Small gift works

More frequently in the past than nowadays, I would make small works of art as gifts for people -- close friends and family. Most of the time these gifts served the same purpose as my card-making does, i.e., to figure out something prior to a series of works or as a continuation, on a small scale of an idea that is current.

Recently my mother returned a small piece I had given to her in the 1980s as she was running out of storage space. I was doing a lot of work based on dreams and made several gifts in this series, where I painted on glass and painted on the reverse side so that the image would be visible in a mirror behind the glass. The glass and mirror components would be held together within a colourful box frame, like so:

My "Grey Box" find of last year revealed the plans for several of these works.

I am pretty positive the one given to my Mum & Dad was the first.

Here is a detail of the piece above, in which the reflected image of the boat and star are apparent.

I know I made several in this series but cannot remember who the recipients were! The following 3 plan drawings may or may not have been realised as small works -- I don't actually remember. I was planning to paint the frames blue (for water) but obviously changed my mind (at least with the piece that had belonged to my parents).

 

Also in the mid-late 80s I was doing a lot of symbolic figure drawing. I am sure I planned to frame this piece, but I don't think I had planned to have a mirror behind it.

I must have had a collection of glass panels, as I painted this figure on the same size glass as the mirror piece above. I scratched into the paint from the reverse side. 

Christmas Cooking - Cranberry Clementine Conserve with Brazil Nuts

I have been very busy with college work, so am behind in my annual Christmas cooking. But finally, last weekend I got started when I saw that cranberries were available in the grocery. At this point I no longer follow the original recipe, but do everything by eye. However, if you have never made this before, follow the recipe and then make your own adjustments for flavour, sweetness, yield, etc. So here is the recipe:

3 clementines, 1 lemon

1.75 -2 cups water

6 cups cranberries (2 standard packages)

3 3/4 cups sugar

1 cup chopped Brazil nuts

I used 3 x 250 g pkgs this year. It helps to spread the berries on a cookie sheet and pick through them, discarding badly blemished and/or mushy berries. My rule of food: if it doesn't look like you'd be happy to pop it into your mouth, you don't want it in your cooking.

It's easy to just pop berries that you're happy with into a bowl of water to give them a little wash.

This year I used between 100-125 g of Brazil nuts, and just gave them a quick whizz in the food processor to chop them finely. Put in a bowl and set aside.

 It's easiest to peel the lemon and clementines before juicing. Cut the zest finely in slivers. Juice the citrus fruit and set aside.

The citrus zest slivers are added to the water in a heavy bottom cooking pot. Cover pot and cook over low heat for about an hour. Check on pot during this time as the water should not be boiling madly, but simmering and you don't want the water to boil away.

Add the cranberries and cook gently. Berries will start "popping" after about 20 minutes; stir regularly and you can help them get jammy by squishing them with a wooden spoon.

Stir in the nuts.

Add juice and sugar and bring to a rolling boil, stirring constantly until conserve thickens. A tip I got somewhere years ago is to warm the sugar before adding to jams. I do this by putting into a bowl and sitting it in the top part of the oven (in Ireland the grill part, not turned on, but getting the heat from the main oven which is sterilising the jars).

There are different ways of sterilising jars. After washing and rinsing, I bake my jars for at least 20 mins at 200 C. Primarily I am using standard jam and mason jars that I brought with me from Canada, so the lids are being sterilised by boiling for at least 5 mins while I am doing everything else. Another tip: only add a small bit of hot conserve to hot jars at first to ensure that the glass doesn't crack. When it is apparent the glass is not going to break, fill jar leaving some headspace and seal using matching lid. If using recycled jars and paraffin, let the conserve cool a bit before pouring in wax; twirl jar a bit so that wax crawls up the sides of the opening, creating a full seal.

The yield for the recipe above is about 6 fancy jam jars. The one with the tin foil, is actually a larger jar, so I would have had 6+ jars. As a matter of fact, I used more berries than the recipe called for and I could have added more water than I did, which would have increased my yield. I have found that I can add more water and the conserve sets pretty well, though the colour can lose some of its intensity. This batch that I made last weekend is quite thick, but still spreadable. It is quite tasty and tart -- a fantastic accompaniment to turkey and turkey leftovers in sambos (mmm, toasties!) but I have also given this conserve as gifts to vegetarians, it is wonderful on toast too, just used as a jam.

Making Books!

There are a few special occasions coming up, so I wanted to make a few leather sketchbook/journals. These are a handy size, less than A5. I coordinated the bead decoration on the spine with the embroidery thread for binding and some decorative endpapers. 

I started work on another book, with a cardboard cover. Everything is nearly ready to go!

 I thought I would make a better effort at keeping a pictorial record of how I make the books. In this picture I am simply cutting the cardboard to size (slightly larger than the prepared signatures of paper, as above). Whenever I come across pieces of cardboard in packing and see the double crease that reminds me of a book spine, I hold on to the cardboard for a future book.

The signatures are almost square, so for the endpapers I ripped to size from a larger piece of coloured paper. My trusty bone folder is great for getting a smooth crease around the first and last signatures.

I also (after years of threatening to!) decided to try my hand at a simple presentation book design, based on a book that was gifted to me about 15 years ago. I prefer to rip inside pages than to cut them, as I get a deckled edge. This helps me orient my pages in a specific direction. I am using a heavier coloured card for the presentation booklets, and am preparing the paper for making a number of these booklets. The booklets may be used as scrap books or books for specific occasions to hold photos, writing, paper memorabilia, or whatever else one might put in a presentation book!

I am using some handmade paper for the cover, and cutting it to match the paper I have already prepared.

I used the bone folder to score the cover and the pages.

Lion clips are a great help for holding the pages and cover together. I used the push pins to mark the places where I wanted the holes and made the holes with my awl tool.

Using coloured embroidery thread (all six strands - for the other books I make, I divide the thread to 3 strands) I sewed the book together, twice in fact, so that the bind is 12 strand. Below I have shown the second book I made in this way, with red thread and red card stock on the inside.

This is my  first finished book, made to this simple design. It is 14 pages, yellow card, handmade paper cover and bound by yellow cotton embroidery thread. It is A5 size and I am quite pleased.

Xmas preparations begin!

I have been very busy this past week or so! I started the new triptych (next post?) but I have also been busy preparing for xmas and other events coming soon.

I did a large batch of apricot-pineapple jam with almonds. I have been making this jam for xmas presents since 1983, I think. Actually, I only started adding in the almonds for excitement about 15 years ago. I have to source more paraffin though, as I used the last I had on these non-mason jars. I will make up the cranberry-clementine with brazil nut jam when I can get hold of cranberries.

I also made some puddings, a few people get them as gifts too.

Another event is coming up, so I have set out to make another gift book. This is a picture of all the prepared pieces; I started sewing the signatures to the leather cover last night, so expect to be finished that before the weekend is out.