by Linda | Apr 23, 2010 | my creative journal
Another TGIF! Both my husband and I feel super tired after this week. No idea why as it was not any more eventful than normally, I believe. I’ve been having headaches perhaps from too much concentrated computer screen time, although I’m always in front of the computer…what’s different about this week? I thought it would be nice to share a peek at my little space in the corner of our bedroom. I have practically taken over all the space!
Do you like my hot pink crocs? Actually, the more glaring issue is probably ergonomics of my workstation, but we already have an IKEA plan to redo the room, so I’m just waiting patiently for the re-org. Otherwise, I do feel a bit blah these past few days. I’m just looking forward to the weekend and passed some time doing a bit of sketching…random woman again. I actually like the little blob in the upper left hand corner the most!
No ponderings or deep musings for discussion this Friday…nothing except that getting a daily email of encouraging words really helps, especially when we have such busy lives bouncing from one thing to another. Have you heard of the Daily Truths from the Brave Girls Club? I don’t know much about the retreat since I’ve never been, but I subscribe to their daily truths list, a daily email with words of wisdom. It’s a paragraph or two of great writing that makes my day start out positive. It’s definitely a good email to find in my inbox, so with that I bid you a happy weekend. Ciao ciao lovelies!
by Linda | Apr 21, 2010 | my creative journal
Happy hump day to everyone! I’ve dabbled and posted about bookbinding, making journals and my little black books from leather. I decided to try making a slightly larger black leather journal to see if the flexible leather as a cover would bother me when larger. The process of bookbinding is the same for any kind of journal…it just depends on the materials you use and the variation or twist you might add in here or there.
1. Cut you paper to size and fold to create signatures.
2. Cut your cover material.
3. Pre-punch holes in your cover and signatures of paper.
4. Finally, bind your book together. In this case it’s sewing the signatures into the leather cover.
The variation I put into this particular journal was in the sewing of the binding…adding buttons for decoration. I really like this look and didn’t want to create the wrap around closure that would interfere with the nice button decoration. Instead I’m going to look for a magnetic closure and use that instead. I’m quite happy with this slightly larger size, about 6 inches square. Even though the leather cover is soft and floppy, it doesn’t bother me at all.
So now I have these stack of journals with no idea what I will use them for. I made them without reason, just experiments to see what would be possible with the leather. I decided it was time to make a bigger journal that I would actually use to hold a whole bunch of old artwork and looseleaf pages. I saw Teesha Moore’s Fabric Journal Tutorial Video and wondered if I could do the same thing with leather! So I tried…but soon realized some of the leather I have is way too thick to make those little pillows Teesha described, not to mention sewing leather is pretty difficult in itself.
You can see above my first attempts where I pre-punch holes in order to sew the leather pieces together. I skipped filling the pillows in with fluffy stuff, but in the end they don’t look cute like Teesha’s fabric ones with rolled up edges. It’s also scary to think how much hole punching I’ll have to do to put the whole cover together…eek! I decided to go for the simplest version possible, taking the patchwork idea of piecing together material to create journal covers. Here’s my first two pieces sewn together, which really took a toll on my hands. It’s hard work punching the holes and pulling tightly to get the leather bound together. However, I really like the results…so I’m going to keep at it and see if I can piece together enough to make a big journal. Wish me luck…
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)
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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!
by Linda | Apr 6, 2010 | my creative journal
Happy Tuesday to everyone! It’s time for me to share some art journaling pages I’ve been playing with this week. I started with random backgrounds on several pages…collaging in some papers and painting with whatever colors I had lying around. The nice thing about art journaling is not having to plan anything really…just let your hands create and lead you forward naturally. Last week I created a super bright collage of flowers, so this time I went with kraft paper and more muted earth tones, even though I couldn’t help putting in some bright red! I first glued papers onto my pages, then rubbed paint around with my fingers. It’s fun to just put down layers without thinking much of how I was going to finish it up…after everything was dry I could go in with pen and ink for details and journaling.
This first spread still has the flowers and brightness of Spring incorporated…I guess I can’t help it. I was listening to the podcast by Jamie Ridler interviewing Carmen Torbus while working on this…hence all the positivity! You can see the photo of background alone up top and then my random doodles that were added in. I was using a new black pen that turns out to be super super inky, which I like for how true black it is, but the inkiness actually flicks around because of the texture from the paint…pretty weird!
You can also create cool textures on your backgrounds if you use crinkled paper to take away some paint from the surface when it’s all still wet. That’s what I did below to get a speckled wall type of texture all over my pages. It’s pretty rough and crazy looking, but sometimes you can also find interesting shapes in the textures.
I actually made myself a doll template to play around with because it helps me visualize various positions for drawing. I know you can buy one of those real wooden dolls for modeling, but it’s just as easy to make yourself a paper doll and put it in different positions. Feel free to download my PDF doll template for your personal use. This little activity turned into thoughts about not liking dolls in general – they are scary to me! I never played with dolls as a child…never owned a barbie and was much more into plushies or playing with plastic figurine toys. Maybe because I have older brothers and it was easier to just play along with their toys!
In the end, I don’t feel totally satisfied with these pages yet, but I know I can always go back and add to it. Always remember that you can keep working on pages for as long as you like, in whatever order you like…that is the beauty and freedom of having a personal art journal. It’s definitely my place to play with freedom and without the pressure of having to finish. I also started another background…not sure where it will take me yet…
I hope you will experiment with playing in an art journal and making random backgrounds – in fact many people work on backgrounds all the time and fill them in when they feel like it at a later date. It’s definitely fun and liberating when you can just play with color on a page and not have to think about composition or the final layout. I do that often when working on other pieces and have leftover paint to just smear onto pages. There are also plenty of techniques to explore in creating backgrounds…try them out and have fun!
by Linda | Apr 2, 2010 | my creative journal
Hi folks! To kick off national letterwriting month and I consider it also send your cards month, here’s a super simple Mother’s Day card you can make. I am really big on using digital elements because of the ease of being able to download them immediately and also because I can create my own matching designs if I’m missing something. However, I also love the real paper, textures and touchy-feeling elements of handmade cards. So the best of both worlds in my opinion would be hybrid cards! Combining both sides of cardmaking I think really maximizes the potential for all of us to create. To start this lovely month of stationery and card goodness here on BackToPaper.com, here’s a super easy peasy way to use digital elements. The idea is to make a simple card by combining elements digitally for printout, but then adding a real-life embellishment to bring out the handmade feel.
To make the card above I used the free Sketch Tulips digital element from Hero Arts, my own designing in Photoshop and simple embellishments I had lying around already.
- I wanted a distressed style, so I created the faded music paper background in Photoshop and put that behind the Sketch Tulip element in Photoshop.
- Then I added a simple sentiment to the bottom with the basic text tool and added a drop shadow in white – so really it’s a glow to make the words pop a bit more.
- I planned to add embellishments in the middle, so that’s why I left the space there, so now my is ready.
- I printed out onto white cardstock in the size I wanted for my card.
- I cut out the graphic a bit smaller than my white card base and added some dimension by inking and distressing the edges.
- Then I added my real-life embellishment of string with a bright button around the center with a simple bow.
- I glued that whole finished panel onto my white card base and tah-dah! All done!
Really easy, right? You can download the faded music paper background I created below, just click for high-resolution JPG. Feel free to use for your personal projects or paper crafting projects. I know sometimes it can be intimidating to use Photoshop or related programs, but this same card could have been done by simply printing all elements out and cutting them out individually to combine by hand as well. I really like simple hybrid cards like this, especially if you need to make 50 thank you cards, for example. You can quickly print out 50 copies of your design. I hope this will inspire you to use those digital elements out there and make a hybrid card. Enjoy and stay tuned for more hybrid projects like this one 🙂
by Linda | Apr 1, 2010 | my creative journal
Did you know it is the month for letterwriting?! I think a heartfelt handwritten sentiment goes a long way any time of the year, but having a whole month dedicated to the art gives us pretty good motivation as well. If you are cardmaker like I am, it’s a good time to send them out to friends and family. RedLetterDayZine has a great post all about this April month of National Letterwriting. There are great links for more information at the end of the post as well.
I can’t believe April has already started because I feel a bit behind in my letterwriting already! I have my dip pen and wax letter sealing kit ready…but want to create some new stationery for the occasion. Watch out for some more lovely printable stationery here – I will be posting my designs! Also, stayed tuned for some hybrid cardmaking print-outs or kits, because sending a card counts as well. Let me know if you have any themes of topics in mind…until then!
