Which is exactly why you should buy one of these. Fun notebooks made of felt, with a book belt that’s made of Lego tape and a piece of Lego. Go on, you know you want to. Click here to visit my Etsy shop.
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Archive for the ‘bookbinding’ Category
You’re never too old for Lego
Posted in bookbinding, tagged etsy, handmade, lego, lego tape, notebook, notebooks, stationery on July 17, 2017| Leave a Comment »
Feeling a bit retro…
Posted in bookbinding, tagged advertisements, adverts, alcohol, cigarettes, coptic binding, etsy, gloves, handmade, lucky strike cigarettes, martini, notebook, pockets, retro, shave cream, smoking, stationery, vermouth, vintage on July 11, 2017| Leave a Comment »
…so here are some books that feature (reproduction postcards of) vintage advertisements. My favourite is hands down (no pun intended) the gloves that come with a cigarette pocket. One of my biggest bugbears is that women’s clothing rarely comes with useful pockets. Usually the pockets on our clothes are too small to be of use or, worse, they’re FAKE pockets just added as a design feature. Seriously, WTF? We need pockets. We need FUNCTIONAL pockets. I have a whole rant on this subject but I’ll just leave you for now with what would probably be my slogan if I went campaigning: Pockets Against the Patriarchy!
If you’d like to purchase any of these books then click here to visit my Etsy shop.
Beatrix Potter back in stock
Posted in bookbinding, tagged beatrix potter, bookbinding, coptic binding, etsy, handmade, notebook, notebooks, recycled, repurpose, stationery, tale of jemima puddleduck, tale of peter rabbit, tale of tom kitten, tale of two bad mice, the tale of benjamin bunny, the tale of mrs tiggy-winkle, the tale of mrs tittlemouse, the tale of pigling bland, the tale of squirrel nutkin, the tale of the flopsy bunnies, upcycled on March 18, 2017| Leave a Comment »
Beatrix Potter notebooks now back in stock. This includes a few Peter Rabbit ones, which are usually the first to sell out so grab them while you can! Click here to visit my shop.
Composition-style notebooks
Posted in bookbinding, tagged book cloth, bookbinding, composition notebook, etsy, handmade, notebooks, saddle stitch on February 16, 2017| Leave a Comment »
These sweet little notebooks are, once again, a result of using up leftovers. Slightly dented/creased signatures of paper teamed with scrapbook paper, random cardboard, and offcuts of bookcloth for the covers. Voila, two composition style notebooks. Available in my Etsy shop for a bargain price, click here to view the listing.
Star Wars
Posted in bookbinding, tagged handmade, jotter, notebook, notepad, perfect binding, star wars on February 13, 2017| Leave a Comment »
Another little notebook made from leftovers. I had a lot of reasonably-sized trimmings of paper, so decided to turn them into a little perfect-bound jotter (using some leftover scrapbook paper as the cover). This one’s not for sale as my partner has taken it to work with him!
Wednesday WIP
Posted in bookbinding, General craftiness, tagged book box, book style storage box, embossing, fake book, faux book, jane austen, stationery, stationery set on February 8, 2017| Leave a Comment »
I’m a bit frustrated at the moment because I started a project towards the end of last week, and now I’m house sitting for a fortnight so won’t be able to work on it again until I get home. Maddening!
Since the start of the year I’ve been on a mission to use up the surplus supplies in my studio. There are a lot. I could almost open a shop selling paper and card, it’s ridiculous. There’s only so much bookbinding I can do, and I’ve finally admitted that I’m unlikely ever to use up all my supplies that way. So what else can I do to use them up? That, readers, has been the question on my mind almost constantly this past month.
One of the things I have a lot of (apart from pretty paper) is thin card. I can’t recall why I bought it, although I must have had a reason, but there’s quite a bit of it and I’ve been wanting to find a good use for it. I made some book style storage boxes using thicker card (from repurposed shoe boxes) and loved the finished product, but they were very labour intensive and thus not a terribly good use of time. However, I do really like boxes that look like books so it was only a matter of time before I thought of a good compromise.
Which brings us to last week. I thought the problem with the last boxes I made was that they were too good. The quality was high because the box was the product. But what if the box was only the packaging? Which is why I’ve set my little heart on making some sets of Jane Austen stationery. Cards featuring quotes from the books, housed in a book-style box. The box will be well crafted (of course) but not made from as sturdy card. The sets will be pretty, and the box attractive enough to keep, and of course you get stationery inside which is always a good thing.
I made a prototype to work out the kinks, and it’s very promising. I had a go at embossing the silhouette on the front and that went well, I just need to fine tune the embossing of fine text/script. I also now know I need to adjust the measurements for the cover somewhat. I’m looking forward to getting back to this in a couple of weeks!
A bit of a boost
Posted in bookbinding, General craftiness, Sketchbook, tagged boost bar, cadbury boost, cadbury's chocolate, embossing, embossing ink, embossing pen, embossing powder, watercolor, watercolour on February 6, 2017| Leave a Comment »
I’ve done embossing before: not much of it, but the results were good. However up until recently I’d only ever used a rubber stamp to mark the area that was to be embossed. It hadn’t even occurred to me that you can buy pens with the embossing ink in them, so that you have total freedom in design. So I bought a Versamark pen and decided to give it a go last week on a postcard I drew to send to a friend.
Doesn’t look very interesting from that angle, but…
…bingo! Not perfect, but not bad either. The problem I had was that the ink seemed to sink into the paper really quickly, so the embossing powder didn’t adhere firmly. I ended up having to go over areas again once I’d heated the paper and then going over it with the heat gun a second time. I suspect this might be a problem caused by the paper (watercolour paper) being too absorbent. So I’m going to try again, but do things a bit differently. I’ve ordered a refill bottle of the ink (which you’d usually use to reink a stamp pad) and next time I’m going to try applying the ink using a paintbrush. Hopefully that will allow me to get enough ink on that it doesn’t dry out or get absorbed before I can sprinkle the powder on. I’ve also learned that I need to do something to the rest of the paper before I start so that it’s easier to tap/blow the excess powder off before applying heat. You can see all the little flecks of powder that got accidentally embossed on this attempt! I’m away from home at the moment so any more attempts at embossing will have to wait a couple of weeks, but in the meantime I’m going to come up with some designs.
