Brayergirl's Book of Banter

Too Arty for Me

Took delivery of this book yesterday. The cover looks lovely, so you might think that the inside is just as exciting, but sadly it was a little disappointing. Effectively this is just a collection of Zine articles that have been put together rather randomly and without much of a flow. The idea of the book is to trigger your creative processes through reading all the articles and maybe trying some of the projects. I for one, will not be out naked in the countryside rolling around in black ash and taking my self-portrait. (Yes, that REALLY IS one of the projects that one of the contributors writes about!)   

OK, so maybe I'm a Philistine, maybe I just don't get the whole self-indulgent, self-obsessed, introverted way of looking at things that some artists seem to have. (Better be careful here, I'm already at risk of wandering into the danger zone of doing the same thing myself! LOL)  I've started to read some of these articles and many of them just leave me cold. The only articles that are really grabbing my attention are the ones with the pretty pictures and  which explain new techniques or processes. I am clearly more shallow than I thought I was.

We all like to think that we are capable of depth, that we can converse on the meaning of life and add valuable opinion, however for me, art is not about that.  Art is my escape, my hobby, my relaxation time, my way of leaving the real world behind and becoming absorbed in an unrelated world of colour and fantasy. I get enough self-absorption and mind flexing in the real world thank you very much!

So, if you like the deep and meaningful's to be incorporated into your artwork, then buy this book, if you just like pretty pictures like me, then get yourself a copy of Somerset Studio instead.      

Fanciful Paper Projects by Sandra Evertson

I took delivery of a new book today, one which feeds my continuing interest in the mystical and the magical - well at least in a crafting sense. You won't catch me visiting witches coverns in my spare time or anything like that. I'm sure that witches are very nice people, but I'm just not drawn in that direct myself. (Phewww, I just managed to get out of that one!)

The book is by Sandra Evertson and is purely a papercraft book, so no stamping, inks or anything messier than glue. The projects are certainly offbeat but have a great deal of charm and I think once I start making some of them up I will find that they trigger inspiration to start creating my own 'Fanciful Paper Projects'  The good thing about the book is that most of the pieces required to make the projects are contained within the book itself, and so you can colour photocopy or scan them as many times as you like to make the projects.

I'll attempt to make one of the projects up soon and will share the results here so you can take a look!