Category: Arts & Crafts

Description*

Paper artist and teacher Helen Hiebert compiles a one-of-kind collection of 40 unique projects, each using just one sheet of paper. Combining decorative paper techniques like marbling, stamping, and stenciling with dimensional techniques like origami, cutting, folding, quilling, stretching, weaving, and pop-ups, The Art of Papercraft offers a rich variety of projects that will delight crafters, artists, and designers alike, including paper votive lights, pop-up cards, folded paper gift boxes and envelopes, woven paper wall hangings, miniature one-sheet books, and much more. Every project is beautifully photographed and accompanied by step-by-step visual instructions. Guidance on selecting tools, materials, and paper selection; in-depth technique instructions; and profiles of contributing paper artists make this a rich and practical celebration of papercraft.

Anyone serious about papercraft will find this book useful, practical, and a pleasure to read. Hiebert provides plenty of technical and historical information about paper which casual paper folders will likely skip, but which is gold for artists just entering the field.

The projects range from very simple origami to complicated sculpture, and are presented in a way that makes this useful as a textbook for someone seriously learning the art.

There are recipes for glues (the homemade wheat paste is particularly intriguing and something I plan to try soon), practical advice on paper, including how to determine the grain and weight, and, best of all, gorgeous photos of completed projects from artists as young as 11.

This will make a great addition to library art collections and to personal collections of paper artists.

Publication Date: February 15, 2022
Published By: Storey Publishing
Thanks to *Netgalley for the review copy

There are people who love to read and prize the story above all else. These people will read anything – traditional printed books, e-books, magazines, comic books, and so on. Then there are others who love the form of the book as much as the words. These people love the feel and smell and heft of a book. They appreciate the font used to create the words, the paper used to create the pages, the color used to create beautiful endpapers or illustrations, and the art of the cover. A book is a book is a book.

In the little book of BOOK MAKING by Charlotte Rivers, the art of creating a book is broken down into multiple types of processes that artists and crafters can use to create beautiful handmade books. Rivers begins by offering an “anatomy of a book” that illustrates and describes all the different parts of a book – signatures, endpapers, head- and tailbands, the case, covering, backing material, and spine. This simple illustration and accompanying text is useful for any beginning bookbinder and will be something a budding book artist will refer to again and again.

Rivers then introduces the reader to a number of accomplished book binders and artists from around the world. Their featured work illustrates types of book creation such as folded bindings and includes intricate work from artists like Gabriela Irigoyen, Thereza Rowe, and Becca Hirsbrunner among others. Each page features a different artist, including photos and descriptions of their work. The same descriptive process is followed for chapters on sewn bindings and packaging.

Rivers reserves the final chapter for “Bookmaking in Practice” where she gives the tools and steps needed to begin binding your own books. I nice set of illustrations and descriptions of necessary tools precedes instructions written by individual artists on how to make a variety of books, from an “Instant Book” to accordian, carousel, and dragon books. Also included are step by step instructions on various binding techniques such as pamphlet stitch, coptic stitch, long stitch, and Japanese stab stitch. Finally, instructions for creating a case binding, marbling endpapers, hand-dying paper, and creating cloth-covered boards are also included.

While the drawn, illustrated instructions might put some people off, they work in this little book. The instructions are clear, and using photos of real artist bound books to demonstrate different aspects of book making helps makes this a handy guide for anyone interested in trying book making.

Recommended for library collections and students.

Vision Box Ideas by Mark Montano – I don’t usually like to review graphic-intense books such as graphic novels or art/crafting books in digital format because my past experiences has included pages that take F-O-R-E-V-E-R to load, and miniscule text rendered as PDF that is nearly impossible to read.

I was pleasantly surprised, then, when I found Vision Box Ideas by Mark Montano very easy to read, with beautifully rendered images and clear text. I was not familiar with Montano when I started this book, but apparently he has some real arts & crafts cred, which shines through in this inspiring offering. Montano offers several examples of vision boxes centered around ideas such as travels and angels. He takes great care to let us know, though, that these are ideas that we should use as jumping off points for our own creative vision boxes.

What is a vision box? Pretty much anything you can imagine. Think about what is special to you, what has meaning in your life right now, or what you envision in your life in the future. Then think about how to represent those visions visually. Finally, arrange all those visual representations into a 2 or 3 dimensional collage created inside a frame or box. I’m making a box right now centered around letter-writing using old letters from friends, beautiful stationery, photos, stamps, and unusual writing utensils.

Montano is very clear and precise in his instructions, all the while reminding us that creating art isn’t done according to a blueprint – that each project has to have some of us injected somewhere. He shows us how to create his boxes exactly, if we want to, but he also pushes us to change a little bit here, or add a little bit there, to create something unique.

Highly recommended.