slightest bit mad

I am finding I cannot stop... one book is barely finished and I am thinking about another... Most of the books I've made so far have been formula driven... trying to figure out what I can do, how to do it better... like book school. Practice, practice... but I'm in the process of a more, out-there book... with a soft cover and rather big... too big, I wonder... but what the heck...

and this is a portion of the cover. Painted, stamped, sprayed, sewn together on my grandmother's ancient Singer... stenciled once, then twice... added to, rubbed out. Done? Not done? I don't know... and I have not begun to sew the pages in yet... 140 lb watercolor, torn into 10x11" pages... crazy beautiful. There will be beads on the spine... I'll show you when I've finished... hand made paper beads and chunks of turquoise... I'm trying not to rush, and anyway, the cover might not be done yet... I thinking of writing something... a line, from the back cover to the front. Maybe about going crazy ...
I've also been working at taking better pictures... Lordie! This is hard, and while I read the tutorials and my camera user guide, I still feel like I am just dancing in the dark. However, I did use a large piece of white watercolor paper and my daylight fluorescent and got these...

I like how they turned out... even though the entire time my camera was flashing a warning at me and kept saying I needed to change setting... plus, I kept getting a snowman... the camera thought I was taking pictures in the snow!

This one didn't get cropped quite close enough and the end of the white paper shows... I still have shadows, but I don't know if shadows are a bad thing...

The color is actually pretty true... this is a big book... and simply done

And look, the copper clad book looks good too... I had some trouble with shine... but overall pretty happy

This one is a little dark... the refection of the white paper at the bottom threw the light off, I think.

I love how rich the colors look on this one... not washed out like before

The white paper background looks blue here... but again the color of the book looks really good.

The background is white but looks blue again... I played with different angles... fun

The shots are so much crisper (I put my camera on a book and then on a little bean bag I have... no wiggle!)

Again, playing with angles

And look how well you can see the whitewashed print... I love how this came out.

Yikes! Gotta go