Trade Up!

2 new books arrived in the mail in the past couple of days and I wanted to show them off! I approached two book artist a couple of weeks ago and offered to trade, it's a nice way to move stocks about and also to get wonderful stuff from people that i don't know how to make myself.

I'm so glad I offered the trades, I really couldn't be happier with what I get, also, seeing how other etsy seller wrap their stuff and what they send the package with is very inspiring and educational.

So, without farther a due, my new books!

AnneClarkDesigns




This books comes from a beautiful jewelery makes and a book artist called Anne, this book is made of beautiful marbled paper that i love, I've never seen this binding before, it's a cross between long stitched and regular European style binding with the stitches exposed. I really love it, it's inspiring me to learn more binding method and already gave me a cool idea for a book.

The end paper is beautiful red pattern and the pages inside are nice and soft. I knew it was going to be a nice book but really, I never expected it to be so awesome! This is going to be my Trip-to-Israel sketchbook, I hope I can fill the whole thing in the 2 weeks I'm going to be there next month.

Really, I can't stress enough how awesome this book is, you should all get one at Anne's store

Painted Fish Studio


This is the second book I got, the price on it was really really low, and I couldn't understand why, I thought I might be reading the measurement wrong or something, however, it turned out that i didn't, this is amazingly made, the materials are really top quality and the whole thing is so awesome I still don't understand why she doesn't charge 5 times more at least for it.

This is a beautiful old fashion style album made from black paper and bound in beautiful mustered. the end paper is cool yellow on mustered dots. I'm especially excited about how amazing this is because Ned's going ot use it for a small version of his portfolio to take for meetings with Model, so I'm glad it's going to look great (well, unless I decide I'm taking over).

Jen's store have beautiful books, albums, art prints and other paper craft, her pictures are beautiful and the whole store have a beautiful clean look. Visit painted fish studio!

Illustration Friday - multiple

I used to take part at the Illustration Friday site a few years ago. It was when I worked in an office and it was a good way to jolt my creativity and waste some office time as well as free use of their scanner (I didn't have one at home at the time) Then I started doing other stuff and forgot all about it.

But, over the past couple of weeks, I've been highly inspired by the beautiful work of Gennine and the beautiful way in which she is inspired by the Illustration Friday theme to create beautiful artwork in her style. So I joined again.

I got a difficult word for my first week - Multiple, At first I wanted to do something with the periodical chart, much influenced by a Making history podcast I was listening to, but nothing came up really. Eventually, I decided to just go with multiple drawings and created 3 of them for this artwork.

For a while now, I want to bring myself to list a painting or a drawing on the Etsy store. It's somehow a lot more scary to me to sell art then it is to sell craft stuff, probably because I value the art more then the craft creations. I take myself more seriously as an artist then as a craftist - but I am going to live up to the challenge and list those 3 pieces.

Stab stitching tutorial

This is a tutorial for my currently favorite book making method. A Japanese style stab stitching cook, it's perfect for making small notebooks, sketchbooks and albums, as well as bigger hard cover books (though I personally haven't tried those.

The benefits of stab stitching books are - since all the pages are stitched together, there are no signatures and so you can bind any number of pages together. Also, there is no glue involve which make this craft a lot less messy (though you won't be able to judge that by how the studio looks right now.


Materials
A rubber ballet or a hammer, paper cut to size, I used about 25 pages for this one, nice paper for the cover and pack cover, also cut to the same size at the pages inside, an awl, a ruler, craft knife, pencil, floss, needle, 2 clips.

Step 1. Attach all the pages together using the clips, put the clips in about a third from the top, leave at least 1"-2" clear to work on.
Step 2. with the ruler and the pencil, mark a straight line on the top part of the book (where the stitching will go). Mark 5 points in equal intervals.


Step 3. Using the awl and mallet, puncture 5 holes where you made the marking. make sure the awl made it all the way through all layers of paper and that the holes are nice and even. If you down have an awl, this can also be done with a nail.

Step 4. make a knot at the end of your floss and thread it through a needle. Start by passing the needle through the center hole from the back of the book to the front, then loop around the top part of the book and insert the needle again through the same hole.

Step 5. Then, pass the needle through the hole to the right of the center hole, and loop around the top part again. turn the book to the back part and move to the next hole to the right (the last one) and loop around it as well. Loop around the side of the book and insert the needle through the first hole to the right again. Then stiched back to the center.
Step 6. Repeat steps 4 and 5 to the left side of the book, then tie a knot at the end and trim the floss.

Ta-Da! the book is done, you can decorate it with rubber stamps, bits of paper, beads, drawings or whatever you like. Or, if you are too lazy, you can hop on to my store and buy one. Writing the instruction is honestly more complicated then actually making one, there are very few options to where the needle can go and it's really really easy to make.

More book binding information
Book binding glossary
The how to make books book
Japanese book binding
Center of book art
The Arm - a wonderful gallery and letter press shop, that offer classes and is just a great place to visit.