by Linda | Apr 19, 2010 | my creative journal
Happy Monday folks! It’s definitely been a crazy few days with the Iceland volcano erupting. Travel interruptions, hotels fully booked, car rentals all gone…pretty crazy here in Europe. We don’t live in a big city area, but there’s enough news about the whole issue to cause lots of worry. I mentioned before that my brother is one of those travelers stuck in Holland – impromptu vacation, right? This whole situation is a great lesson in the power of nature. I was thinking no matter how technologically advanced we get, there will always be something out of our control. We have to be able to adapt with nature and go with the flow. I started to ponder the great power of nature, so scary – but also the delicate and vulnerable side at the same time. Nature is all around us, even if you live in the big city – there are plants around, birds chirping and always the sky is above you. It would seem obvious that our environment becomes a huge area of inspiration for all of us, no matter if we write, dance, paint or whatever…
This past weekend our family was able to visit a very nice agriturismo in the area to try out the food. Besides having a fabulous Sunday lunch with our loved ones, we also had a huge dose of nature. I’m no expert in photography, but I like the hobby enough to lug around my Nikon D60 everywhere to capture the moments. I take photos for many different reasons and I take a lot of photos – thank you to digital photography and a giant 16 gig memory card!
For scrapbooking, I take photos to remember the times, to preserve and tell the story of our lives. I also take a lot of photos to use as reference for drawing, to study the shape and forms around us on a 2D surface. Finally, I also take photos because I like to capture interesting views…especially when it comes to nature all around us.
I know there are a million photos of wildflowers out there and I’ve taken countless photos of wildflowers myself. But I still keep taking pictures of them, because it makes me happy to do so and somehow I seem to see and feel something different each time. BTW, you might want to check out Creative Tech’s Fundamentals of Digital Photography – it’s a free course to watch live or you can buy the videos to watch anytime and learn more about photography. I took all these photos this weekend, looking at the details and little elements of nature around us. We also had the privilege of seeing a wild boar mama with her little piglets…how darn cute are they?!
So besides using photographs as direct reference or for collaging material, I also think the process of photographing inspires. Capturing a moment in time…it makes you stop and really look at that one moment. Our lives seem to be getting busier and busier and photography definitely helps to slow myself down a bit. I hope you enjoyed some of these weekend photos I’ve shared and perhaps you’ll take a slow and closer look at your environment for inspiration. Have a great Monday!
by Linda | Apr 16, 2010 | my creative journal
Happy Friday everyone! Although I think some people might be in a frustrating situation right now because of the Iceland volcano. Lots of people were evacuated and the news says there might be health risks related to the fall out. It’s also causing cancellations of flights – including all travel between Europe and North America. I had not even thought about that when hearing the news, but my brother happens to be one of those people stuck in Europe! It’s amazing how even impeccable planning and timing can’t account for all possibilities. Goes to show that we can’t control it all and it applies to so many things in life, right? I know I would be freaking out if I were at the airport right now. My husband always wonders why these uncontrollable events cause me to cry from frustration…hey, that’s just how I express my emotion! But I understand he is trying to tell me that it doesn’t help to freak out, it’s all out of our control at times. Okay, I’m not even a person stuck at the airport right now, but it’s starting to make me anxious knowing my brother is in that situation. While I keep in contact and see if there is anything I can do to help, I’m also calming myself with crafting. I suppose it helps to get busy with your hands, focusing your mind on a little task.
After finishing some freelance work, I continued to make my little black books, testing various methods of binding the paper to the leather covers. I was actually quite surprised that the glued binding works. You can see below that the single pages fan out nicely and the glue dried into a flexible state. I suppose only after years it might start cracking apart? Of course, I didn’t purposefully try to rip pages out, so not sure what will happen with use.
Since I didn’t use any padding between my clamp and the book, you can see there are some marks and glue on it. I decided to cover that part up as I had to bind the paper to the leather cover anyway. I just cut out some circles and used them to anchor the paper onto the leather with some glue. The circle shape is actually a nice detail and I was thinking it would be nice to use many different shapes or flourishes on these inner binding pages.
After I finished this little book, it seems like a pretty standard method, pages fanning out. Again, the glue seems to have dried flexible at this time, but I still feel like after a while it would start to crack or if I pushed down the pages to write. Am I just being paranoid? Wondering if anyone has had experience with glue binding?
The next little black book I made has multiple signatures sewn together. This allows for many more pages, but binding it all to the leather cover pretty much went the same route. I just cut out some decorative paper and glued it all together. Although, you can see the decorative paper on the back is shorter…not sure what I was thinking there. I knew it was shorter, but just went with it…zoning out?!
Since I had glued decorated paper behind the binding part already, this doesn’t look as clean from the side. There’s also an element of attaching just the right amount of cover material so you can close the book with perfect edges, but still open all the way flat. The decorative paper was definitely getting wrinkly in certain parts. It seems that this method is similar to the glue method, just with lots more pages.
Finally, I made a super mini book with the paper left over. This time I decided to sew the signatures directly into the leather cover instead of relying on glue to hold it all together. I realized that this works better with fatter signatures because your holes do have to be a certain space apart to not completely rip through the leather.
The sewing isn’t really sewing – more like tying each signature through the two holes, so you see the embroidery thread on the outside binding and tying a few knots inside to secure.
I used an old earring for the bead part and realized I could put one bead on the end to catch the eyelet, so the string doesn’t go through. Then the other end of the string has a bead so you can secure the book after wrapping around multiple times. This adds a really pretty detail to the book, not to mention reuse of random jewelry items I have. I seem to always lose one earring, so I have a bunch lying around for use.
I noticed that this type of binding really works well with the leather. Each signature is secure, but it’s all very flexible and easy to smash open the paper for whatever doodling or writing. I suppose that is why you see so many of these journals in touristy Italian bookshops!
I know there must be a cooler way to bind these individual signatures to the leather though. Stuff for sale seems to look more complicated anyway. I really think I’ll have to get some bookbinding sewing charts, because thinking about figuring out a cool stitching method myself just makes my head hurt!
Overall, I am really satisfied with my little black books. Even with the little imperfections, stains of glue or wiggly edges…they look super cute and are totally unique. I think the addition of decorative paper inserts and the beads really add a nice accent to the stark black leather. I think my favorite is the smallest one – not sure if the size is winning me over – but I think it’s the exposed stitching and flexible binding. What do you think? Let me know if you have any ideas or variations. I’m already going to try a concertina type book after watching how Marion from A Piece of Craft, made her heart minibook shown on prima’s ustream video. Especially for the tiny books that seem sized for gnome hands instead of human hands, they seem perfect for binding a little art book or something meant to look at rather than for actual use. Well, I hope you enjoyed following along my bookbinding adventure and hope you have a great weekend. Ciao ciao lovelies!
by Linda | Apr 15, 2010 | my creative journal
Today I continued my new project of making a little book…that actually turned into making multiple little books. I took the paper I had and tried the gluing method. I didn’t have two clamps, so used my heavy duty hole puncher to weigh down the stack of little papers as I drenched glue on the binding. I’ll have to wait for it to dry completely and see if this method holds well enough.
Since I wanted to try more methods of binding the pages together, I cut some more paper, but this time using regular Fabriano drawing paper, creating 4 page signatures. Signatures are just sheets of paper folded in half that will be bound together to form your entire book. In this case, I’m not being very technical about it, like checking the grain of the paper – too lazy! All the rules of bookbinding that you learn have a really good reason to be a rule…it really does matter in the end. However, it all just depends how picky you are about your book and what you will be using it for. I’m pretty flexible because it just depends what I feel like doing at the moment – I skip steps when I get impatient or when I feel like the precision won’t be worth it for the project.
However, one thing I never skip is the pre-punching of holes. Otherwise, you aren’t exactly going to be able to sew the signatures together. It’s sort of a tedious process that is super boring, especially if you have a lot of signatures…but it makes the next step of sewing a lot smoother.
I tried sewing one little book of signatures together, but sort of messed up somewhere in the process – you can see the line of thread on the outside binding below. No worries since it’ll be covered up in this project. After going through the process of sewing it, I realized I had the same problem of not knowing how to attach it to the leather cover – oif!
My hands got really tired from the sewing and poking, so I’m going to continue tomorrow. I have more paper for an even smaller book that I’ll try to sew straight into the leather cover, but I’ll have to finish these first two. Check back in for the results tomorrow…hopefully one method or another will work properly.’
In other updates…I realized that I’ve been drawing a bird a day for 5 weeks now! I’m proud of myself for keeping to the routine and I like how a daily thing, even if it’s just 5 minutes, adds up to so much before you even know it. Who doesn’t want to have stuff done without realizing? Let’s see, otherwise I’m just doodling in my art journal…realizing drawing a million circles can be super tiring…and feeling like I have no time again because suddenly dinnertime is here. Yikes…gotta go!
by Linda | Apr 14, 2010 | my creative journal
Another hump day…that’s what I call Wednesdays since I learned the term in grade school. Sigh sigh…middle of the week, doesn’t feel like a fresh start, but doesn’t feel like you are close enough to the weekend either. I had a bunch of projects lined up to be worked on today, but I just didn’t feel like digging into them. You can call it laziness or perhaps ADD, because I started making a little book instead. The inspiration came from watching the latest video of crafting by Marion on ustream. She made the cutest little book, so I was inspired to make one with stuff I had lying around. A beautiful piece of black leather, scraps of thick white drawing paper and old jewelry supplies…
Looks pretty cute, huh? I just folded up the scraps of paper I had, cut the leather to size and used eyelets to attach the side piece of leather for closure. The round bead is glass from Murano attached to a black leather cord…sort of the traditional system of wrapping around the booklet many times and slipping the bead in place to keep the whole thing closed. A cute little 8x8cm book, perfect to keep in the car for notes or in your purse perhaps? I’m quite happy with the results and how neat it looks. I suppose all miniature items just look cool! So what’s the problem with all this? Well, I haven’t actually attached the pages to the leather yet. I’m not sure if glue is strong enough, but sewing would be too close for all those pages as I want them single, not in bunches. I fooled ya, didn’t I? It’s totally unfinished…
I was chuckling a bit to myself about the unfinished book and how I could still take the photo that looked final. I found out that some projects you see published in crafty books are sometimes unfinished as well, so that’s why I was chuckling. Or at least sometimes they don’t finish projects completely because they only need the parts essential for photography. Pretty tricky, huh? Well, if anyone knows of a good method to attach the paper to the leather that would be nice. I want something sturdy that enables me to keep the pages single sheets folded, rather than bunched together as signatures. Now I’m going to scour the web and see if I can find a good tutorial or combine techniques that would work for this project…
by Linda | Apr 7, 2010 | DIY printables
Today would probably be the ideal example day for living in the Tuscan hills of Italy – sunny warm and happy bright weather. It’s the scene I think folks probably picture in their minds when I say that I live in Tuscany. You can almost feel the warm sun on your skin, hearing the birds chirping and listening to the cool breeze rustling through the many hills of grassy green. Well, it is true and is one of the reasons why I fell in love with this place…but it actually isn’t idyllic year-round. Only during this time of year, when the signs of Spring start popping up and it isn’t too hot where the grass starts to turn brown – does it look like the postcards you often see. My mood is always elevated by this lovely weather. I was inspired to whip up a spring flowers stationery set and it’s also part of my attempts this month to write more by hand. It’s National Letter Writing month after all!
Spring Flowers Stationery Set Printable PDF (228 kb)
If you like my design printables be sure to sign up for my weekly newsletter for more freebies and the latest updates!
I hope my design will cheer you up a bit, wherever you are…wild flowers have been popping up all over our yard so I have flowers on the brain! Even though dandelions are supposed to be weeds, they can be pretty as well or at least that’s what I tell myself because they’ve taken over our yard. Plus our niece has lots of fun blowing them all over.
BTW, if you like printable stationery, don’t forget to download the Airmail Stationery Set from last week as well. Enjoy and happy day to everyone! Ciao Ciao!
