This little book was a combination of a day with a granddaughter making a paperbag book, a little bit of nostalgia and the pressure of a sister’s birthday looming. These three things combined to produce “AFRICA CALLING”.
The protea is the national flower of South Africa so it went on the cover. I have been doodling with watercolours since doing a sketch/watercolour course on line some five years ago and my box of paints wave at me every time I open the cupboard door. I dug into my box of African ephemera and found bits and pieces of this and that collected over the years . . . postcards, Christmas cards, travel brochures . . . and put them together with some personal bits of old letters, photographs and song lyrics tucked into the pockets made by the paperbag pages. As you can see, very little embroidery; just some surface stitching on natural linen which forms the cover.
The actual book construction is not of my invention – thanks to Pinterest and You tube there are several ways of assembling handmade books and this was a very simple construction.
