get you a cuppa somethin' good, I'm going to ramble.

And as usual, there are lots of pictures to look at!

I didn't promise good pictures though. Morning isn't a good picture taking time in the cutting room apparently cause these pictures are a mess!

My youngest son told me these first two fishes look like they're wearing lipstick. I told the boy to shut up! 

I finished these two the day before yesterday. They're done in pearl watercolors, acrylic paint and marker on cardstock.

The backs are painted one color, one green and the other orange, and my info written in marker.

And beings the boy made that remark about lipstick on the other fishes, these five coming up don't even have lips! 

These fishes were really fun to paint the backgrounds. I got messy! I fingerpainted them. 

I did use a brush on the lines in the fins.

You'll notice all of these fishes have spots. I got a new tool in the mail a week or so ago and I've been going gungho with tiny spots because of those tools. I've no clue what these little tools were originally made to use for. They look something a dentist might use, but they don't seem to be sturdy enough to do much with teeth with them. They're little plastic sticks with a poof of fiber of some sort on the end of them. The small one makes a dot about the size of the thickness of number 2 pencil lead. The larger one makes a dot about twice that size. I got four of them for a dollar from blueskypink. (Plus a bunch of other cool things in that box! Including those pearl watercolors I used on the fishes.)

These were all done in pearl watercolors, acrylic paint, white out correction fluid (eyes) and marker done on cardstock. 

I didn't do much to the backs. I left them like this so if I want, I can send these naked as postcards.

I put a dent in the stack of books waiting to be sewn.

This one has copy paper pages, is about 4.5 inches square and is sewn in the long stitch or figure 8 stitch or whatever that stitch is.

I went the lazy route with cutting the holes for the stitching in the covers. I made slits across the spine where the holes should have been. I did that for two reasons. 1.) I'm sometimes lazy and 2.) The holes would have never turned out even across the spine. and 3.) It was the easy route.

The book is just as sturdy as if I'd taken the hole route and spent twice as much time on it.

I've been working on this paper bag book for ages! I finally broke down and finished it last night.

The cover is a microwave popcorn box (the biggest chipboard box I had) covered in doodled up magazine paper, other scrap paper I doodled on and duct tape. The duct tape is the stuff across the top and bottom edge. It's sewn with red acrylic yarn in the japanese stab binding stitch. This book measures about 11 x  6 inches or so. I didn't actually measure. That's a total guess.

The inside of the covers are painted in acrylics.

As are the 8 paper bags that make up its pages.

I didn't show you ALL the pages. You get the idea. They're just painted up nice and colorful! The bags are left whole and painted on each side and in the gussets. Not a whole lot of rhyme or reason went into the painting of the bags. I just slapped on a bunch of acrylic paint and called it good.

There's a large pocket on the inside of the back cover along with an extra layer of painted and stamped chipboard from another project that was needed for reinforcement. There's a bend in the cover where there was a bend in the popcorn box and the cover didn't work quite right with that bend where it was. The stamped house piece fixed that problem.

A close up of the stitching.

As far as I'm concerned, this book is finished. It is up to someone else to fill it with information.

This little book came out of nowhere in the middle of book sewing. I went into the cutting room to cut a page block for one of these other little books you all are seeing and ended up cutting the page block for this one as well.

It's a tiny book at only 2 inches square. It has 10 signatures of 5 sheets of paper each. Pages are white copy paper.

Covers are plastic math tiles. The red side has a minus symbol and the blue side has a plus symbol. I have quite a few of these little tiles and have no clue what the heck I will do with them all. When I ordered them, I really thought they were something entirely different than what they are. I'll figure out what else to do with them all someday. There are different sizes of tiles besides this size. This size is the largest of the tiles though...different shapes, different colors as well.

I sewed the book together in the copic stitch and then made the closure out of red acrylic yarn and a wooden bead. 

I used my crop-o-dile to put the holes in the covers. That wasn't as easy as I thought it would be. 

Wooden beads seemed to a choice embellishment tonight. It helped that I found the three wooden beads I used on the floor by my desk. The last time my eldest son was here he spilled a box of wooden beads under my desk on the floor. He missed a few when he picked up that mess.

This little book is 4.5 inches square and about 3 inches thick. I used cardstock for the pages. I showed you all the cardstock folders I have been cutting up. I used some of that for the pages. It already had a nice 1/4 inch pocket so I didn't have to fold these pages, just had to cut them to size.

I have no idea what this stitch is called. I made it up as I went along. I have never sewn a book like this before. It worked great though and I will be sewing another one exactly this way in the near future. There are still two or three book covers in that stack.

This is what the cardstock looks like from above. One could put some really chunky embellishments on those pages!

This one is sewn in the long stitch/figure 8 stitch. It is 3.5 inches square with 12 signatures with 5 sheets of paper in each. You do the math. I'm terrible at math! 120 pages?

I like the patterns of the colors on the covers of this little book. Some spots are covered with clear glitter paint and it sparkles.

A different view. Copy paper pages. All the little books with white string holding them together were sewn with crochet cotton.

ATC

fingerpainting with acrylics and then marker 

I did this ATC a long time ago! I found it on the kitchen table the other day when I straightened up that mess.

And last, but not least...or maybe it is the least? It's not a masterpiece by any stretch of the imagination! Another ATC done in ball point pen on cardstock. I bought a new set of pens at Dollar General the other day and had to try them out.

That's it from me for a few days. I'm still working on the butterflies. Progress is moving along nicely on that front. I need to make a basket for my friend Cherry and I don't know what-all will get accomplished by the next post!

Thanks for stopping by!

Remember...

Be good to one another!

It matters!

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