Tick Tock - More Halloween Minibook Pages Before Halloween

The next set of pages include the hand-colored relief prints on scrap, printed paper.  I decided to include these in this book because they are so seasonal AND the idea of using recycled paper in a creative way is appealing to me. 

Last year when I flew to Florida, I sat next to a man that worked for a paper company.  He shared that his main job was to fly all over the United States and sell paper products to large businesses.  The volume of paper he talked about was amazing to me - he was talking in the thousands of tons of paper annually.   He talked about ongoing reforestation work and the constant need to increase the tree harvest to keep up with  paper demands.   When I asked him if there was a noticeable impact of technology use and development of electronic storage, he responded that there has never been a decrease in paper production during the span of his career - he was about my age Or a little bit older.....HMMMMMM.

All of these prints have been created using hand-carved relief block but not all of them have been carved using the same materials.  The pumpkin was created using Speedball softcut, the scarecrow and skeleton were made using a new material sold by Blick (the gray and white, layered material,)   the text lines and the crow (a.k.a. raven,) were created carving an older version of the Speedball softcut.......

.....and the vulture was created using the newest softcut material - it was very pliable AND seemed fresh.....

I am just finishing up another minibook now - it is much more static, being created almost completely from purchased materials with a limited number of monoprints.......a new type of creation for me.  It is a good example of what almost anyone could do using purchased materials and spending some time; with some written text or journaling, it could be a wonderful project for a new minibook creator!