Popup cards at RSM

I'm supposed to be teaching popup cards tomorrow with the seniors at RSM, and so of course I waited until today to make my models.

I made two, one was really simple and here's one a bit more complicated. It's hard to see with the flash snapshot, but there are 7 different layers. The photos are my nieces from last year, when we went blueberry picking.



I actually made this one first, and then late at night decided that it would be a good idea to have something fairly simple to show as well, so I made a one-layer popup. Not exactly worth breaking out the camera again.

Book binding class wrap-up

It was a GOOD decision to do just one book. They got it done in a timely fashion, but there was certainly no extra time to do a 2nd book. Most of the people finished pretty much right around 4pm, which was our planned quitting time.

So, day 1, 5 hours: they gocco'ed 20 cards and dyed 9 sheets of tyvek each. Only 10 people showed, which was good because the room really couldn't have been comfortable with 2 more people in there dyeing or gocco'ing. I had 5 people dyeing while the other 5 gocco'ed, and then they swapped. That worked out rather well actually. Everything had time to dry overnight.

Day 2, 5 hours: I demonstrated folding the pockets and the accordion. Some people wanted to decorate and some people just wanted to go straight to sewing, so I demonstrated the sewing fairly early on too, which meant that I really had to do that a few more times as people caught up to that stage. Same with doing the wrap around cover.

People seemed to have really enjoyed the class and asked that I come back—yes!—so I guess all that preparation paid off. It's also a group of women who work really well together. Some of them have taken lots of classes together, so it was a good group.

Now that it stays light until later, I managed to get some much needed pruning and yard cleanup done after I got back. Now it looks somewhat less trashy...

Teaching my first bookbinding class

After years of teaching Print Gocco, I had my first gig teaching bookbinding today.

I spent quite a bit of time looking at materials and then most of Wednesday preparing—making models & writing instructions, and still didn't quite finish. Ended up skipping the Shabava Norooz concert Thursday night in order to finish illustrating the instructions. (I did look around for basic illustrated instructions but just didn't find quite the exact right thing.)

So this was a 4 hour class at Springdale Jobs Corps. After the Oregonian article came out, they contacted me to come out to teach a class to their students who are training to be NAs. All in all, it went pretty well. Most students started out doing pretty well, but I think they lost some steam later in the afternoon. I also could use more cutting mats and awls. I bought a bunch of new brushes, X-acto knives, and bonefolders for the class, and also another awl, and 2 more cutting mats and rulers, but we really needed more. The extra waiting around contributed to some impatience. So now I know.

It was pretty exhausting, not having taught students that age before. There's quite a bit of socializing going on during the class, and I can't always read their expressions on whether they're enjoying the class or not. Although a few of the students were really quite serious about it so that was very nice.

I had them start by dying a sheet of tyvek, which we used later in the afternoon as covers for a Japanese stab binding book. We also made a pocket book with a wrap around cover and pockets glued to an accordion. We went 30 minutes over what I had planned, but I bet if I had 2 more mats, rulers, X-acto knives, and awls, we could've done it in 4 hours. Again, now I know!

Silk road flowers web site wrap up!

Sort of. We did Part I of the training session this afternoon, got through 2 of the 3 lessons I prepared to teach her to edit her html files. But she's a quick study, pretty much figures things out on the first run, from not having seen any of it before. If only she can remember it!

Got home just dead tired, a lot more tired than I'd expect from teaching 1 person for 3 hours. So rather than cleaning my studio as I hoped (to get ready to start painting again, now that the pillow books are out of here), I did more mending. Didn't quite finish, and now it's time to go to bed. Especially since I ran out of thread...