Inspired by Books Reading Club with Andrew Thornton

Today is the day we share our creations inspired by the book, Paris to the Moon by Adam Gopnik, as part of Andrew Thornton's Inspired by Books Reading Group.


                                                         

Back in March Andrew Thornton came up with the idea of an Inspired by Books Reading Club.  He developed  a wonderful list of books and the plan that we would read them, discuss them and make "something" inspired by the book. Of course I had to join in.  I had just finished  6 mysteries by Fred Vargas and needed  some real reading inspiration.
Here is the list of books he chose for us to read:

April 2013 -  "Paris to the Moon", Adam Gopnik

May 2013 -  "A Rumor of Gems", Ellen Steiber
June 2013 -  "The Bucolic Plague", Josh Kilmer-Purcell
July 2013 -  "The Cookbook Collector", Allegra Goodman
August 2013 -  "The Infinities", John Banville
September 2013 -  "Dogeaters", Jessica Hagedorn
October 2013 -  "My Mother She Killed Me, My Father He Ate Me", edited by Kate Bernheimer
November 2013 -  "Bridge of Birds", Barry Hughart
December 2013 -  "The Journey to the East", Hermann Hesse
January 2014-  "The Enchantress of Florence", Salman Rushdie
February 2014 -  "Difficult Loves", Italo Calvino
March 2014 -  "An Irish Country Doctor", Patrick Taylor
April 2014 -  "Interpreter of Maladies", Jhumpa Lahiri


Our first book to read has been Paris to the Moon by Adam Gopnik.  I was inspired to read the book because I love Paris' literary past and present but especially the time when Gertrude Stein lived there.  Malcom Crowley's book  Exiles Return, A Literary Odyssey of the 1920's was a formative book for me as a teenager.  So of course the parts of Paris to the Moon I liked best were about writers.  I was especially taken about his piece on the Two Cafes as Les Deux Magots was the cafe where Sartre, Camus and Simone de Beauvoir hung out.  So that was part of my inspiration.  The other was the ongoing theme of change in the French way of life and their resistance to it.  Entirely understandable.  So I decided to make some beads about these two themes.  I have called them Wrapped Up in the Past.  My inspiration for how to make the beads was an article in Belle Armoire Jewelry ( Autumn 2012 page 44) by my friend Sharon Borsavage of Live Wire Jewelry.  In this article she made some absolutely knock out gorgeous resin paper beads with some of her lovely ephemera.  She gave instructions how to make them and so that is how I got started.

I wanted to make beads about the past at  Les Deux Magot cafe.  So I got together some pictures of Sartre, Camus and deBeauvoir and made tall collages that I could tear into strips and coat with resin.

Here is how my table looked when I was making the beads.

                                           Here is a picture of the beads drying on the straws

The process of making these beads involves coating strips of paper with resin and then wrapping them around a straw.  Then let them dry for a couple of days.  To hold the wet resin strips around the straw you use rubber bands.  The directions call for small ones but I only had regular so they were hard to remove when dry but gave the beads some serendipitous color!!  Needless to say, Sharon Borsavages beads were so much more elegant than these.  But I grew to like mine as I added to them.  Like these cool bead caps,
the rounds of copper wire and finally beads at the bottom.

I also experimented with coating strips of linen with resin

 In order to keep the linen beads around the straw mandrel, I tied them with waxed linen instead of rubber bands.

 This one I wire wrapped with two black raku beads.  I like its rustic look.  I added all these beads together and used a piece of copper I cut out to hang them  from for the necklace I made.

This is a short necklace.  The toggle clasp was also fun to make.  I wanted to make a specific reference to  at least part of my inspiration so I stamped the three names of Sartre, Camus and deBeauvoir on the clasp.

                                   Toggle Clasp for my necklace entitled  Wrapped Up in the Past

I have had so much fun trying out new techniques and adapting them to a specific theme/idea.  Each step of the way was like an adventure and I am pleased with the result.  But truthfully, the best part for me was the excitement of discovery and doing something new and different..  Thank you Andrew for giving us such an open ended  challenge and a list of books to read to spark our creativity.  I am having a ball!!
Here is the list of other participants .  I hope you will check out their creations.HERE   I know I will!!

Mary K McGraw 

Mary Harding

Sarajo Spurgeon Wentling

Jenny Davies Reazor

Judy Campbell

Andrew Thornton, Laurel Ross, Terri Greenawalt