Happy Bookbinding at Unit Twelve and a trip to Glasgow

 Sophie (my daughter) and I had a lovely treat over the Bank Holiday Weekend - a two day bookbinding course at Unit Twelve in Staffordshire, with the talented Alix Swan.  We own a couple of her 'books', although I hesitate to just call them books as they are exquisite paper creations accompanied by elements from the story eg 'Rapunzel' is a tiny accordion book within a castle shaped box, and 'The Elves and the Shoemaker' comes complete with a teeny pair of shoes!

Although I've made books in the past I'd never had a go at making hardbacked books of this nature.

Bookmaking is a very precise craft but I was very happy with the results, and even considered leaving one of the books with an open spine!

We used lots of found papers in the studio to make two more books in addition to the plain workshop one.  I intend to fill the blank one with snippets from the story 'The Elves and the Shoemaker', one of my very favourite stories, but the others will become journals.

They are only tiny but now I know how I'll be binding my own journals with a mixture of papers and to the landscape A4 size that I love!

Then it was off to Scotland for a short break.  Whilst up there we were able to visit Glasgow, a city that's long been on my list of places to visit.  I will definitely be going back!  We took a tour of the Glasgow School of Art but it was limited to just the outside of the building and the furniture gallery because of student exams.  It was still really interesting though.  I love the work of Charles Rennie Mackintosh and he designed so much more than just the building.

As an art student himself he realised the need for wide corridors (for carrying canvases) and doors clearly labelled as 'out' and 'in' so you could manage your bulky artwork without colliding with anyone.

It's not clear on this photo (but how ace is that lamp-post?!) but the roses he positioned across the top windows start off as buds on the left of the building and as you move across, open up to blossoming roses on the window on the furthest right!

And I just LoVe how they validate your ticket...

....by stamping a moustache on the man himself!

a gallery crawl (no pubs involved, unfortunately ;) )

 I took my daughter (nearly sixteen) and my two nieces (nearly fifteen, and ten) on a bit of a gallery crawl the other day.  We started off at Unit Twelve Gallery near Stafford, run by the very talented Jennifer Collier.  The current exhibition is called 'Traditional Twisted' and features work by one of mine and Sophie's (Grammar?) favourite artists, Alix Swan as well as work by someone we know from our home town, Leah Fletcher.

Alix's work is based on traditional tales and I have a couple of her tiny books.  For this exhibition she had created wooden boxes containing elements from the stories, with a handle on the side to turn (which played music) and a book tucked in the back with a padded label stating 'pull me'.

 I love the way she reduces the stories to single words or snippets of sentences.

 And that long, thin book for 'Rapunzel' is just fab!  Sophie and I are already booked on her two day workshop at the end of May where we'll spend a whole weekend making a little hard back book and, I assume, putting some content in it.

 I'm struggling to decide which story, if any, to do as 'The Elves and the Shoemaker' is my very, very favourite, alongside 'The Three Billy Goats Gruff'!  But Sophie is doing 'Little Red Riding Hood' for her GCSE project and I'm loving the references to trees, the snippets of red for the girl and grey for the wolf; plus 'The Princess and the Pea' would give great castle imagery and snippets of fabric for the mattresses, and would really suit a long thin book. Hmmm.

 Other work in the exhibition included these lovely paper/cloth quilts by Maria Thomas.  Look carefully and you can see regular packaging for biscuits and cakes and other sweet goodies.

Leah Fletcher's work is a beautiful combination of vintage fabric, memories and porcelain.

From Unit Twelve Gallery we travelled West, just a few minutes down the road to Stafford where we saw the 'Mad Dogs and Englishmen' exhibition by Lauren Van Helmond at the Shire Hall Gallery (Sue, you'd love this!)

Lauren creates amazing metal sculptures of dogs and combines them with blokes!

I love how, with a simple bit of carving, wooden spoons can have such character!

The gallery shop is fabulous, full of way too many goodies.  There's a cafe too but we didn't have time for cake unfortunately!

Off on the road again we headed for the market town of Eccleshall, where a group of artists have got together and run a gallery called 'gallery at 12'.

It's a proper English town and the photo really doesn't do the main street justice, but how fab is that old fire station!

It was great to see work by Jo Hill in particular as I love her textile designs.

A quick trip to the old fashioned sweet shop completed our trip as my youngest niece had to get back to go bowling with a friend.  Cake would have been nice, but never mind, and there are lots of little boutique shops in Eccleshall which looked fabulous through the windows.