Wayfarer's Wander Books ala India Flint - Student Work & Mine

After taking the most exhilarating Eco-dying workshop ever with Fiber and Paper Artist India Flint in Santa Barbara 2 summers ago, I was able to teach her techniques to my Advanced 3-D students last school year.  They were seniors Kevin, Nida and Rita.  the kids worked so fast and furiously that I wasn't able to get a lot of shots of their individual papers, but I did manage to get a couple of pix of Rita Labib's finished book.

Above is her gorgeous and earthy cover.

And above here are two of her pages inside the book.  She dedicated the book to she and her  boyfriend's relationship.

Below is the back cover. 

One of the techniques they learned was the signature paper that we dyed in onion skins and strawberry tops.  Here is an example of the one I demoed for them.

Above is opened up and below is folded into book form.  If you look closely you can see where I sewed with twine over a very small part of one of my signatures.  India said that was our special mark that we should stitch or draw onto all our papers for the book.mark

Below you can see the 3 kids signature papers before they went into the dyebath.

Here is a close-up of Kevn's special mark.

Another paper we made was larger and crinkled and sewn on with silk fabrics prior to dyeing.

The one above and below is my demo piece before and after the dyebath.

And here are two shots of it folded up ready to be put into the book.

From the moment we start this assignment I gave each child a large piece of watercolor paper (140 lbs.)  Every move we made we did on top of this paper, from the collecting of flowers, to the drips as the papers came out of the dye baths, and more.  We worked on both sides.  I think these were my front and back that I demoed on.

But I wasn't satisfied, I put more plant matter onto one side, scrunched it up and into a dye bath it went for a much richer look below.

I believe this was Rita's big book cover paper right beter she cut it up for map folding to put her pages into.... 

so that she ended up with this beauty.