Open House and end of auction - this Sunday!

Open House

Venue - 10 Garth End, Collingham, Wetherby. LS22 5BH.

Date - Sunday 21st August

Time - 12-4pm

SUNDAY 21ST AUGUST is the date set for the end of the auction of the 50 books, and at this point I will be able to inform everyone if they have 'won' the book or books they are bidding on. I am holding an Open House in Collingham, 12 - 4pm. You are welcome to come and browse the books, have some refreshments and look through other small items for sale (candle holders and cards).

Tell your friends and family. Tell complete strangers!

As Sunday approaches ...

As Sunday approaches Tim and I are working joyfully towards the final preparations and the end of the auction. This has been quite a journey from the decision at the beginning of 2015 to undertake to make 50 books in a year. At that point I had no idea if it was possible, or what they would be like. I began with 3 books, all plain and from those I got more and more ideas about how they next one could be. It has been an amazing journey that I have been happy to share with many people. I'm glad many people have been able to view the books in person as there is such a different quality to holding the books as opposed to looking at photos or videos of them. 

Here is what else will be available on the day - 

handmade cards

 tea-light holders made from driftwood and logs

Poetry booklets

beautiful fimo shapes

There will also be refreshments and a vegan cake! What more could you want?

Bidding has gone over £1,000 and still 4 days to go!

I'm really pleased to be able to announce the bidding for the 50 books has reached £1,089 with 4 days to go before the auction closes. This is really good news as far as I'm concerned, but there is still the opportunity to increase this. Scroll through previous posts to view the books individually and then message me with a comment on the post or by email.

What will I do with these books out of my life? just have to make some more I guess! 

Here's another glimpse of one of my favourite books

The Ocean of Bliss.

A poem written in 2008 and embroidered by me more recently.

Enjoy!

Books and more

Here is a lovely picture of the cards I have been making over the last few days, which will be on sale on Sunday afternoon as part of the Open House.

A beautiful display of handmade cards.

One of my favourite books

This is the 50th book and is a poem that I wrote about Thay (Thich Nhat Hanh) in 2014 when he first became ill. In Buddhist iconography there is an image of the Bodhisattva (one who has put off personal enlightenment and has reincarnated to lead all beings to enlightenment) Avalokiteshvara with one thousand hands and an eye in each hand. This is so he can see all the suffering in the world and has the hands to help. A beautiful image that I had in mind when I began to write about Thay and considering the many different aspects of his teaching. Having written the poem it took me a long time to work out how to illustrate it (especially as I can't draw). I had ideas of using people's printed hands as a border and the words of the poem in the middle but having tried that it didn't feel right to me. Suddenly it hit me that I could make a book like the Family hands (number 9). On a retreat I drew round people's hands as a starting point for each page. I also had in mind the notion of decorating hands with henna (as used for Asian weddings) and this gave me the inspiration to decorate each page. The brown colour also fitted in with the brown robes that the monastics at Plum Village wear.

It seemed appropriate to me that the final book has taken the most amount of work because of all the detail on each page.

The book measures 26 x 21.5 cm with 36 pages. The cover is decorated with decoupage and the book is assembled with coptic spine binding.

The current bid for this book is £35

Here is the front cover.

 This is the open book.

Here is a link to a video showing the book opening.

These books need more love

The following books all have bids for less than £10 currently and I feel they need a boost and a bit of love!

Book No 5 Wooden birds

This book is a very small cute one that I made as a variety to the other bigger ones previously.

 It is a delightful 4 x 3cm with 2 tiny wooden birds decorating the front cover.

 

The 116 pages are from an old poetry book (apologies to Wordsworth).

Book No 16 Mind is a great storyteller

This book features one of my poems, written in Plum Village last June. The last page is cut out to feature the final line. The covers and pages are decorated with decoupage.

 

The front cover is decorated with patterned paper pieces. Stitching at the left hand side is coptic binding, which is how the book is assembled.

 

This shows some of the inner pages and the cut out on the last page. It is 15.5 x 21.5cm with 12 pages and the poem is handwritten. You can read the poem on my Mindful Living blog here 

Book No 18 Borrower's Maroon

A book for Borrowers, measuring just 3 x 8cm.

The maroon paper is from Namaste, a shop in the UK that imports beautiful handmade papers, furniture etc. from Thailand and India. There are 136 pages made from fine rice paper.

Book No 25 Silence Heart

Book number 25, (yay! half way through) is a heart-shaped book held together with a split pin. It has the poem Silence written on individual pages which appropriately open out into a lovely fan.

This is the book closed

and this is what it looks like open.

It measures approximately 8 x 8cm with 17 pages.
You can read the poem on my Mindful Living blog here 

Book No 30 Blue Leaf

A small book measuring 6 x 5.5cm with 124 pages of plain white paper.

Just because I enjoy making small books!

Book No 35 In out Concertina

This book has the same words as book number 34 (in, out, deep, slow, calm, ease, smile, release, present moment, wonderful moment) but in a small concertina book, measuring 4 x 4cm. 

Here is the book, closed with a ribbon and bead. The concertina page is made from rice paper and the cover is handmade paper with multi coloured threads in it.

Here is the open book with words printed (each letter printed individually).

Book No 37 Book Decoration

This small purple and pink book opens out into a folded decoration by sliding the bead down the ribbon to open and then back up to close.

Measuring just 4 x 4cm with a sparkly purple cover and purple ribbon.

Here is the open book decoration with pink and silver pages inside.

What is the 50 Books auction?

In 2014 I turned 50 and it felt like a landmark that needed acknowledging.
I've done creative things as long as I can remember. Mum and Nannan were both sewers and knitters and they taught me and my sisters when we were young, so it feels like something I have always done. I also remember Mum calligraphing Christmas cards with gold ink and that is something that really interested me when I was in my teens. Being left handed I struggled with handwriting at school and wasn't allowed an ink pen as my writing wasn't neat enough and I couldn't write in a straight line on plain paper! But I had my own ink pen at home so I used to practise by myself. When I was 14 I joined Sheffield Youth Theatre, which was an amazing experience and informed much that I have done since then. The director was a very innovative woman who really encouraged us to follow the things we were good at, not just acting. We would sew our own costumes, handwrite the programmes in calligraphy and design posters etc. That encouragement to pursue creativity in whatever form it took has stayed with me since my teenage years and over time I have run a business making clothes, made several wedding dresses for friends and family, as well as exploring felt-making, simple print-making, jewellery, card-making, embroidery and more recently, book-binding.

This now leads me on to this current project.
I decided to celebrate being 50 by making 50 handmade books throughout the year (2015). That was the easy part! Now comes to working out how to hold and run the auction.
It is a silent auction, which doesn't mean you don't have to talk but rather than people shouting out bids for each book you can browse the exhibition and write down your bid on the piece of paper with the book, as long as it is higher than the previous bid.
Throughout 2016 I have taken the books with me on retreats and had the opportunity to display them in places where people can add their own bid. This all ends on Sunday 21st August with an Open House at my house, 12 noon to 4pm. You will be able to browse the books, buy other small items for sale (cards and tea light holders), have some refreshments and hopefully, enjoy the garden.
I hope Sunday 21st August will be a joyful celebration of creativity and you are most certainly welcome!
10 Garth End, Collingham, Wetherby. LS22 5BH

The money raised goes to Plum Village.
Plum Village is a very important place for me and I am happy to support it in this way. It was set up in 1982 by Thich Nhat Hanh (Thay, a Zen Buddhist teacher) as a retreat centre and is now a thriving monastic and lay community in southern France, near Bordeaux. Anyone can go for a week's retreat there. Thay teaches mindfulness and his teaching has become the path that I follow to guide me through life. I have spent 6 years researching his teachings on Mindfulness and Engaged Buddhism for my Ph.D which I recently completed. Now I'd like to give something back to help this beautiful place and all it represents continue.