Kiley's Handmade Books

Star Books Class!

2009-12-10T10:17:00.000-08:00

I wanted to share the exciting news that I'll be teaching a quick holiday class at M.E.C.C.A. in Eugene next Thursday (17th) from 6:30-8:30pm!
I'll be teaching how to make 2 styles of Star Books and we will make templates so you'll be well equipped to go home and make an army to decorate your house in or give as gifts.

The class is $12 with all materials included. If you're intrested in registering for the workshop give M.E.C.C.A. a call at (541) 302-1810 and they can take care of you. You can also leave a comment here I can email you the registration form.

Breaking the silence

2009-11-28T10:44:00.000-08:00

Rhonda of My Handbound Books was encouraging me last weekend to break the blogging silence, and I am now finally sitting down to do so! I really must apologize again for my lack of dedication to blogging these last few months, life has been such an exciting whirlwind with a new job, new house, and a new puppy that I just haven't had a lot of time to take it all in-let alone share it with everyone else.

I've been hard at work making lots of bright & colorful star books, which make fantastic holiday decorations!

I think one of the reasons I love making these stars so much is I love the paper I have been using to make them-Lokta- Lokta is a handmade traditional paper of Nepal. Lokta is a native fiber which is a very long and has remarkable strength. Each batch is hand dyed and normally a sheet has a different color from each side making each star unique. Lokta is sustainably harvested & has no impact on the forest eco system of Nepal. I could go on and on about the paper, but I can't tell you how happy it made me to buy several sheets in all the colors they had! I've been slicing them up and making lots of different color combination's.

There is new section in my Etsy store with an ever growing collection of star books. The star book craze came about because I was looking for something special to send for my contribution for the BEST Holiday Book Event. I was looking through my example book box and was just delighted when I found the one of these I first made in June.

Speaking of the BEST Holiday Book Event it is being held Nov 27th - Dec 5th.
If you purchase books from participating shops during this time, you have a chance to win prizes from BEST team members and gift certificates to participating shops!
A drawing will be held with the winners announced December 7th on the BEST Team Blog.

For every $10 you spend in participating shops, between Nov 27th - Dec 5th your name will be added to the drawing. For example, if you purchase something for $50 your name goes in 5 times! If you put "BEST Holiday" in the note to seller box then you can have an extra ticket in the drawing!
Here is a list of the participating shops:

ParksideHarmony

NatalieAsIs

LadyArtisan

Kiley's Handmade Books

BookWraps
Re:Paper

Three Gift baskets, each with 9 great prizes, will be given to three winners! Click the picture below to see all of the prizes. The separate baskets will be highlighted in three different posts on Monday-Wednesday.

You could also win one of two $30 Gift Certificates to the participating shops above!

Wow

2009-10-21T20:43:00.000-07:00

As the title of this post says, wow.... I can't believe it's been a month since I've last posted it really feels like it was just a few days ago! Thanks to everyone who is still with me, I am going to try to get back on a once a week schedule.

While I haven't been around online I have been working away in my studio and at my day job. Things in both the studio and my day job have been very exciting lately. As I think most of you know I work for Luna & Larrys Coconut Bliss and things have been a buzz with our Night of Bliss preparations-which in retrospect I feel terrible for not telling all of you about.....
If you live in Eugene you should clear your calendar for Novermber 7th to attend our local Night of Bliss event, because we have a rocking party planned. Actually it's a community benefit/party with endless Coconut Bliss Sundaes, so if you are in the Eugene area be sure to spend the evening with us from 5-9pm enjoying some Bliss and helping out some great people at the same time!
In other work related news you follow my Twitter feed you may notice from time to time that there is a tweet in there that probably should have gone out by @lunaandlarrys instead of me. One of the many reasons I have one of the best jobs in the world is that I get to work from home a few hours a day while my puppy grows up and gets used to being alone for long periods of time. So please bear with me while I get used to having two accounts on my home tweetdeck, I promise to be better about it now that I'm over the flu :)

Back to the studio, the last few months has found me working on an order of 50 wedding dvd folio's for Rich & Alyssa of Nickle City Studio & a smaller order of 10 for Leah of Leah Lariccia Photography. The photo on this post shows the folio's I made for Leah. They are an elegant black silk case with a translucent white paper that has a silver flower and vine pattern on them. I love these folio's to me they feel like a timeless idea of what a wedding was to me when I was a little girl.

I promise to get back on a more regular schedule and to have pictures of Rich & Alyssa's folio's in the next post!

Folders

2009-09-20T11:51:00.000-07:00

Thanks to everyone for the birthday wishes! I had a great day with my toes in the sand :)

As I had said in my last post I got a new teflon folder from Dennis Rudd, it is the boxmakers tool that he sells. I really enjoyed the one box I made and am hoping that having the new folder will motivate me to make some more.This is a picture of all the folders in my possession as of now; the three cream colored tools facing the white tools are my actual bone folders and the white ones are my teflon folders.
The bone folders I purchased at various craft & hobby stores in Eugene & Portland. I had just these three until about 2 months ago and love each for different purposes. The one in the middle is my favorite for scoring, it has a very fine sharp edge on the front of it. I used it to make all the little boxes for my wedding and took a chunk of out it. I can't remember where I found it and thus far have been unable to replace it.
The teflon folders I am still honestly getting used to! They don't feel anything like a real bone folder, they are much slicker and take some wrangling for me to hold on to. The closer of the two tools I purchased from Talas and was the first in my collection. I've come to love it for smoothing out the covers on the folio's after I've cut the slots for the ribbon. The advantage of a teflon over a bone folder is that it doesn't leave shiny marks on your paper or book cloth like a bone folder will.
While I'm still getting used to the teflon I think it time it will become my preferred tool because it really doesn't leave a mark at all. I have plans to purchase a mircospatula from Dennis Rudd to add to my collection very soon.

Happy Birthday to Me!

2009-09-12T22:22:00.001-07:00

Yes, it's that time of year again :)I always love logging on to Etsy and seeing that at the top!
Actually it's not yet my Birthday here in Oregon, t-minus one hour- however it is in Etsy Standard Time (NY) so I'll take it :)

I opened one of my birthday presents early this year because it got here and I knew what it was, it's a new teflon folder from Dennis Rudd, which I meant to take pictures to share with you today but by the time the hubster and I got the photography box built it was time to go to MECCA for the Object Afterlife Challenge reception. I arrived there to fantastic news that my piece had sold at the Eugene Celebration! Which is excellent pre-birthday news, I hope I get to meet the new owner at the Bring opening.

Tomorrow includes breakfast plans, a trip to the coast for some Agate hunting and puppy shenanigans. This will be her first trip to the coast so I expect a sandy happy puppy, lots of plenty towels will be packed :)
After we get home we'll be meeting up with friends for dinner and a few cocktails.

I promise to check back in later this week with lots of pictures for you! I just sent the first round of folio's to Nickel City Studio and I can't wait to share them with you. After a long day in the studio another 8 folio's are in the press as we speak, however it's currently raining so I think they'll have to stay until Monday just to be safe.

Celebration!

2009-09-03T19:24:00.000-07:00

The Eugene Celebration is this weekend and while I don't think I'll make it this weekend (we have a vet visit Saturday) I will be there in spirit! I have a book in the first annual MECCA Object Afterlife Challenge which will be on display at the old MECCA location for the Celebration this weekend, after that it will be at the spiffy new MECCA location and then in October it moves to Bring! The opening of the show will be at Bring on October 10th if anyone local wants to stop by and chat with me.

This book was really a challenge for me, I don't often thing of my self as an artist and almost never put content in a book. The materials also really threw me for a loop for a long time, I received a large plastic burlap like bag, some plastic packaging, and a bunch of the tear off ends of tractor feed paper. I ended up using all but the tractor feed pieces, I wanted to use them to decorate the covers with but it made the book way to busy so I went with a wonder scrap of green Bugra paper and earth tones for the confetti.

The inside pages are the bag cut up and then I glued scraps of torn paper on to the pages in hopes that someone will use the book for an altered art journal. I'll be honest that while I'm intrigued by the idea I just don't have the time right now to start. Hopefully in a year when Penny grows up a bit, right now she's very demanding of all most all of mom's free time :)

Thanks for sticking around!

2009-08-16T12:49:00.000-07:00

I would like to start by saying thank you for all the well wish about my poor thumb! I'm finally almost all the way healed, I have a nice new pink patch of skin that is about the size of a dime on my thumb and is still super sensitive!
I would also like to say thank you for sticking around! I haven't been a very active poster over the course of this summer but it's been a really busy summer!
We moved, I had my first book binding accident, I got called in for jury duty & assigned to a jury, I've started working for a second awesome local company, I've got some really awesome folio orders on the line, and I'm now training a dog on top of it all.

Let's start with the dog first, she's an adorable Red Heeler Jack Russell mix and her name is Penny.
She is about the cutest thing ever and we couldn't say no when we were asked to bring her into our life. We don't know why but we are her 4th family and are happy to give her a place to call home.

I'm having a great time working with 3 photographers right now designing folio's for them, the first and largest order is for Nickel City Studio. We chose a green color that isn't as bright green as their logo for the cloth and a fun white cloth for the spine that almost a wood grain pattern to it. The paper I found to coordinate with it couldn't have been a better match and so far I'm totally in love with it. It's a handmade hand silk screened Indian paper with what's called a basket weave pattern on it. I have a little teaser shot here to show you;

The picture isn't the greatest and I've realized that since moving I need to break down and build a light box. Our house has great windows that let in lots of light, just not in the right places or angles for photography. As much as I hated our old skinny kitchen I do miss the great lighting it had for photography. Also while that stack of paper looks big, it was bigger! I got about 30 of the pockets folded when I realized I should take a picture of the huge stack of paper.

Hopefully in the coming weeks I'll be a lot better about posting on a regular basis again. Once I figure out some lighting in the house I promise to have a tutorial up on how to make Kumihimo cord so stick around for that!

Hey look, it's a book!

2009-07-30T21:02:00.000-07:00

I'm feeling rather accomplished this evening, as I've managed to complete a book up to my standards without using my left thumb! As I'm left handed this started out as quite a challenge but after the first signature or two I was almost sewing at normal speed.
I really like this sketchbook-It's 8.5"x10.5" which I think is the largest leather book I've made to date. Secondly I love the buttons! They came from the customer & are vintage WW2 buttons, they come down the page in a wave with the natural curve fo the edge of the hide. It looks fantastic and sadly I don't have a good picture of it. I lost the fantastic lighting in my old kitchen & had I haven't gotten a light box built yet...

Thanks for all the well wishes about my poor thumb! I'm a slow healer but so far I'm only about a day behind schedule on the after care sheet they gave me so hopefully I'll be able to get my stitches out next week and get started on the tutorial I keep promising!

In other news this weekend I'll be at Sushi! Sake! Sumo! in PDX serving Coconut Bliss. I'm really excited about going, because well I don't like cancer! It's a really run fundraiser for the American Cancer Society and hopefully I'll have time to slip into a sumo suit!

Also going on this weekend is the Bookbinding Team's summer BBQ!

Summer is winding down in some places and a distant hope in others, but members of the Etsy Bookbinding Street Team are ready to celebrate the hottest season by hosting a Virtual BBQ Scavenger Hunt. Next weekend starting Saturday, August 1, through Monday, August 3, browse participating shops and locate hidden photos of items associated with the venerable tradition of the summer backyard barbecue. Not sure what that means? No worries! We'll provide a list of items so you'll know exactly what you're looking for. Find them all and enter to win a $30 gift certificate good at any participating shop. AND win bonus chances to win with each item purchased from participating shops during the hunt!

Stop by the BEST Blog Friday, July 31, for a list of participating shops and complete details. Just follow the smoke!

Another Quick Update

2009-07-27T18:31:00.000-07:00

I have internet at home now but won't be up to much for the next week or so as I had my first bookbinding accident yesterday. I was cutting board on my mat cutter yesterday and somehow left thumb got in the way.... I'm left handed....

I've got 4 stitches, a cut nerve, and a lot of choice words- but with my dominant hand out of the action I'm not up to much. Which is a large disappointment because I have a very large order folio order that needs to be worked on, which is what I was doing when I tried to take my thumb off. Maybe in a day or two I can get a teaser shot of the cloth swatches and paper together, I can't believe how perfect of a match I got and how well I think it suits the photographers personality. However that will have to wait until I've got at least a semi functioning second opposable thumb :)

Quick Update

2009-07-15T13:44:00.000-07:00

I just wanted to let everyone know I officially survived the move yesterday! We now have a cute little duplex & a yard!

We won't have internet access at the house for another week so I'll probably be silent for another week or so. Hopefully the lack of internet will motivate me to go unpack my studio and get back to work!

Officially on hiatus

2009-07-03T22:07:00.000-07:00

Well it's official, I'm on hiatus. The last of my studio went into boxes last night and of course right after wards we got news that the duplex is behind schedule to be ready for us to move into. I'll now be without my studio for over a week!
To top off the bad news I messed up my foot quite badly today at work- well on the way to finding lunch. I was walking with a co-worker (the awesome Chris G) down to Friendly Street Market to get some accouterments for lunch and walked right into a huge pothole and did something awful to my foot. At the time it was just a little twinge, but by the time I left work my foot was huge and I could barely walk on it.
My ankle oddly enough is perfect, I messed up something in my arch and I'm hoping it's not something that's going to require a cast. Just a light sprain rather than something torn or worse. Either way my long holiday weekend has been shot and I'm on the R.I.C.E (rest, ice, compression, & elevation) plan along with some Chinese herbs for injuries of this type.
I am hoping to be mobile enough for planned trip to Portland this Sunday, it's a $2 Sunday at OMSI and I want to be able to walk around and explore!

As it doesn't feel right to leave my blog with such a somber post let's look at something cute and fuzzy!

That my friends is a 3 week old lion cub from the West Coast Game Park in Bandon, OR. We took a road trip down last weekend and it was fantastic! I held both Bella pictured above and her brother Simba. I also got to hold a 4 week old spotted leopard cub Bentley, but he was squirmy and is pretty blurry in most of my pictures. They have many more of other fantastic animals for petting and viewing but the cubs are a pretty special thing. I also held two Opossoms, two farrets, and something else I can't remember or find in my photos... out for petting was a baby fox, baby wallaby, a baby black skunk, and an adult golden skunk (both de-skunked) and a few other animals- plus the heard of deer and goats that run over small children to obtain food.

I'll leave you with another picture my husband and I with Bella. I am going to make my way towards bed and contemplate unpacking some of my tools.

A different kind of book for a different kinda swap

2009-06-24T15:12:00.000-07:00

In my slew of creative work last week I also finally completed my swap book for the Book Arts Forum swap! This book went to Billie and she kindly provided the pictures as I was so excited to get it in the mail across the pond I forgot all about taking pictures to share!
The cover is made from old x-rays, this one is of a chest. Kinda hard to tell from the pictures, but trust me it's a chest :) The theme of the swap was to use materials we had never used before. I received my book from Rhonda and I think it's already packed in a moving box but you can see pictures on her blog!
The x-rays of course came from MECCA my favorite craft reuse center, and in exciting news I'll be teaching classes there again in the fall. I'll be teaching an introduction class, probably a coptic class, and a class on ATC albums as they do a monthly swap. I also just signed up for their summer artist challenge and should be getting my materials next week. I'm a little frightened as I've never let someone pick my materials for me, but it should be a lot of fun.
I have enough x-ray left to make another book, maybe two. I haven't decided if they would be good for the shop or if they would be too strange...

I haven't made any new books yet this week, almost all of my creative energies have been going into my CSA box and finding wonderful new things to eat. While I haven't been taking pictures I think I'll put up a post later with all the tasty things I've been eatting and links to how to make them.

Hey look, crafty stuff!

2009-06-18T20:23:00.001-07:00

After my last post I realized how much I missed working in my studio and how I needed to get back to work ASAP before I lost my sanity in this whole moving process. The good news is that I now have a cute little duplex to call home and I got some quality studio time in!

I had an extra white case left from the first order of folio's I made and I had found this awesome heart paper after I shipped Brie's order.

This was stop numero uno on studio time, I had been wanting to put the case and the paper together for a long time. Pockets were made, ribbon was attached and I am really happy with the results. This lovely little dvd folio can be found my shop!

This lovely star book is my first attempt at the structure, I asked Amanda to teach it at my local bookarts meeting this month!
I love the book and color combo's, but I'm not thrilled with the holes I punched in it... at this point I think I liked it better without the holes. However I also only own a star punch, a 4-leaf clover punch, and my screw punch so my punching was kind of limited....
I'm very excited about making a bunch of these to use a Christmas ornaments and maybe just some an ornaments to hang in my new studio space. I never decorated the current studio space I'm in and I really want to remedy that when we move this time.
I also got a fun blue flower celtic weave finished a few days ago, but don't have it photographed yet.. coming soon!
p.s. for those of you who visit the site I think I'll be playing with the set up over the next few days so don't be alarmed if things look different!

Yes, I'm still alive

2009-06-12T11:41:00.000-07:00

Holy cow, life has been a crazy whirlwind around here and I think it's only going to get worse for a little while!
I found out the day our lease was up that it was up and we've been searching around for a new place to live. After two weeks of an exhausting & time consuming search we have an application in on a place and hopefully we will have a nice little duplex to call home soon.
Things you've missed due to my crazy life, I've created yet another style of wedding dvd folio like my fold up brag books, I was interviewed for Billie's Craft Room, and I bought an awesome seat bag for my husbands new bike!This awesome picture is the packaging for Dark Roast Photography who I made the chocolate and ivory folio's for. You can see one of the 3 dvd folio's unfolded up front and one folded up lurking with the boxes. I still love these folio's and I really love how great they look with the rest of her packaging!

Stay with me over the next month or so as we prepare to move and actually make the move, I promise to try to not fall off the map quite so badly!

Graffiti Blizzard Book

2009-05-20T21:05:00.000-07:00

As I said in my last post I made a Celtic Weave Sketchbook for a trade. What I traded for was some graffiti sketch work on a book I made. My local book arts group had our meeting this week and our swap theme this month was Graffiti. I made a blank blizzard book out of craft paper and filled it with 6 atc's for him to decorate any way he wanted too.
Below are several shots of the book in it's finished state. I still feel bad that I didn't get any pictures of the sketchbook I traded him, but I've been told he loved it!
On with the book porn!

A Tasty Give Away!

2009-05-19T11:06:00.000-07:00

As I have said before I work for Luna & Larry's Coconut Bliss and we make fantastic coconut milk ice cream. This week the wonderful Coconutgal has been reviewing our flavors and we decided to join in the fun and give her some coupons to give away for free pints!
You can find her blog here, and details on the contest here. Sorry to all of my international readers but Coconut Bliss is currently only available in the US. We are still a very small company (7 of us work here in the office) and have just recently gone nation wide here in the states.

In other news my laptop is now back in my hands, much sooner than expected and as I got it back I didn't get much work done this week. I made a celtic weave to trade yesterday but forgot to take pictures of it... Hopefully I'll have time to get some pictures of what I traded it for before I have to give it away too! Other than that this week I need to finish the rest of Leslie's chocolate and ivory folio's as I've been taking my dear sweet time on it.

A Short Pause

2009-05-13T20:42:00.000-07:00

My laptop and I are going to be separated for what will hopefully be a few short days. My case has cracked in the exact same spot again and it's been leaving marks on my wrist so I decided it was finally time to send it in to be repaired. Sadly as I'll be mailing her off tomorrow I know she won't reach Apple until Friday so at the soonest I would have her back on Tuesday of next week. I'm expecting it to be more like Wednesday or Thursday in reality. The good news is that without the interwebs to distract me I am expecting some time next week to do some serious binding.
Next week you ask? Why not sooner? I have a graduation in Portland Friday evening, a reservation at the Grand Lodge Friday night, and an appointment with the tide pools in Cannon Beach on Saturday morning :)
The bad news, I can't imagine the number of post that are going to be in my reader that I'll need to catch up on!

In the mean time I'll leave you with a few photo's of the DVD folio's I've been working on. The first is a gold and chocolate 1 pocket. While you can't see the paper inside it's a sparkly chocolate paper that matches the ribbon and cloth perfectly. This photographer wanted an elegant simple folio and I think this works fantastically. I'm also working on a few new designs for her that hopefully will involve a flap.
The brown silk and ivory folio are also very elegant and simple. These are still in production but as I said the other day I was staring at the piles of materials and I had to see what one looked like finished.... and they are stunning! I love the flocked ivory damask fabric and the silk cloth, it's a wonderful combination and in retrospect I should have taken a photo of the inside for you to see as well!

Well with that it's time for Lost so I'll see you all when I get my laptop back!

Happy Mother's Day!

2009-05-10T16:15:00.000-07:00

To all the Mom's in the world Happy Mother's Day! Now that I know my Mom has opened her box I can show you what I sent her this year!
It is a Kusudama ball made from the tutorial on Folding Trees; it's a two part tutorial part 1 and part 2.
I cut each of the 60 squares by hand from coordinating scrapbook paper, I had the right sized origami paper but I really wanted the color to be the same overall with different patterns on the petals. I'm really pleased with the results and my Mom loves it so it was worth all the work.
I really enjoy folding the flowers and have a few of them around, but I think I need to create a ball for myself to take to work and hang by my desk. I have a very small desk so I don't have a lot of desktop space to put things on so this would be perfect!The past few days in the studio have been spent doing lots and lots of prep work, mostly cutting and measuring things. This photo shows everything cut and prepped for the order of folio's for Dark Roast Photography. I have one 3 DVD Folio in the press right now as I couldn't wait to see what they looked like! I love these folio's, they are simple, elegant, and I think a great way to preserve such a wonderful day. This picture can also be found on Flickr with notes about what is strewn around my desk with some commentary. As I said awhile back I moved to google reader to keep up with all the wonderful blogs out in the world and they have a recommendations area in the home page. I had never really noticed it until today when low and behold I found myself!
It makes me wonder how many people out there have found my blog via a reader recommendation and how many people actually have my blog on an RSS feed. The blogger gadget says that I have 3 followers but I would like to think there are many more of you out there on RSS readers.
Ah the things I think about while I'm working away in my studio. I also discovered today that while I work much better with music on in the studio I don't actually listen to it. I spent 4 hours working today and when I finished I realized I had been listening to the same album for the whole time!

Head Fog & Pictures!

2009-05-07T15:06:00.000-07:00

I've been falling behind in sharing some of my newest creations. Mostly because I've had a sinus infection and have been living in a serious state of head fog. I'm staring to come out of it today but am still feeling very scattered. I had this whole list of things I was going to accomplish today, I got up at a reasonable hour and just did random things until noon!

Around noon I contemplated lunch and saw an old crochet project laying in the corner and picked up determined to triumph over it. I've got a good hand on it now, I need to make more "yarn" before I can finish it... I realize that is vague I promise to share photo's when I'm all done!

See what I mean about scattered I'm already way off topic! Back to the new books and pictures! Above is a new portable photo album! I love this green velvet paper, the texture is so fantastic and the organza ribbon is the perfect touch!
Next up the new style of folio I'm working on! This one is currently for sale in my shop as it is not the materials I will be using for the next order. This was a trial run to make sure that both myself and Leslie liked the way it looked. The new ones will have the same linen cloth along the spine, but will have a lovely brown silk cloth instead.

This green journal was the first in my "A Couch I Was" series of books. Remember the couch I tore apart in the fall? Well I'm finally starting to use the leather from it. I say was because almost immediately after I listed this one I got a request for a custom order for this journal larger and in sketch book form! The sketchbook is happily on it's way to it's new home but I think I will create another like it as I liked the look of the two buttons!
Phew... 2 more stay with me! This one I also love, I've been making thicker books lately and this one clocks in at 1lb 6oz (.62kg) which is awesome. I think I've said it before but I love holding a good thick book. This book also features a great handmade paper for the covers, I find that I'm becoming more of a snob when purchasing paper. I have been buying more handmade papers and less commercially printed papers. Lastly we have a fun pair of earrings! I love the gold hoops with the little hearts in them and I love how it brings the paper and the hearts together as well. They are from an Italian handmade paper (again see the handmade part) and I love the different shades of blue.

Ok now that I've overloaded all of you I'm going to run to twitter so that I overload others :)

Twittering

2009-05-03T13:59:00.000-07:00

I can now be found on Twitter under KileysBooks. I would love to follow any of you out there on the webs, you can either add me on Twitter or leave a comment here.

You might also notice that I've been working on the side bar on the blog. I have temporarily removed all the links I had as my blog reading is out of hand and many of the links on this page were not current or sites I frequented anymore. There are currently 31 blogs in my reader, but I expect that number to grow. Tulibri has a fantastic list of bookbinding blogs on her blog, and I keep finding more and more blogs to read via her recommendations! I'll work on bringing the links back when I've caught up on a few other things.

I'm off to finish my mothers day present, I had planned to share photo's with everyone but I just found out that my mom reads my blog from time to time so that has to wait for a week!

Folio's Away

2009-04-30T09:47:00.000-07:00

Tuesday morning I pulled the last of Brie's dvd folio's out of the press, shot a few photo's and sent them on their way. It was really rewarding to see them all lined up and finished.

I always try to send a little something extra with all my packages and sales from my shop. If I have the time I always try to personalize what is going into each package as well. For Brie I used a strip of paper that was used to make one of the folio's and her pink book cloth to make a business card holder. The card holder is a Blizzard Book which is a fun little structure, the way this one is put together you can fold it up and tie the ribbon to keep it in your bag, or open it up and lay it on a desk or a counter to display your cards. If I decide to do any shows this summer I will be making one of these to hold my own cards.

Next on my plate is an order for Leslie of Dark Roast Photography her folio's will be designed differently from Brie's and I hope to have a mock up completed this afternoon. Her book cloth has is in transit and I am anxiously awaiting it's arrival. Leslie chose a chocolate brown silk cloth and an ivory damask paper, the combination is going to look fantastic together and I am really excited to get started on them!

Busy Girl

2009-04-27T21:46:00.000-07:00

I realized the other day that I didn't say much around here last week, but that's because I was a busy girl! I spent most of the week working on the first folio order and when I wasn't working on those I was working on these fantastic watercolor journals.
These were custom order for a specific paper and I love how they came out. There is always something to be said for a book with some girth to it and watercolor paper is great for girth. This was also my first time sewing the Celtic Weave stitch with the same colored thread. Having 4 needles all with the same color thread was quite a challenge. The first book took me a little over two hours to sew up, however towards the end of the first book I devised a system for managing the 10 needles on the book. The second book greatly benefited from the learning adventure of the first :)
The pair are happily on their way to their new home, if you want to take a peek there are more pictures here.

This week finds me contemplating doing a local show in June, from what I've been told the show is hit or miss and the crowd will either really like or really not be interested in my stuff- no one is really sure which will be the case. I'm going to go check out the May show on Friday to see what I can dig up.
I also have another order for folio's in the pipeline, I'm waiting for the cloth from to arrive. To keep me busy until then I picked up a box making kit at Paper Source this weekend and hope get is assembled to share soon.
Tomorrow I'll be photographing the folio's as a set so hopefully I'll have some fun photo's to share!

Etsy Day!

2009-04-24T11:27:00.000-07:00

Today is Etsy Day! Yay!

I love Etsy, the community that is has grown, the friends I have made, and all the wonderful opportunities it has given me. Today I gladly celebrate Etsy day, and invite you do to the same!

Presses and Beach Trip!

2009-04-20T17:10:00.000-07:00

I had a fantastic weekend that I didn't talk about at all yesterday! Saturday my husband and I took advantage of the first nice weekend and ran to the coast. We packed a picnic lunch and used our picnic set for the first time. I think we've had it for two years and never remembered to bring it with us!

After lunch we cruised up 101 looking for an area with tide pools as tide was out. We almost never make it to the coast on days when low tide is in the afternoon so we were very excited!

We spend a larger part of the afternoon at a park I can't remember the name of as we had never stopped there before, but we had a great time. We found a few pools and stuck the camera in the water proof case and got some really fantastic pictures. Once we finished with the pools I went back to the beach and dug around in the sand by the river for agates.

Sunday we got up to another wonderful day and got to work outside making me some much needed larger presses for my folio production.

For years I've had two small book presses that can press one or two books at a time as that is all I have ever needed. As I said one of my two presses is too small for the 3 pocket presses so a trip to the man's mall fixed my problem!
We bought two 2'x4' pieces of MDF and sliced them in half to give me 2' square presses. Once we had the 2' boards we drilled 6 holes in each and put in carriage bolts and wing nuts and voila, new presses!

What you can see in the pictures are my two new presses next to my old "large" press. The middle press is currently pressing a round of folios the other two had just been emptied and quality checked.

The box is full of folios who so far have been quality checked, which means I've stuck a DVD in each pocket, closed it up, and tied it closed. I can't wait to have them all finished so I can take pictures of the large stacks all tied up and pretty. Although I do like the look of all the ribbon loose in the box as well!

Sorry for the picture jumble... I guess that is the problem with making the pictures bigger, I now have more images than I have words for!

Building Cases

2009-04-19T16:04:00.000-07:00

The last few days in the studio have been spent making color selections and building cases. I had a lot of fun matching up papers to book cloth and it actually didn't take me nearly as long as I had originally thought it would. I built a case out of each of the 4 colors I had to choose from; white, black, off white and pink. I put the cases together in a four corners kinda thing and put a pocket on each color and did process of elimination until I ended up with my favorite combination.

I ordered my cloth from Talas and then was headed through Portland a few days later so I bought my papers before I had samples of my cloth to take with me. I was a little bit nervous when I started matching everything up but it all worked out beautifully in the end.

Once I matched a paper to the color cloth I was going to use I paper clipped some scratch paper with the number of pockets and the color cloth on the front and started to make a list and piles of pockets. I was pretty proud of my organization once I was done with everything and staring at my list and piles :)

Once completed with the list I picked everything up off my bench and got to work making the set number of cases that I needed.
This is only my second very large scale order so I'm still working out a process for production work but I think I've gotten a pretty good rhythm down now. I did learn that I needed more equipment to make larger projects, I usually only have 1 or 2 books in my presses at any given time so the two that I've had served my needs just fine. One of my presses was too small for the 3 pocket folios and the other only held two at a time, so the solution of course was to build new presses!

I'll share some pictures of the new presses, and my fantastic trip to the coast yesterday tomorrow! For now I'll leave you with a peak of the first pink folio out of the press this afternoon!