This week I was preoccupied with cutting and collating manhole covers.

My garbage bin is overflowing with paper. Sheet after sheet filled with negative space. It piles up by the hour.

© 2016 Louise Levergneux, one of my favorite covers today

Did you ever foresee an action in advance? While carrying many die-cut manhole covers from a drawer of my printer cabinet to my work table, I dropped the whole stack. I have five steps to go from my printer table to the other side of my half measure studio!! It took hours and hours to collate the manholes to fit each volume. My eyes crossed a few times while trying to recover the sequnces of the manhole covers; but now, the manhole covers are collated by each volume. My next phase in publishing City Shields is to print 28 double sided inserts.

© 2016 Louise Levergneux, manhole covers on the work table ready to collate, AGAIN!

© 2016 Louise Levergneux, manhole covers finally collated

In 2012 when I was creating my flip book project Outside the studio, I dropped sheets of unnumbered pages of my first flip book. It never dawned on me to number the pages, it appeared simple enough to collate. Each page (frame) of a flip book portrays a fraction of a second. This means each image is very, very, very similar! This mistake taught me to number my pages. With City Shields there’s no way to number the covers. I have two sheets of templates to print for each volume. The second template has a variety of covers. I prefer not to waste paper, it’s too expensive! The lesson here is not to drop the sheets, butterfingers!!

I took a break from these wonderful die-cut photographs that brought me back to my travels. So, I drove to Nampa and visited The Tiny Book Show hosted by the Nampa Public Library.

© 2016 Louise Levergneux, Amy Tingle at the Nampa Public Library getting ready for the workshop

© 2016 Louise Levergneux, The Tiny Book Show, awesome!

© 2016 Louise Levergneux, I enjoyed reading this wonderful blue book "Cooper" by Harold Wilson — © 2016 Louise Levergneux, I enjoyed reading this wonderful blue book "Cooper" by Harold Wilson

© 2016 Louise Levergneux, This is a Goldendoodle story!

Amy Tingle and Maya Stein are a mobile creativity company based in northern New Jersey. They travel in a vintage caravan, named MAUDE (Mobile Art Unit Designed for Everyone). The caravan allows them to deliver unique experiences and inspire communities everywhere.

Amy Nack, a local printmaker who goes under the imprint Wingtip Press was on hand to help with the tiny book-making workshop. Everyone is invited to The Tiny Book Show. Amy and Maya stop at select locations around the country to display tiny books made by artists and writers from around the world. Check out their next venue here.

Back at my studio, I cut binders boards for different projects. The days are going by fast and my summer time back home in Canada is approaching.

For entertainment, I watch Garip Ay create Vincent Van Gogh’s Starry night and Self-portrait with ink marbling animation. Enjoy!