Heather Eddy Art

A while ago I started a board on Pinterest called Art to Steal From. It should really be called Art From Which to Steal but that's a bit much, so I'm keeping it simple-minded for now. AnyWAY, here was one of the pieces I really liked and decided to make my own of today. It turned out rather well if I do say so myself.   It's wilder than the original I used as inspiration. It reminds me of how my hair works - it doesn't stay put.

I find that if I take just a little bit of time every day to do something creative - baking, folding a book, dabbing a bit of paint on paper - that I feel better. Just a few minutes does it. It's like yoga for my heart, I suppose. Tomorrow is Apple Day at my son's school. The students are supposed to bring their teacher an apple so she has healthy fruit to eat. To be honest, it feels kinda weird to ask students to bring their teachers food, but there you are. In my rebellion or show-offiness, I made Kenneth's teacher a book apple. I simply carved one of my Reader's Digest books into an apple shape (thank you to the apple which gave its last gasp to be a template pattern and its stem) and painted it with three different inks. I teased the book around to hold a nicer shape and hot glued it open. I popped the stem into the top with a length of ribbon to act as a leaf and - voila! An apple that never spoils.

As someone who loves paper craft so much, I’m always on the lookout for new books on the art. On a whim, I entered a contest on Goodreads and was lucky enough to win a copy of “All Things Paper” by Ann Martin. Ann runs the website AllThingsPaper.net which is full Full FULL of papercraft designs and ideas. In her book she gathered twenty different paper artists together to share their ideas. I hoped to find something new and interesting to try. The Table of Contents divides up the projects by type: Home Décor, Fashion Accessories, Jewelry, and Correspondence. The projects themselves turned out to be fairly standard: candle luminaries, paper flowers, greeting cards and paper jewelry. Each of these fairly common projects is given a twist to make them something unique to each of the artists.  Being that I am a book folder, I found the Phone Book Letter Holder the most interesting idea in the bunch. I saw it the first time I opened the book and was intrigued. One...

After weeks - yes, WEEKS of agonizing over this, I've finally finished my friend's wedding bouquet. Gina is a librarian who used to work in my library system. I visited her branch in Fresno one day while I attended a professional meeting. There was a beautiful display of a book turning into a butterfly (the pages were ripped out and, one by one, looked more and more butterfly-like). I called the library later to find out who'd done the artwork and was given Gina's email address. From there, we've shared book art, funny library stories and I've followed her blog and some of her life. She's since moved on to greater library systems and is now getting hitched to a great guy.  We've never met in person. When she asked me to do this, I accepted without thinking. And then, I thought about it and HAD NO IDEA WHAT TO DO. Text pages, map pages and purple. Oh, and gold. I made lots of little flowers to figure out what to make and decided on the...

I've been using my old book again to make more bookshelf paintings. These are based on that stack of 200+ pictures I took at the library one day. I'm trying to work on my color composition - if you choose ONE color that you ADD to every other color, it ties them together a bit. As long as the primary color isn't too showy.  This one turned out best colorwise. It looks like I limited the palette, too. I don't do that very often or well. :)   Ta da! Another house painting! This one was in my stack of things to do. I drew it a long time ago and am only now getting around to painting it. The chimney looks like a devil's horn. And here is the work in progress desk. That picture on the front of the books turned out great...

This painting didn't get any better. In fact, I'm pretty sure I ruined it with the colored pencil. This all comes from trying to accommodate a HUMONGOUS stamp into my painting. From now on, it's only little paintings. At least for these super color-saturated paintings. I just can't make them do what I want over a large area of space. Now this painting will go into a sad pile to languish until I can look at it with fresh eyes and see if it is salvageable. Maybe putting some book paper over the totally awful parts will do... I had a box of books and access to a drill press. So I drilled holes. Then I kept the box for several weeks because I didn't know what to do with them.  The other night, I sewed one. Frankenstein book! I am making a wedding bouquet of paper flowers for a friend. Here is one I made from a paint chip. And here it is on top of the Frankenstein book.

This is what you can make. Go! Make!  I did a Pay it Forward Christmas ornament thing this year with a bunch of friends. I decided to do these little paper ornaments. Easy. 15 minutes each. You'll like them. This will be mainly a picture tutorial. I've just finished grading about 800 finals this week and I'm too pooped to pop. Supplies Supplies: Paper Circle punch (I used a variety to make different-sized balls. The balls end up the same size as the original circle. hot glue ribbon ignore the pins. They are not used. How did they get in the picture? Cut out EIGHT circles for each half of the ornament Bend in half like a taco. DO NOT FOLD. Pinch. Fold in quarter. Crease fold. Leave petal ends lovely and round. Dab on hot glue. Do not burn self. (I did not listen to me) Attach next segment. Take care not to squish petals. Just keep adding until you get to the next to the last. Before gluing in last segment, add ribbon,...

♥THANK YOU TO EVERYONE FOR HELPING MY SISTER ♥ A while ago, a person showed me a really pretty picture of a book whose pages looked like honeycomb and asked me how it was done. It reminds me of those decorations of the 70's - did anybody else have those at their parties? They were the height o' haute. I kept the email in my inbox because I promised her I'd show her how it was done. Here's my take on a honeycomb book: Supplies: You need an old book, glue and a pencil. I also used a colored pencil but you don't have to. Use a page to fold in quarters (see marks 1, 2 and 3). Using your folded paper as a guide, make marks in pencil where your folds are. Using your marks as a guide, draw lines down across the fore edge of your book using a ruler or a piece of cardstock to make them nice and straight. THE TOP AND BOTTOM EDGES COUNT AS A MARK. If they aren't perfectly straight, that's not really a problem. Approximate is good enough.I...

In addition to little books, I also had some long pieces cut all the way across the book from the spine. With these, I've been experimenting with different ways to fold the paper. It turns out that this particular book I cut wasn't glued very well on the spine (unlike RD books which are VERY well glued!) and the signatures fell apart and the pages began to loosen. I found I was only able to work with about five signatures at a time without them coming apart. A single fold (the long part of the "tail")  turned into a double fold (the longer part of the star) and then, for effect, yet another fold for the little parts. The inside is not very symmetrical and it drives me CRAZY. I'll have to cover it up with a button or something. Still, it's cute.

Bits of books waiting to be turned into... This and other things...