That special project, followup

The journal project that I mentioned in the last post, will include handmade books from several other bookbinders that are all members of the Bookbinding Etsy Street Team. Here are some of the other contributions:

- Buechertiger
- CinderLisa Design
- Kristin Crane
- Minus + Minus
- Tickerfinch
- PaulinePaulette

There are sixteen books that will be "adored and adorned by creative women around the world." Each women will create a 4-6 page story in one of the journals, written and illustrated to show who or what made a difference in their lives and their advice for other young women. A short film will be made to tell the story of the books and the ideas, and the film will be premiered at the first TED Women's Conference in December and the books will be displayed and shared at a gallery event.

Journals for a special project

Hardcover, flat back binding. Front cover uses my own hand marbled paper. Spine and back are cream Japanese book cloth. Three round windows in the front cover containing seeds and bits of dried flowers. End papers are painted. Custom box.



Soft cover, wrap-around with chopstick closure, longstitch binding. Cover is patchwork leather, adhered to heavy cowhide and hand-stitched. Pages are heavy watercolour papers and end papers are bright red handmade paper. Custom box.


These are two journals that I made for the Levi Strauss company when they contacted me about a project they are doing, The Levi's Anthology. There will be fifteen handmade journals (made by women) sent to various women around the world to fill with their thoughts and ideas, seeking to capture the essence of what has shaped young women, what's relevant to them in 2010, and what advice they would have for other young women trying to shape their own worlds. Ultimately, when the books are completed, they will be featured in a film along with some of the women who wrote within them and the books will be made available for viewing at a gallery.

Beautiful Books, etc

Earlier this week, I visited the Anna Leonowens Gallery, which is an art gallery at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design. There were two concurrent exhibits that I wanted to see.

The first exhibit was all the winning books of the 2010 Alcuin Society Awards for Excellence in Book Design in Canada. Thirty books were selected for the awards, chosen from 252 entries published in 2009, from 108 different Canadian publishers.

It was nice to see so many beautifully designed books all in one place. I especially liked one of the children's books City Alphabet by Joanne Swartz, which received an honorable mention in that category. It is a modern abcedarian using imagery and words captured in our urban landscape. A couple of the books in the reference category were among my favorites too. Living Proof: the Essential Data-Collection Guide for Indigenous Use-and-Occupancy Map Surveys is a gorgeous book. The title may not sound very exciting to some, but the presentation of the content is irresistible - even if you don't have a penchant for reference books!


I was disappointed to find that the winners in the Limited Edition category were not on display, boo! I would have liked to see those. If you are interested, there is a full list of the winners on the Alcuin Society's blog.

The second exhibit, was Tactile Notebooks and the Written Word. This was a collection of journals filled with all manner of text, image, object, etc, that were created by NSCAD students in a class where their goal was to "to heighten their sensory experience, expand understanding in unexpected directions, and deepen their artistic vision." It was fascinating to flip through these books and see and feel what each of the artists conveyed.


This visit to the Anna Leonowens Gallery was refreshing since I have been just a little out-of-touch with the book world over the past few weeks. Obviously, since I haven't added anything to my blog for over a month! Apologies for that. As some of you know, my little girl Mallory was born on June 20th so she has been distracting me! As we settle into a new routine, I plan to get back into my bookbinding studio occasionally.

Introducing Mallory! Born June 20, 2010

More Patchwork Journals

I had so much fun making the last batch of patchwork leather journals, that I made another batch. These are now available in my Etsy shop, of course.


Each of the wrap-around covers are assembled from my heap of leather scraps, adhered to a larger piece of leather, then stitched to keep the pieces secure. Reclaimed buttons and braided cord closures finish the covers. These ones have all blank unlined, new, recycled paper for the pages (rather than pre-used blue-box papers like the last bunch). The binding is a longstitch and chain stitch combination, sewn directly through the covers.

More books from boxes

I just have to show some books I recently made by request using fun boxes. Because, not only is it fun to have all the products that are advertised on television, it is even more fun to have notebooks made from the boxes.

The Graty and SlapChop combo, of course.



The Snuggie, and yes, the Snuggie for dogs.

Book and paper arts with a 5-year-old

Occasionally, my little boy requests that we make things in my bookbinding studio, and he doesn't mean block towers or Lego towns. Last week he asked if we could make a book. We have made blank notebooks before, just using a basic pamphlet stitch (his first attempt was over two years ago).

This time we found printable booklets online so his book would have real content. The layout of the pages made them perfect for a stab binding, so this time Nicholas made his first Japanese-bound book, called "What begins with N?".


He wanted yet another project, so we made paint. Using a simple recipe that we found online, we made three pots of sticky paint. This is esentially paste made from cornstarch with some food colouring mixed in. The result was a very translucent paint mixture, and when the papers dried, they were very slick and smooth. Could be a great concoction for paste papers.


Some book and paper arts resources, if you have a kid who likes to make things:
- Make Paper with Kids
- Origami for Kids
- Printmaking with fruit & veggies
- Preschool Indoor Fun
- Make your own mini books
- Cereal Box Bookbinding
- Making Paper Airplanes

Marbling

This looks fun, eh?


Recently I haven't had time to do anything very new or exciting in the world of bookbinding. I had two local craft markets which took up my time for a while; I also have a couple substantial orders to fill; and I just spent a couple days marbling. I had to make 30 marbled sheets that were all the same... or at least very similar, using the same colours and all with the same pattern... To make up for that, I spent the next day using as many colours and patterns as possible. Here are some examples - zooming in on the patterns:












Some of these are available on Etsy: MyMarbledPapers.Etsy.com

Crafter's Market, May 8th

I'm going to be selling my journals at a spring craft market this Saturday!

Spring Crafter's Market!
Date: Saturday, May 8
Time: 10am to 6pm
Location: Halifax Forum's Multipurpose Centre, corner of Windsor and Young Streets.

There will be a fantastic variety of local art and craft sellers. So if you're in Halifax, come by the Halifax Forum's Multipurpose Centre on Saturday. This event is a fund raiser for Feed Nova Scotia so there is a small admission fee, or you can bring a non-perishable food donation in lieu of the admission fee.

This craft sale is perfect timing if you still need to find something for Mother's Day!

Six journals

When I was preparing for the local craft market that I mentioned previously, I prepared the signatures and the covers for these six journals. I had the covers made, pressed, dried, and the signatures were folded and pressed and I took them with me to the sale to work on if there was any downtime. I got only two of them bound while I was there, each are sewn with four rows of chain stitches, or the small-c-coptic sewings. Now I've finished the others and added the buttons and ribbons. They are now all available on Etsy too.

Celebrating Earth Day (wtih free stuff)!

April 22nd is Earth Day! In recognition of Earth Day, I am giving away free eco-friendly journals with any order from my Etsy or Artfire shops for the rest of this week (so, until midnight on Friday, April 23rd). Eco-friendly journals are ones that I have made entirely with materials that would have been otherwise destined for landfill.

There are actually two ways you could win something from me:
1. Any purchase from MyHandboundBooks.Etsy.com or MyhandboundBooks.Artfire.com will receive a free eco-book automatically!
2. Leave a comment here telling me what you are doing to celebrate Earth Day. I'll randomly select one person's comment to win an eco-notebook too! (Make sure you leave your email address or link to contact information so that I can contact you if you win!)
Edit April 24: This giveaway is closed.

The winner!
Congratulations to Pegg, the winner of my Earth Day giveaway! I had 15 comments to pick from, and I used random.org to generate a random number and it picked 10, and Pegg was lucky commenter number 10! Thank you to everyone who left comments here telling me about Earth Day activities, and thanks to those who made purchases this week; they got free eco-books too.

Some examples of my eco-friendly books:

Halifax Crafter's Market - April 17 & 18

Attention local readers: the Halifax Crafters are having their Spring Fling Crafter's Market on April 17th and 18th!

I'll be there with my books, along with many many other very cool artisans.

Location:
Olympic Center, 2304 Hunter Street
(which is really the corner of Windsor and Cunard)

When:
Saturday & Sunday, April 17 & 18

Time:
11:00am to 6:00pm each day

Drop in and shop for your mother's day and father's day presents, graduation presents, gifts for new babies, early holiday shopping, whatever you need, it'll be there...

The Illustrated Accordion

During April, the Kalamazoo Book Arts Center is hosting an exhibit called "The Illustrated Accordion." They have also posted a virtual exhibit on Flickr so everyone can see the collection. For those of you in Michigan, maybe you can check it out in person at the KBAC Gallery.

Included in "The Illustrated Accordion" is this little accordion book that I made last Fall.


This is called "A Walk on the Beach" inspired by our family's trip to a beach that had an unexpected conclusion. The accordion is made with pockets to hold found objects: shell, feather, driftwood, etc. The first pocket includes a tiny book with a bit of text about the walk on the beach.

Several months ago, I mentioned that I was participating in a miniature book exchange and this accordion book was initially designed for that purpose. For our exchange, we need to make an edition of 6 and we send one to each person. I was really happy with this book so I made an edition of 10; copies are available on Etsy.

It's that time of year again: Edible Books!

Once again, on April 1st, people all over the globe will be celebrating books by participating in Edible Book Festivals! If you have always wanted to be part of one of these events but do not have a local Edible Book festival to attend, you can be part of the BEST Virtual Edible Book Festival this year.

All you have to do, is make your edible book(s), snap a few photos, and upload those photos to the BEST Edible Books Flickr group before 9pm (EDT) on April 1st. You can join the Flickr group and upload your photos here:

www.flickr.com/groups/best-edibles-2010

You can read all the details about the event on the BEST blog. Photos will also be posted to the BEST blog and a small panel of judges will pick their favorites!

Marbled Papers

A few more examples of my marbled papers from my last marbling session. I did get past the stones a few times. Starting at the top, these are a "diagonal stripe" with antique spots and a Spanish wave, then the "cathedral" pattern, some sort of "feather" pattern, a "nonpareil" pattern, and a "Gothic" pattern. These patterns may have other names, but these are the names with which I am familiar.






Some of these are available on Etsy, of course!

Repurposing materials for patchwork journals

I have finished another batch of journals made from repurposed and reclaimed materials. This time, the materials are the scraps and discards that I create when I make books. The catalyst for this project being the mountain of scrap leather on my floor last week.


So, the covers of these journals are made with small scraps of leather that have been matched and colour coordinated, adhered to a larger piece of leather, trimmed to fit a prepared textblock, then stitched.



The paper used for the pages has all come from the paper recycling bin beside my work table. That includes whatever I found in there, like papers from the computer printer, envelopes, sketchbook covers, paper leftover from other projects, etc. The result is an interesting mix of papers in each book, suitable for art journals or any writer who likes to get creative while journaling. Closures on these journals are made from either strips of leather found in the scrap pile and/or reclaimed buttons. I made eight of these books last week, and sadly, there has been no discernible difference in the size of Leatherscrap Mountain.



Available on Etsy.