Book and Paper Arts Archives - Page 8 of 15

Book and Paper Arts (page 8 of 15)

How to Add a Handmade Map to Your Journal Pages

August 8, 2020 / by Kelly

I don’t know about you but I am feeling on the lost side of things these days, dazed and confused. So what do you say we make a handmade map? If you keep journal pages you can add a map there and then you’ll know where you are. When this mess is all over, you can look at it and know that this is where you were. It’s fun, it’s simple, it is an easy way to feel as though you are making order out of chaos and that is really therapeutic right now. Also, it’s not fattening. So let’s go.

You don’t have to draw well to be a good cartographer of your life. Yes, you could do a fancier job but if you wait, you might not get around to doing it. (Sound familiar?) Hand drawn maps have a special charm and immediate quality and a diagram of your neighbourhood is a powerful tool for storytelling and memory keeping. (One of my most cherished maps is one I made of the walk I took every single day for years with my dog: it was so ordinary but now that my animal friend is gone, I can [read more]

Altered Book Filled With Vintage Paper Ephemera

August 6, 2020 / by Kelly

Hellooooooooooo! This is my latest altered book and it is full of vintage paper ephemera from the 19th and early 20th century. This book took several weeks to make, from preparation to blocking and creating individual collage layouts using a variety of authentic engravings and other vintage images. These are not printed downloads: I always use originals. This altered book is a one-of-kind piece.

If you want to see a larger version of any photo below, just click on it and hey, presto, you will be able to see more detail.

Please let me know if you have any questions or leave me a comment below. I love getting your feedback.

If you are interested in buying this altered book it is £165 plus £8 worldwide shipping. Please send me an email at kellyboler79@gmail.com or a DM at Instagram [read more]

Digital Downloads Botanical Flowers 1838

July 16, 2020 / by Kelly

Last year I got lucky and found a book called Paxton’s Magazine of Botany from 1838. (Or maybe it found me.) Inside were 48 insanely beautiful, hand-coloured botanical plates of flowers. Repeat – each one of these prints was painted by hand. I am still working out how (or if) I will sell the originals but in the meantime, I am offering them as digital downloads that you can print and use in your own artwork. Each plate is high resolution, 300 dpi.

Note that the originals of these plates are over 180 years old some of these copies will have foxing and other smudging from over the years but if you love old paper as I do, you will consider this part of their patina and part of the story that they are telling. They are also in the public domain so you can use them in your creations safely.

Please go to the bottom of this post to see a video of ways that I use these images in my mixed-media and art journal [read more]

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How to Layout an Altered Book Page

June 16, 2020 / by Kelly

In this video I share how I create one of my collage layouts in my altered books. Using a vintage image from “The Girl’s Own Paper”, a magazine from 1903, and the cover of an antique French bank book from 1910, I show how I play with a variety of backgrounds to get a page that you can’t stop looking at. I also explain about where to put the images on the page and how to rearrange them to change the narrative, or story, that the images are telling. Finally, I show how to really make your altered book pages pop by edging the images with charcoal and smudging.

Please let me know if you have any questions in the comments below and I will be happy to get back to you and if you like what you see, subscribe to my free, online newsletter where you will receive tips, hacks, and tutorials for making altered books and other paper and journal arts [read more]

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Vintage Paper in Altered Book Pockets

May 28, 2020 / by Kelly

This latest altered book is chock full of vintage goodies tucked into pockets. Included in this piece:

Colour woodpecker engraving, 1867

Variety of engravings of jaunty women, 1881 and 1887

Cabinet card of young girl, 1900s

Distressed envelope with sealing wax, 1851

Handwritten postcard, 1875

Handwritten French card

Celluloid card, 1911

French “wrapper”, handwritten receipt, 1857

To see a larger view of any photo, click on the picture:This

Here is the flipthrough:

Cost is £175 GBP with free worldwide shipping. Contact me to buy or use the Buy It Now below. (Click here for currency converter.) Any questions? Send me an email at [read more]

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Oldest Known Work of Art is 44,000 Year Old Cave Painting

May 15, 2020 / by Kelly

The oldest known work of figurative art has been found on the wall of a cave in Indonesia. It is 44,000 years old and spans over 16 feet, depicting a hunting party in pursuit of wild cows and pigs. The animals are portrayed as huge while the people are tiny, although they do have some fantastic, supernatural elements such as lizard-like tails and a bird’s head on a man’s body. (If you like learning new words, this is called “therianthropy”.)

I don’t know about you but the evidence of the need to create, reaching out to us from 400-centuries inspires deep, almost wordless awe in my tiny, human brain. Also, it is a lot like a journal page, if a journal page was 16-feet big and on the wall of a cave. Just saying, people you might want to think about making an illustrated record of your days in your sketchbook.

This is not the painting. I don’t have a legal right to post it so I drew my version. To see a photograph of the real thing, go here to National [read more]

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Here is Your Pep Talk: Joy As an Act of Defiance

May 15, 2020 / by Kelly

“People have always been good at imagining the end of the world, which is much easier to picture than the strange sidelong paths of change in a world without end.”
― Rebecca Solnit, Hope in the Dark

There is a lot of malaise going around, and when I say “malaise” I basically mean being in funk so deep that you can’t start or finish anything. I am hearing this from the last people in the world I expected: people who are smart, creative, resourceful, self-motivated, self-disciplined, and buoyant, and if they are in a funk, what hope is there for the rest of us. Fortunately, that is not how hope works so here we go. Here is your pep talk.

Consider this: humans are biologically hardwired to fear change and you have been hit with a mortal degree of change unimagined a few months ago. Consider this: if you are not okay right now it is because powerful forces are hard at work making sure that you are not okay. They are rather, deliberately manufacturing the maximum amount of chaos, despair, division, and confusion possible. Under the circumstances, it would be weird not to go to pieces. Except consider [read more]

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How to Make Easy Handmade Paper Flowers

May 15, 2020 / by Kelly

There are many ways to make paper flowers but this is my favourite. Easy, cheap, truly beautiful, and fun. You can wear them a “brooch,” buttoniere, or corsage, put in a little vase, or give as a gift. All you need is a length of paper, a “stem,” and a glue gun, then you roll and tack, tack and roll. Here’s the video tutorial.

Add a brooch back or corsage pin, and you are ready to go. Just let me know if you have any questions and please sign up for my newsletter on my website for more free art ideas and other [read more]

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La Maison du Pastel

May 2, 2020 / by Kelly

Recently I visited La Maison du Pastel. I was toting handmade paper and ink and a journal or two that I had bought on the other side of the Marais and had trudged miles to find it tucked away on the rue Rambuteau and I guess it all showed because as I walked in, the lady behind the counter looked at me and said quietly, “Le Graal.” She wasn’t wrong. I don’t even work in pastels and this room was the holy grail.

These pastels have been made since 1722 and has been in the Marais district of France since 1766. In 1878, M. Henri Roché took over the concern and it is in his family still. Currently they have 1540 tints and counting of pastels that are world famous for their intense colour and quality. (They were the pastel of choice for Degas.)

I bought a small box of half sticks. They were (understandably) expensive and as I say, pastel is not my medium of choice but how could I walk away without something, some touchstone and connection to hundreds of years of artisans committed to creating the finest tools for creating. A spell. A part of the grail.

To visit La [read more]

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Using Lists in Your Journal Pages (Plus Prompts)

May 2, 2020 / by Kelly

After last fall’s holiday I was cleaning out my bags and all of the bits of papers and crumbs and whatnot that end up there. (You know the ones I mean.) One of them was where my friend and I made a list of our expenses (road tolls and fancy wine, museum tickets and postcards:, petrol, t-shirts, cut flowers, fountain pen ink, maps – all of the things that we spent as we went, and then divvied up over a cup of coffee at the end of the day. As I was about to put this half a page of paper into the get-rid-of pile, I realised something. This fragment brought back vivid memories of that time together, of an afternoon of my life over coffee I would have forgotten. And that is what a list can be.

Adding a list to your written diary or illustrated journal captures day-to-day details that define your life and this time, anchoring a page in your sketchbook or diary, a snapshot of where you are and what you are doing, and when you find it again in a year or five or seventeen or your grandkids are going through your stuff [read more]

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