In the Event That...

You're Making All Your Gifts This Year

by Holly Otterbein

Wooden Shoe Bookbinding and Printmaking Demo | Sun., Nov. 23, 5 p.m., free, Wooden Shoe Books, 508 S. Fifth St., 215-413-0999, woodenshoebooks.com

Creating art can get costly, so Amy Opsasnick makes it a point to recycle. Her senior project at the University of the Arts was made entirely of reused photocopies.

"Art doesn't have to be expensive," she says. "It also doesn't have to be hard. I like to make complex pieces out of simple techniques."

One such method is the pamphlet bookbinding stitch, which Opsasnick will be teaching to the first 13 people who arrive for her demo at Wooden Shoe Books this Sunday. She'll also be showing participants how to construct a "do-si-do" book structure (so named because it's as simple as the dance step), and a printmaking technique that requires only a photocopy, acetone and a smooth surface.

Hopefully, she'll impart onlookers with a bit of her talent, too. Her prints blend the mundane with the bizarre — in My Mother My Mirror (pictured), a woman drapes her arm around a young girl. Seems normal enough, until you realize their arms end with pink lobster claws.