I think I like this best of the books in the rainbow series.  It’s predominantly red, which is one of my favorite colors, so that’s part of it.

This was one of the first ones I finished, so I wasn’t terribly concerned about making it that different.  I decided to just go with the background as is, and use a strong design as a focal point. This is a commercially purchased stamp that I like quite a bit. I think I like it in part because it resembles the weed-motif I used on the dark clay cups I made last year (inspired by a photo I took in Missouri.)

On the back you can see part of the writing (commercially purchased stamp) and the crows with the basketweave border (linoblock I cut years ago.)

Inspired by the previous book in the rainbow series, I decided I wanted to do some more lettering.  It used to be that people who painted signs and drew ads had to paint the letters and numbers by hand, and they had to use both precision and creativity in designing their own fonts.  I wanted to use a Roman font for this, and I wanted something simple enough that I could showcase each letter without overwhelming the overall design with a too-understandable word.  So I chose my lucky number, in Roman numerals.  Half of it is cut off, but that doesn’t matter. You don’t need to know what my lucky number is.

For the background, after I finished masking and washing with color, I needed some way to tone it down. The other books came out so colorful that I was having trouble differentiating them.  So I used a toothbrush and some black acrylic paint, and splattered it.  To me, it looks a little like something out of the eighties. I seem to remember that splattered look being popular.

I used a sharpie paint marker for the letters. I’m not sure I quite like the sharpie paint markers.  They’re fussy, and not as opaque as I’d like, so I’m not sure they’re more accurate than a brush and some paint or gesso.  I have them now though, so I ought to use them.

This was another one of the rainbow series books, so-called because of the rainbow look of the tie-dyed/marble technique fabric I used for the base.  After the layers of masking tape and washes, I had blocks of color, which I added stamps to.  This one has silver rub-and-buff as accents.

I wanted to try some calligraphy techniques, but I don’t like the way that text can dominate a piece of art, for example when people do collage art that has words like “believe” or “family” or “good times”. It seems kitschy and scrapbook-y to me.  So I asked my friend, Latin teacher and fellow Clarionite Betsy Hasman, for some texts I could use. She gave me this, one of her favorites. I think it’s Cicero.  I drew pencil lines, then chose a font and began to copy from the printout. I don’t understand it at all, and since it’s layered on top of itself, you probably can’t either.

I wanted a focal point on the cover, so I used a framing stamp and some embossing powder. The stamp, however, has too fine of a detail to show well with the embossing powder, and more to the point, I didn’t have anything to go inside. So I cut out a piece of dyed paper towel, then split it and glued it to the center.  I’ve used layers of dyed paper towels to good effect before.

This time, it didn’t seem to do the trick.  More detail, I figured, more stamps. I used the black wings, and then added a smaller silver stamp under it.  I don’t know if I made it better, but I figured I’d done enough. The calligraphy is pretty cool, after all.

This was one of the series of books I made with the tie-dyed/marbling technique cloth as a base. You can see the faint impression of some of the collage background papers, for example, the joss paper.

After I had the rainbow tie-dyed/marbled cloth with the colored paper back, I laid strips of masking tape over it and began to layer colored washes. Since I did this for all six of the rainbow series book covers, they all kind of look similar.  I used my linoblocks of birds to put some detail, and when that proved insufficient, I used black acrylic ink and my commercially purchased stamps.  For this one, I finished by adding some coins that I had purchased in bulk a few years ago to make belly-dancing costumes (before I stopped belly dancing.)

This was actually a book cover that I had started this spring, but had to leave unfinished on the shelf because I ran out of book blanks.  Once I made more book blanks, I got it out to finish up.

I started with a printed calico, which I washed over with violet and black.  You can see the print of gesso that’s fainter (the florentine design) where the wash didn’t take.  I used some bird stamps with interference acrylics, and when I got out the black acrylic paint to print the musical staff, I put some on this as well.

I had a color theme, and knew I wanted to use the bronze charm (which I also used on a previous book) but I didn’t know what should go in the center of the charm, so I cut a circle out of the selvage and used that.  The color matched.  I added the grommets, beads, and brads for texture, then sewed the charm on and glued it to the book blank. When it was finished, I rubbed oil-based rub-n-buff on the cover and especially around the sides to continue the color theme.