After a long time sitting on the table in 5 or 6 pieces the Guadalupe/Sirena shrine has finally come together.

I never did find a place for the rose petals.

Shrine I — Guadalupe, Sirena, and the Chicken Boy

A couple of details.

My hand colored and glittered Virginsita.

detail — guadalupe

The oddly appealing Chicken Boy.

detail — chicken riding boy

…coming soon… it’ sitting in the press getting flat.

Meanwhile here are the graphics for the covers of  “(K) Kicks”

(K) Kicks 1

(K) Kicks 2

The book pretty much sucks — it’s a one day after all. But I like the graphics.

Each time I am in Oaxaca I stop into the Casa De La Ciudad. There is always something interesting in the little sala to the right of the entrance.

When I was last there (September 2008) it was the exhibition –Los Libres, Los Viajes, y El Tiempo (Books, Travels, and Time — roughly)

los libros, los viajes, y el tiempo

The problem of how to let people look at/through older books is not often solved at all let alone nicely.

display column

Here they have scanned/photographed the covers and portions of the text from several books that tie in with the exhibit. Then bound them together and left them out for people to look at.

not something you would find on display in the USA

These aren’t sophisticated facsimilies. They’re just-good-enough reproductions that aren’t expected to last beyond the current exhibit.

reproduction of the text pages

They are scanned and then printed single sided on matte photo paper and “bound” by being stapled at the left margin. The staples are covered by cloth tape.

There was this one that fascinated Jim — the excerpt was from the antennas chapter.

an early radio manual from Mexico.

This one is fine just for the cover illustration.

that

This is a great solution to the problem of how to let people get hands on with books that can’t take the handling.

Cheap, tidy, and certainly the only way I’ll ever get my hands on Dueno del Mundo by Julio Verne.

dueno del mundo por julio verne

On my way back to my interrupted vacation in Oaxaca I had the chance to upgrade my DFW to MEX flight to business class. I *love* business class. The only thing better than the leg room is the refuge from the “cheap as we can make it” ethos of coach. Including this lovely little bit of packaging that arrived with my salad.

Sitting on the side of the (place mat covered, of course) tray was this little gem.

a sweet little package for salt and pepper

Pulling at the cutout in the top reveals:

sliding the inner package out

Completely disassembled the actual container is obviously nothing special. It’s the sleeve that makes it more.

package disassembled

Note that the manufacturer has also made it very easy to create these for anyone. Any name or logo can be printed on the sleeves. Some clever things could be done with the cutouts for the words and at the top as well.

Oh, and the other thing that rocks American Airlines business class — hot roasted nuts.

Our recent vacation gave Jim the chance to take a lot of pictures of motorcycles and riders on the proverbial “closed course.” Some of them are in fact “professional riders.”

I now have tons of uncluttered photos to work with. Hence the creation of a new series of work, this time in engineered paper.

First up:

Solo Red Bike

Not a very imaginative name I know.

I had to remove the rider from the original photo in order to have a clear background. Now that I’ve seen the piece assembled I think that I could have left the rider on the background and simply built the images out from there. It wouldn’t be as dynamic an image but it would have saved a bunch of time erasing the rider and bike and rebuilding the background.

red solo rider — closeup

Assembly began with printing and cutting out six copies of the rider. Tabs are attached to the fronts of 5 of the images and the base (shadow) is folded forward so that it will show when the rider group is attached to the card.

all six rider images

Here the riders are attached to one another. I used a strip under the shadows to give the bases something to stick to while I was attaching all the pieces. I left the strip under the riders because it made gluing the bases down in the right spots easier. (I should have gotten a picture before I glued it all down!)

Red Solo Rider rider images linked

Here’s the finished prototype.

It was a little confusing in Maryhill with everyone switching up the bikes and riders. To the best of my knowledge that is Tim Keene on Rolf Vitous’ pretty red record holding bike. I’ll ask for the details next time I see Rolf.

I have a number of other photos that I’ll be using over the next couple of weeks.

This little harlequin dancer is sitting on my worktable waiting for a face. That’s always the hard part.

I started with the doll parts and some fancy red and gold paper that became her tights.

Then she got a skirt.

I started with some organza and cut two layers. the upper layer is notched and then the edge is finished with a blanket stitch and some gold beads. Getting the beads to sit just right was a bit fiddly and I had to wear my reading glasses to see what I was doing. I don’t think I’ll try this with smaller beads!

I got a kit for making a paper box last week. It was from Books by Hand. They have a number of kits for making books/albums and boxes using book board, book cloth, and decorative papers. Ben Franklin sells the kits. Mostly they sell complete kits but if you scout around you can find kits labeled “Just the Pieces” These contain just the die-cut book board pieces and the directions you supply your own paper and book cloth. I bought the kit to make the Japanese Folding Box.
I used some celery colored book cloth and a piece of silk screened paper that I had in my stash.

It’s interesting because it unties and lays flat.

You build the box by folding in the sides and then the folding over the tops and tying. Kind of like this:

There ends up being a lot of extra board wrapped around whatever you’ve got in there. Still it’s cool that it all falls flat when you undo it. think this would make a great container for a book or a set of cards.

In fact Jim came up with a great idea for something to put in it…