Books To Be Red
Ocracoke Island, my home for twelve years, is a spectacular place. Beautiful beaches and wildlife aside, this quaint little village has some of the loveliest gift shops I have ever seen. They are owned and run, almost exclusively, by women, whom I must add, have impeccable taste. At least they cater to my whims and desires (I know I have impeccable taste ! ) and I can always find something amazing for my loved ones. Anyway, I have had a big lifestyle change recently. I have just started working in my most favorite of all the shops – Books To Be Red. I am so happy. I love books ! you can never have enough books. I get to recommend good stuff to read and I get lots of visual stimulation from beautiful new book covers, graphic novels and children’s picture books. I love art and this special bookstore has a lot of art supplies ! One of the best things about my new job, however, is getting to apply my artistic sensibilities to my new environment. I was asked to create a spring themed book display on the porch, in this cute little cabinet and a crafty little light bulb lit up ! After finding a great selection of springy books and gifts, I was inspired to jazz it up even more by using gift bags and tissue paper. I cut out tiny little birdies from the gift bags, giving them tissue paper wings, then I made little butterfly cutouts from the tissue paper as well. So simple and so cute !
This was so much fun, that I was inspired to take a little extra home and make some more cute things. Over the weekend, I made a sweet little jacket for my tatty sketchbook:
Did anyone else have to do this at school ? When I was at Primary school (Elementary) in Scotland, we had to cover all of our books to protect them. At first my mother did this, then I had to take over the responsibility as I got older.
One the book was covered, I remembered the butterfly cutouts and made some bigger ones:
I folded a hand-sized piece of tissue in half, to make it easy to cut out a symmetrical design. This took a few tries as I kept making the bottom wing too big. The first butterfly was made up out of my head. To get inspiration for a slightly different shape, I googled “butterfly silhouette”. Then, I simply glued each tissue shape onto a piece of gift bag paper and applied some circles cut out of the same gift bag to the top of the tissue. I gently drew some details with fine point markers and a white roller ball pen. I loved doing this ! I could do it all day. I also have a few birdies inside my sketchbook to remind me of how cute they are.
Keep your gift bags ! re-use them, upcycle them, craft them up into something cute ! The possibilities are endless.
The Irrepressible Artist 