A Picture's Worth a Thousand Stitches

       Ever since making my Obama box, I have been open to the idea that any image can be made into needlepoint. After all, if it can be done with cross stitch, then why not? Before making this piece, I luckily came across a website that creates and prints any image into a cross stitch pattern, for free. I would just translate that to needlepoint. I wanted to create an image of my mother, so I used my favorite photo of her.

              Many grueling days and hours later, I am not sure that I am using the pattern right, or sure that I even like what I am making. For one thing, in order to get a more descriptive image, you have to be willing to use a very small pattern, that in turn uses MANY different colors. More colors than I have rolls of yarn. So I basically had to blend similar colors into one because I just didn't have the variety. It was also hard using a magnifying glass for every stitch.

                                                 This is the original picture of my mom.

 

This is the cross stitch pattern that I printed out and used.

                      To date, I have gotten rid of the awful peach color in the forehead that just looks out of place. And I have filled in most of the the shoulder with white yarn. I have not finished and probably won't mostly because I don't like hurting my eyes. Honestly, I don't like where the colors in this are headed. Though I do like how the fingers and eyes came out.

A Book For My Late Mom

          This book is VERY special and important to me. My idea started out with a way to remember my late mother who committed suicide when I was fourteen years old. I was actually going to write a ghost story, which, looking back, would've been a little silly. But my idea stemmed into just pieces of a poem. I wanted to positively remember her and I had just so much to say. After many rough drafts, I had what I have printed into this book. Constructively, this is a pocket accordion book, so every page on the inside has a pocket.

            In nine of the eleven pockets sits a picture of my mother. My family has taken so many pictures over the years that it wasn't difficult to find a bunch of pictures with one similarity. I wanted whatever book this would be, to be readable and enjoyable for even people that didn't know my mom. So in every picture, my mom's face is not visible. There was no Photoshop or anything needed to make that happen. I simply found beautiful photos of my mom in which her face was covered by a hand, or a shadow...just basically not made out. And in the poem that spans the nine pages of this book, I describe how beautiful my mother was. I find ways for the reader to imagine her face and beauty without judgment, because only then is a stranger able to identify with how I view my mom.

         It was hard for me to think of a simple way to get words printed on the size of paper I used, so I decided to just glue it on somehow. I used photo paper for the words because ironically the pictures weren't coming out great on photo paper. All of the pictures in the book are printed on regular copy paper, then double-side taped on a thicker paper that is hard to bend. I did this to give the viewer the feel of an actual photograph. The pictures are removable because they're in pockets. The background paper all comes from a beautiful Everyday Snapshots series of 12x12inch paper. For the most part, every book has a different background that you can mostly only see if you remove the pictures.

                  To date, I have completed only 33 of these books. There really is a lot that goes into making one. Every book has a long piece of purple satin ribbon that is wrapped around it to keep it from going back to it's accordion shape. Every book has a different bead that keeps it closed. The idea for this book and the handmade cover that I constructed from a special hard paper is taken from the book "Making Handmade Books", by Alisa Golden. I really love how I made this come together.

Cmomon Knwolgede

                    

            This is another book with fun facts. But this time there are about twenty of them. I titled the book "Common Knowledge" because that's exactly what it isn't. For this book, I really wanted to have a cool book design, and I came across this one in the book "Making Handmade Books", by Alisa Golden. This bookmaking technique is called Slot and Tab. Basically you just cut out an equal number of folded pages with a hole in the center, and the other half with the top and bottom corners cut out. You slide them together until a book form is created. The cut-outs don't have to be triangles, but I wanted the effect that you see on the spine. This book involved no glue, staples, or adhesive of any kind to be constructed. For the writing of this book, I used the one-and-only Microsoft Word. The hardest part was making sure the pages had an even center on the computer; that took forever.

 

                I made about 40 of these books with 4 different colored paper in the mix.  There's no way I could make the finished product look this good on my own, so I went to Kinko's to have them all printed. Then, I constructed all the books by hand. The facts in the book are all provable, meaning you can test them yourself. They are all obscure as well, chosen mostly from a single Tumblr website. None of the facts in this book are found in my pop-up book, I made sure of that.

           One thing that came to my mind while I was making this is the term typoglycemia. It is the ability for the brain to correctly read words that are scrambled, proving that the human brain reads one word at a time, not one letter at a time. I laenred tihs in fitfh gdrae from an otpcial ilulsoins wbeiste. It's sitll cool tdaoy. I wrote my entire Introduction and About the Author this way. The two pictures in this book were taken on the same day.

 Just because of the intricate construction, this is a book of mine that I admire.

The EACH Way to Speak

                This book was a sort of response to my first book about my grandmother. That one had just one of her many sayings, but this one has all of the "big" ones. People that have heard my grandmother talk are really the only ones capable of grasping how meaningful this book is. E.A.C.H. are my grandmother's initials. There are eight pages, so eight quotes. At the back of the book is my About the Author. I thought of this book as a great opportunity to introduce my presence as an artist/author. The book construction is that of a simple zine, which is a short book, completely handmade, and it usually has one main topic of focus. The book itself is just one entire sheet of paper folded appropriately.
                 This book was extremely difficult to make on Microsoft Word because there wasn't a layout for it. I had to manually put in the boxes for each page, the page numbers, the pictures, and the wording. That alone took a few days. But I am very proud of myself for completing this book. I made around forty of these books in two slightly different-colored papers, mostly for family and close friends. No one else really understood it. The two pictures of myself are there mostly because I couldn't choose from either one. What's interesting about the pictures in this book are that I chose them each  so one could picture my grandmother saying that particular quote. And yes, the front is an older picture of my grandmother.
              Novemeber 13, 2015 update: This book was entered into a contest and won a purchase prize award! As a result, his book will be donated to the UCLA Arts Library to be a part of their already awesome book arts collection! I'm so proud!!

Pop-up-Bookin' It

              This past February I also got really into the idea of making a pop-up book. The closest I came to this dream was making this lovely book completely from paper and glue. I think that at first it was hard to come up with a theme for a pop-up book, but I just turned it into a book with illustrated fun facts. When I make fun fact projects, I like to find the most obscure facts-one's that are interesting and previously unknown to even me. I couldn't get too crazy with this book because too many pages with the paper I was using would not be good for the structure of the book. I chose just four facts.

 

          I thought it was cool to use the spine like an actual book, so I wrote title and author there. "I Didn't Know That..." is a joke in itself because these are actually facts that not a lot of people are aware of. When I list fun facts, I always make them provable so that I'm not just digging info out of nowhere. All of these facts you can prove for yourself.

         I got the idea for the first page from a small handmade book called "Summer", by Aidan Mathews. That book opens just like this page. There were no instructions on folding for this technique, so I had to just figure it out.  As you can see, the folds are symmetrical, so that right there makes it a little easier to figure out. And it is true; no piece of paper can be folded in half more than seven times.

          I found this fact somewhere online, but in no particular place. Fumes from the chopped onions are attracted to moisture, so they go to the mouth rather than the eyes. The movement in this page is the hand and knife above the kitchen counter. When you open to the page, the hand moves outward as if hovering above the onions. The image of the woman wiping tears was so hard to do because I'm not a sketch artist. I didn't want to use an image that wasn't mine, so I traced this one from a picture online. I used a light box for that. The idea for the movable arm came from a technique in a "Pocket Paper Engineer" book by Carol Barton.

          This idea was quite tough because the words in the fact had to match each panel. I wanted that because if you notice, three of the words are colors. I just happened to have paper colors close to that, so I wanted to use them. To get the words evenly done on four different pieces of paper, I had to test many functions on Microsoft Word, and finally, print the same result on four pieces of paper. And the pop-up technique is just a stretch of the prop-up tab technique. It is probably seen in any basic pop-up instruction book. It was very difficult to produce successfully because I had to get the folded angles right so the book would close. Tell me, what word rhymes with month??

       The fun fact here is "If you mouth the word 'colorful' to someone, it looks like you are saying 'I love you'". I guess that beats 'olive juice'. When you open this page, the mouth opens wider, as if speaking to the reader. The idea for this page was sketchy at first for me because I didn't want to show the inside of a mouth...that's gross. But it turns out, that a cartoonish form is an excellent way to go. I also had to trace this image from a printed picture, but that didn't give me the result I wanted. So I just finally sketched my own image and came out with this. I colored it in with markers. The fold of the upper half was hard because just like the last page, the fold had to be perfect. The fold here is also pretty basic.

         This book took me about a week to make come together from the start of my idea. I had many ideas for the background papers so I decided to just have a mixture. I think bright colors make the book more appealing. I have only made two of these because it is a lot of work.

The Pink-Colored Book

        
   This past February, I got really into bookmaking. What I mean is that I was really into physically creating my own books, cover to cover. The inspiration for my first ever handmade book was my a phrase that my grandmother says a lot. She says "What you know good?" usually when talking on the phone to an old friend. I've only recently discovered how artistic her words can be. I worked hard to make the cover align with the front page; E.A.C.H. are my grandmother's initials. This photo is just one of many that has been taken of her through the years.
            I think my book came out pretty decent from what I wanted it to be. And by the way, a handmade book doesn't need the traits and features of the books we find in Barnes & Noble or other bookstores. This happens to be a book that folds out like an accordion, so it is called an accordion book in the bookmaking world. The book style came from the book "Making Handmade Books", by Alisa Golden. This book happens to be where I've gotten the majority of my used ideas.
             

BeigeandBlue

                         I've made this tissue box cover at least once before. I've always loved the design; the creativity put into this design is spectacular to me as an artist. I didn't change the colors from the original design on this one because the pattern is just THAT good.

Keep Relaxin'

         Credits to Joyce Bishop for this magical lounge chair design from a Barbie furniture book. I made this the first time last year and gave it away. Before I made this, I regretted giving the chair away because I liked it so much. So now, here we have a new and improved chair that I might like just a little bit more than the first one - even if it is the same exact color! This took me about a week to complete.

Such A Chic Way to Live

                      You may not realize it right away, but this house purse is better made than the first one I did in Christmas of 2012. The mesh is clear instead of colored, so you can't see it through the yarn. The lining is thick, so you can't the mesh through the fabric. And of course this is the second time around, so it's just better inevitably. I finished this in maybe a week. I did most of the work in one sitting. The first time I made this purse, it took me a couple weeks to finish. I've never wanted to live in a purse THIS MUCH! Creation credits to Dorothea Gillis.

Gates Of Gold

            This is a paper cutout of the Golden Gate Bridge. The most difficult part of this was cutting out the tiny lines you see. I'm quite surprised that I didn't almost rip this piece to shreds! I really think the patterned paper is fitting for this cutout. I just had to write 'San Francisco' because it looked empty without it. Please excuse my terrible cursive. Origami Architect credits to Joyce Aysta.

Empire

                   This is a paper cutout of the Empire State Building. I have been told that this resembles a drawing but I assure you that it is a full cutout. This took a few hours and the folding process of this one sure was hard. It just would not FOLD! But here it is. Origami Architect credits to Joyce Aysta.

Eiffel Tower

                This is also Origami Architect credited to Maria Victoria Garrido Bianchini. This is a single paper cutout of the Eiffel Tower, of course. I think the patterned paper really romanticizes this piece. This was definetly one of the simpler forms, given it only has one dimension. Though it sure took long enough to finish! This one took 2 hours.