Fabric Meets Photo

Last week I mentioned Michaela Müller's Book 'Fabric Meets Paper'.
I made another project from the books, a small photo album.

For the cover I used a stitch doodle I made, when I went through my stitching thread stash and found a box with left overs from a Theresa Wentzler project from long, long ago. Mrs Wentzler has wonderful, very elaborated patterns, which use a lot of blended flosses (and I mean a LOT). In order to organize them, I always wrapped the leftover thread around a cardboard bobbin and that's how I found them. So I took the left overs and just stitched little 2x2 squares randomly in an 11x11 grid until a thread ran out and I pulled the next one from the box.

I bonded the fabric to silk paper and then covered thick cardboard stock (like 2mm) for the front and back of my photo album. For the binding I folded a stripe of paper to a little arcordion and then glued the leaves of the album into the folds. The cutting is not perfect, but well ...

Inside went pictures from an evening photography class I took in March (this is my favorite made in Offenbach's harbour at sunset). 

I also did a little bit more stitching and finsihed three booksmarks. I already gave one of them away before I took the picture (it had a little seahorse one it)

Fun in the Sun

Two years ago I won a craft book by Michaela Müller ('Bunte Bücher'). I really enjoyed the book and did some of the projects, so when her new book came out this week, I didn't hesitate to buy it outright (I don't think I can rely on winning it again)
This time the topic is 'Fabric Meets Paper', both things I like and enjoy working with. One project was using the sun (or rather the heat) do some type of printing (not cynoprinting, that needs special light-sensitive paper). The idea is to paint cotton fabric with deluted silk-paints (which I have still plenty around, even though I haven't done any silk painting in years), cover parts of it with small(ish) object, and place it in the sun (it also works in the shadows, it's the heat that does the trick)

In the book, the author uses buttons, and that's what I used as well.
When the farbic starts to dry, it does so faster in the open areas. The pigments from the covered areas are moving to the open areas, so in the end the places where the buttons where are lighter than the rest.

It actually works quite well (this is from another test, where I used blue, instead of black like in the first picture)

 I then started to play around with some other materials. I kinda like that it's not always sharply defined.

 I also really like this test, where I had two rounds, one in a golden orange, the other in green. I used Ginko leaves from my parents' garden which I picked up and pressed last year.

As the book is about how fabric meets paper, there are also instructions in how to make a traveler's journal (among other book related projects). This one is rather small (only about 15 x 11 cm), but I really like how it turned out.