Last month’s group prompt challenge word was “titivate,” an old-fashioned word (to me, anyway) that means “to make decorative additions to; spruce up.” I quickly found a quote by an ancient Greek philosophy, Epictetus: “Know first who you are and then adorn yourself accordingly.” I looked for more quotes about attire and dressing, and started to think about paper dolls. Here’s the results. Click on the pictures to see larger spreads.

This little sculpture, almost a tunnel book, is a paper-cut inside a toilet paper tube and by Anastassia Elias. She has published a book featuring 67 of her works—you can preview the entire book or buy it here. And there are a lot more images here.

{first seen at Book Patrol}

Every year the Santa Fe Book Arts Group does a collaborative project at one of our monthly meetings. This year it was based on French author Daniel Leuwers’ project the Book of Hours. Marilyn, who ran the meeting, picked these “hours” — Morning Sounds, Coffee Time, Meditation/Yoga/Gardening, Webbing Around, Cocktails, Roads and Paths, Skies/Constellations/Sunset, Insomnia Sucks — and divided us into 8 groups of about 6. My group was “Coffee Time” and we all knew our hour ahead of time so we could bring a poem or text related to our topic. We were also requested to bring some paper, 2-3 tubes of acrylic or watercolor paint, a sponge brush, a pen to write out our poem, a ruler and a bone folder.
The plan was to paint the paper, both sides. Then tear it down into 6 pieces (15×5, so it could be folded in thirds), write our text on all 6, then trade with the other group members. Finally we made a box to hold the accordions.
As we got going, the room seemed to be divided between those who were comfortable free-hand painting on the paper and those that were very nervous. So Marilyn had us do a couple of warm-up exercises to get us all relaxed — one was to paint a scrap piece of paper with string and walnut ink. Looking at my scrap with just brown on it, I realized that “coffee time” for me wasn’t just about the brown coffee, but also the blue sky and first light of morning. I was glad I had brought blue and red paint along with sienna.
Here’s someone’s full sheet of paper drying…

After they were dry, we sprayed both sides with Golden Archival Varnish, to make it easier to write our texts over the paint. Then we set about tearing the paper down to 15×5 rectangles and folding them in thirds and writing our text. Here’s my contribution

Instead of a text, Kim cut a pop-up in one of the folds of her accordion…

Here are the other 4…