Yearly Archives: 2013

May 23, 2013 · 4:34 pm

A Scrap Exchange for Upcyling and Fabulous Papers

On my recent vacation, I made trips to two great places near Raleigh, N.C.  The first was to a store I have used online for years, PaperMojo.  They have an astounding array of decorative papers of all types and weights and have just opened a small brick & mortar shop in Wake Forest.  There’s nothing like being able to see and feel a paper before buying.  Textures and weight is so important in bookbinding.  I have a number of sheets I have purchased online in the past that I will probably never use simply because they are too light or too heavy or just don’t feel right.

I didn’t buy much, just one sheet with leaf inclusions to use in the books I was working on and two sheets that will work very well for the soft cover style.  I don’t think I would have bought the latter online.  Here they are:

The other stop was at the Scrap Exchange, a reuse center in Durham, NC. It’s a non-profit that collects unwanted materials from businesses and individuals and sells or re-purposes them.  They have an incredibly eclectic range of items from electronics to wallpaper sample books to office supplies. I bought some odds and ends and it made me start thinking about making books from all sorts of goodies.  Here is my collection:

I have no clear idea of what I’ll do with any of these.  The plastic samples made me think of my Jacob’s Ladders. Both the vinyl floor & wall samples might become book covers as well as the wood.  The marble I’ll be using for paring leather.  If any of these work out, I’ll be looking into finding a local source.  Stayed tuned to see what happens!

In other news, I started planting the gardens – just potatoes for now, but the good stuff will come soon.

I’m giving a three-day marbling workshop next week so that will hold back the planting.  As soon as it’s over I plan to dive into it!.

Leave a Comment

Filed under bookbinding, Craft design

Tagged as , , , , , , ,

May 18, 2013 · 5:11 pm

Home Again to the Garden

I’ve been on vacation the last two weeks and have come home in one of the loveliest times of the year. The fruit trees and lilacs are all in bloom, the grass was knee high and the nurseries packed with people buying plants.  It’s a bit early to start the garden, but after a long winter the urge to go outdoors and play in the dirt is very strong. Here’s some of what was waiting for me when I arrived home.

I’ve gotten a lot of the grass mowed, but not around the edges!

I had started preparing the garden before my trip and gave it another digging after I returned.  Now’s it’s all ready to fence and do a final grooming before planting.

While I was on vacation, I was playing with my books – of course.  I really like the format of the new soft cover book.  I had cut a bunch of paper for text and covers before I left on vacation as I knew I would have a lot of free time to play.  Here’s the result of my play.  They aren’t quite finished as there is some final gluing and trimming to do.

I had a lot of fun with these books.  First in matching up my marbled paper with a complementary piece of heavy stock, then choosing the thread and playing with the long-stitch pattern and finally deciding on the shape of the slots for the front and back tabs.  Only one of these books has the front and back of the same paper.  I’m looking forward to finishing these up … soon.

Next on my agenda is a marbling class that I’ll be teaching for the local arts center.  It should be a lot of fun. I’m planning on just covering the basics and having the participants have fun experimenting with colors, papers and anything else I can think of.

2 Comments

Filed under bookbinding, Life

Tagged as , , , , , ,

April 28, 2013 · 7:08 am

A Rush Job

I had great plans of doing a real job of cleaning up my studio this past week.  Didn’t happen.When I took a few of the new hanging books down to the Arts Center, they mentioned that they were out of my smaller notepad and memo pad covers.  Of course, I had to drop everything and make some up.  It’s more fun than cleaning anyway! So here are the results.

You may notice that I tend to work in fours.  I find that making four books or towers or notepads at a time gives a nice rhythm of repetition without becoming boring.  You can see how I make these notepad covers here.  I have a few of these on Etsy also.

On another note, the weather has finally warmed up and I was able to start digging up the garden yesterday!  I no longer try to do it by hand and it’s much easier.  I have a little electric cultivator that works very well for me.  I’ve tried renting a roto-tiller, but they are just too heavy for me and every year it gets harder for me to pull start gas motors.  I now just drag my long extension cord out behind the pines and till away.  Get fun for a short time!

I’m still plying with some soft covers and mostly making messes.  More on that later.

Leave a Comment

Filed under Marbled Paper, Notebooks

Tagged as , , , ,

April 22, 2013 · 6:46 am

New Hanging Books

This is just a quick post to show off my latest batch of hanging books.  I made some with “soft” covers – really very stiff or heavy card stock- and some with Davey board covered with my marbled paper.  The board covers are hinged or articulated in order for them to open properly. I’ve had a lot of fun searching through boxes of old beads to find ones to use on these books.  It feels good to actually use some of the stuff in the basement instead of just tossing it.  Most of the cords and raffia are also from the stash.

Previous versions of hanging books in a blog posted a year ago.

I also tried out a new soft cover binding, but ruined it in the finishing process.  If I am brave enough, I may post some pictures!

Etsy

1 Comment

Filed under bookbinding, Marbled Paper

Tagged as , , , , , ,

April 12, 2013 · 12:07 pm

Cold Amid the Soft Covers

I promised a blog about my soft-cover books, but first a rant.  Why it is so freaking cold in mid-April?  Wet, cold, gloomy and just the pits!  I suppose I should be happy there are no snow storms or tornadoes, but it’s all about me and I’m COLD!  I have heard there is a magic line about 100 miles south of me where it is warm and spring-like and cherry blossoms are blooming, but not here, not now and that’s not good.  Enough of this already.

On to the books.  I will confess, I have a conflicted relationship with soft cover books.  They can be very diverse, imaginative and fun to make, but they aren’t “real” books.  In my more traditional moments, I equate them with paperbacks and “crappy crafts” as being very disposable, not something one keeps. On the other hand, they are fun and usually easy to make.

When I was on my recent vacation, I bought the materials to make a few when I tried of the ladder games. Naturally, I choose a type of softcover book that is rather traditional in shape. It has the added advantage of having a relatively stable spine.  Many soft cover books have little stability and the spines can twist and wiggle. This book has a nice long-stitch spine and tabs that wrap both front and back which creates a double thickness on the spine.  Once I finished my  first prototype, I began to see some great possibilities for using some of my heavier marbled paper.

Here’s a look at the first one I made (the second isn’t finished yet) and four that I made with my marbled paper once I came home.

The front and back covers are cut at the same time with the tabs interlaced. Works great if you are using the same paper for both, but since I was using my marbled paper for one side, it left an extra set.  There isn’t an individual picture, but in the group you can see that I made a second book from the green textured paper, but with a black marbled piece for the cover.

As usual, some of these books will be available on Etsy.

 

3 Comments

Filed under bookbinding, Life, Marbled Paper

Tagged as , , , , , ,

April 3, 2013 · 7:38 am

Making a Jacob’s Ladder Book

Several people have asked me how to make the Jaccob’s Ladders. I’ll try to explain a bit, but it’s really too complicated to describe just in words. I used the instructions in Making Handmade Books: 100+ Bindings by Alisa Golden. It’s available through Amazon.com or other booksellers.

Here’s my brief explanation.

The “steps” of the ladder are made from “sandwiches” of two  boards. I covered my boards with my marbled paper. The sandwiches are joined together by ribbons and that’s the tricky part. The ribbons weave in and out of the sandwiches and are glued on the inside but not on the outside.  The weaving is not straight down the ladder as the ribbons must loop around the step so that the ladder can move.  If you open the ladder slowly, you can see that the ribbons form an X  between the steps, with the outside ribbons staying parallel to each other and the center ribbon “X-ing” them.

In Golden’s book, she lays out the process in 28 steps with diagrams.  Even with that help, it took me several tries to get the weaving completely correct. Once figured out it is a lot of fun!

Good luck and happy gluing!

Ladders6

 

Click below for a short video of a Jacob’s Ladder in motion.

Jacob’sLadder

 

1 Comment

Filed under bookbinding, Craft design

Tagged as , , ,

March 29, 2013 · 6:31 pm

In Production Mode

For the last two weeks I’ve been on vacation, visiting my family.  The first week I was house and pet sitting while they had a spring break vacation.  Even though I had my laptop with me, I knew  I would be bored with just a dog and a cat for company for a whole week.  Before I left home, I was busy choosing papers and ribbons and then cutting the paper and board for a bunch of new Jacob’s Ladders.  I’m very glad I did! Along with reading several books and the twice daily dog walking, the ladders kept me very busy.  I commandeered a table in the kitchen that had good lighting, much to the dismay of the cat who thought she owned that spot. Every morning I played with my ladders.

Here’s the proof:

TexasGroupI’m getting much better at not making mistakes on the ribbons — or at least, I know how to fix them when I go over instead of under!

I had great fun in choosing the papers before I started.  I have music, recipes, art prints and even the Bible. Here are some close-ups of some of the “steps”.

I have another music ladder completed except for the last step.  I miscounted the number of boards. About half of these ladders will be for sale on Etsy.

I also visited the local art supply store, just to see.  Of course I bought a bit of paper to play with.  I made, or rather started some soft-cover books with long stitch bindings.  I’ll save those for my next blog!  I still am owning a blog on the process of masking marbling.  I hope to get to that soon.

 

 

2 Comments

Filed under Boxes and Towers, Craft design, Marbled Paper

Tagged as , , ,

March 22, 2013 · 10:50 am

Maps of the Mind, Marbled, of course

Maps are some of my favorite recycled papers to marble.  I try to use colors that complement the areas of the map – browns and rust for desserts, blues and greens over the oceans – as well as harmonize with any printed colors.  As with much in marbling, you can plan a lot, but the paints seem to have a will of their own in the end and that’s the element I find so fascinating.  The little drop of white that centers itself right over a town or the purple swirl that almost follows a coastline  or the yellow streak of marbling that happens to disappear on top of a printed red and magically appear again to lead to a river or mountain is always a surprise.

Here are a few maps I’ve marbled in the past.

In my last marbling session I did a bunch of pages from an atlas.  Because of the way books are made, when disbound the pages are not consecutive, so I had gazetteer pages facing map pages.  I had originally planned to use both pages for ladders,  but I like the maps so much that I don’t want to cut them up.  Here are some of the pages.

I’ve used my marbled maps in numerous projects: books, towers, portfolios, almost everything I make, I’ve tried it with maps.

The map covered towers have been very popular, especially when I use local maps.  Eventually I will map some map ladders, but right now I’m “laddered-out” as you will see in my next blog!

1 Comment

Filed under Craft design, Marbled Paper

Tagged as , , , , , ,

February 24, 2013 · 5:26 pm

Shimmer & Shine

One aspect of marbling that haven’t explored much is the use of metallic paints.  I had tried some in the past with rather mediocre success and just hadn’t worked with them again.  During the class at the Campbell Folk School this fall,  I had some very successful pieces with metallic paints.

These two pieces show the use of metallics. In my last marbling session, I decided to explore their use a bit more, trying to match metallics with colors and just seeing how they reacted with other colors.

One of the first things I verified was that metallics just don’t show up well on white paper.  They tend to just look like a flat brown, orange or grey.  The colors I was playing with were gold, copper, bronze and silver.  Here are three white cards that had gold and copper on them.

As you can see, it’s hard to tell where the metallic is.  In contrast to this, here are some of the pieces I made with metallic paints using colored card stock.

The papers used for these pieces were black, royal blue, red, and purple. The gold and coppers are much clearer.  The amount of shininess depends entirely upon the amount of paint dropped.  On some of these there is way too much.  One problem that arises with metallic paint is that it granulates very quickly and has to be constantly stirred – without making bubbles!  This paint had the added problem that it was old and even more prone to coming out of suspension.  Fine for experimenting, but not the best.  That is why there are so many little “bits” of paint in the designs. These are especially noticeable on the fine lines of the get-gels.  On the purple stone piece, I decided to join rather than fight, so I left it at the stone stage without trying to do any drawing out.

I think I’ll continue working with metallic paint, in moderation.  I like the clear crisp colors a bit better, but it does have a place in my marbling palette.

1 Comment

Filed under Craft design, Marbled Paper

Tagged as , , , , , , ,

February 21, 2013 · 5:47 pm

More Ladders

I was so pleased that I finally have the ribbons straightened out that I made a bunch more of the Ladders.  I’m especially enjoying using pages from vintage books.  The way the paper is cut, I rarely have complete paragraphs or even sentences.  It is a mind stretcher to “read” some of them.  They are not really just random words, but more like dream thoughts that never get quite completed.  I’ve cut a bunch more from cookbooks, Shakespeare and even the Bible.  I’m looking forward to putting them together.

In the meantime here are the ones I’ve finished.

All of these are for sale on Etsy.  In other news, I’m still cleaning up from my last marbling session. Marbling is fun, but it does make a mess!

I’m still sorting out the papers and trying to decide which papers to use and which to sell. That’s always a fun enterprise.  More on those papers later … I hope!

1 Comment

Filed under Craft design, Marbled Paper

Tagged as , , , , , , , ,