A second book for the sequential chain poetry and artist Book of Sand. Hand cutting the silver birch trees for the centre page. Before sewing it into the next book a close up shot through the trees, is this what the wolf sees ?

Lola makes her own beautiful marbled paper to cover and bind her books.

Some more delights from Sandie Cottee...

ANNAL latin : a record of events in one year. A follow on from the 365 book . Covers tea bags, oil colour and wax varnish. 
Gwen's own art work features only once in each book, they happen to be birds in flight. There are some happy accidents too such as her grand daughter's drawing watching the antics of the wrapping paper cat playing with the sewing cotton.

The "clay books" started from a remark during my very first ceramics class, during the art foundation course I started in 2008. The tutor had us roll out a slab of clay and then said "Here are your clay notebooks" and we went on to impress patterns into them -  a process that I've returned to in recent ceramics work. Very recently I've been casting folded book structures in porcelain slip, producing abstracted shapes; some have decoration inside the porcelain, arising from dark slip that's been screenprinted onto the paper structure, which burns away during firing.

Each of the Binders Keepers (tool rolls for bookbinding tools) contains some of my Travel Lines fabrics, screenprinted from lines drawn while travelling on London Underground and buses. The Binders Keepers come in unique fabric combinations and are ready to fill with your favourite tools. (Sewing Companions - for sewing tools - are also available; see
 www.travel-lines-london.co.uk/sewing-companions.html.)

 Kitty sent us photos of a new book 'Hand Shadows for Idle People', and the other of her books packaged up ready for the fair.
 

On Saturday morning important final preparations got underway for the event. 

Following a leisurely start with coffee and scones, attention turned to assembling our collaborative book simply titled Artbookart. 

While these two slept soundly we were hard at work...

….collating the pages.

...measuring...

...and finally sewing.

The limited edition book, for which Louise Swain, Sally Chinea, Gwen Simpson, Lola Swain, Karen Apps and Chris Ruston have each contributed two pages, reflects the practice of each artist. The pages vary in their content and style, thereby making each book a unique artwork. This resulted in 10 small (A6) but beautiful little books bound with red thread using coptic stitch.

The books are made in a small edition of 10 copies and will be available for purchase at the HOFS on March 15th.