Judge this book by the cover

The two-day workshop that Seth Apter taught (For Your Eyes Only) last weekend at Random Arts was inspiring and challenging and a big step outside my comfort zone. The supply list was fairly extensive and specific but when it was time to pull supplies, like a variety of papers, ephemera and objects, I had a hard time deciding what to pack.  So I pulled stuff without over-thinking it and ended up with ample, albeit completely unrelated-theme stuff. 

(Fortunately, Jane's amazing shop has a bit of everything, which alleviates the fear that all the 'right' stuff was left back in the studio. So no worries and I always return with lots more than I took.)

Seth's book is amazing and I love his gridded design approach; however, when we started to work I could not make the first one (though I understood the concept). But Seth is amazing. He shares brilliant techniques fully understanding that the same format might not work for everyone (like me), so once freed I got into the zone. Along with a few of my photographs I'd brought 2 pages of haiku that I'd written over the past couple of years; my theme presented itself. 

Having limited supplies turned out to be a blessing in this case. In the studio it would have taken weeks to figure out how to put pages together...  I used a painting and a lot of the painted papers I took.

And I had a bunch of vintage school paper used by "Lester" and his work appears throughout :) 

I had a bagful of batik and sari ribbon (supplemented by a trip to Jane's shop) and I found they made great binding covers, plus I love having things showing outside the piece.

Fortunately I had a lot of small scraps - burlap, screen, tissue paper, snaps, lace trim, mica, rick-rack, butterflies...

Seth said our books were filled with 'happy accidents'... or were they?

He gave a rather Freudian explanation for the dual face spread - half child and half emerging being....

And of course I had to use one of my faces.

and put an old library card in the back cover

I'd left the back cover blank but wrote a haiku when I got back to my studio.

We all experienced the same thorough, detailed demonstration and explanation of the processes.  But Sunday afternoon when we shared our work via 'show and tell' (which included Seth's thorough and amazing critique) I was blown away by the diversity, originality and creative interpretation. The only similarity was that they all had 2 covers. 

I think I'll take a break from painting faces and make another.