My kitchen, living room and bedroom are organized and comfortable. Even my linen closed and medicine cabinet. But that work room and the office, particularly the work room, needs lot of work (help). So what am I doing? Not sorting through the box of papers I should have sorted before I moved. Not going through the photos I should trash. Not arranging tools and supplies. I’ve been making books. I have a little workspace cleared off (and I’m keeping it clean). I had an excuse for the first book: I had to get it ready for the party last Sunday. But I was inspired to make more books and that’s so much more fun than all the sorting and arranging. I had to wait for more ink which stopped me from working on the garden book. The ink came and I have to get back to that one also.

The party book is my attempt at a popup book. It met with success, although I see every flaw in it. First, it has no real theme. I looked for photos that had distinct foregrounds and realized most of my photos don’t have obvious distinctions between fore- and background. I have known that for years but never gave it much thought. So this is a collection of five disparate photos, six if you include the cover. I made two copies of each photo, one in color, one black and white. Then I cut out the colored foreground and floated it in front of the black and white image. Floating it means raising it above the page using strips glued on two sides and on the center fold. This page is the piano man in Bryant Park, New York. I kept the green plantings on either side of the photo but made the rest of it black and white. The man is too dark to really pop out, but the piano has color in it. The color in all of the pictures, except the covers, was not good. It was much better on my screen so that disappointed me. You can also see where I wasn’t able to trim the lower edge of the page. My craftsmanship could have been better.

The next photo was taken at Millennium Park in Chicago. I kept the color in the large projection screen that’s part of a fountain. The whole scene reminds me of Seurat’s Sunday Afternoon on the Island of the Grande Jatte at the Art Institute just down the street. This page has two floating pieces that should have been connected and one should be above the other. Maybe in the next book. The page is embellished with a butterfly charm from my bead collection. (More boxes of stuff that should be sorted.)

Three other pictures are from Japan and one from New York. The people under the umbrellas may have been employees at Meiji Mura, an open air museum of buildings from the Meiji era of Japan. This one is also embellished with a butterfly.

I saw this young woman walking toward the fountain. I followed her and got her dancing, embellished with an angel.
The one below, embellished unnecessarily with a fish, is from Katsura, one of the emperor’s palaces outside of Kyoto. The garden was wonderful; the photo doesn’t do it justice.
This is from Pontocho in Kyoto. Pieces of sculpture were placed in the stream that runs through it. In this photo I removed the sculpture from the black and white background using the clone tool in Photoshop.

These last two photos are the cover. I took the picture at an event here in Pittsburgh and used one photo wrapped around the pages.

I’m not finished with the next book. It will be a star tunnel book and, so far, I am much more satisfied with it. Photos in the next post.