Waiting (im)patiently

I am waiting for my paper to arrive. Actually, it's here, I'm just not allowed to touch it until June 1 (next Tuesday) because I ordered it through the book arts class at school. Sis. Simpson wasn't in today evidently, but the paper was. I have to wait for her to talk to this semester's class about it before I can get into it. It's probably a good thing though, because if I were to simply open it up and put it in the paper drawer or something, people would probably take paper that wasn't what they ordered, and all that jazz. It would be a disaster, especially since I know how mad I would be if I went and my paper that I need for a book was GONE. So I'm waiting.


I haven't just been twiddling my thumbs though. I have been doing evil things. Firstly, I bought a beautiful leather coat. It was gorgeous ("was?" you ask,) and probably only worn once, if that. I'm serious, this coat was pristine, soft leather, no scuffs or wear on cuffs, elbows, collar, or anything. It was $8. I tried it on, and it doesn't fit me quite right. Too big in the shoulders. After trying it on, I picked it completely apart. I now have a decent amount of beautiful brown leather. It's nice and stretchy, so it's perfect for cord bound books. Mwahaha!!!

See the beautiful pile of leather that coat has become? And that's not all of it either! I got a nice zipper off of it too!

Secondly, I bought a beautiful 1957 atlas on Etsy. It's pretty big, 11 x 14 inches or something like that. I'm especially excited about this atlas for a couple of reasons. I've had this book marked as a favorite for a couple of weeks. I was debating whether or not I should get it because I didn't need it super bad at the time, and we're trying to be careful with our money right now. So I thought, about it for a while, and then went back to it the other night. I spent about 15, 20 minutes thinking about it and looking for a better deal. Then I decided to go ahead and get it. The magical thing is, somewhere in the 15 minutes or so I spent looking around, the seller lowered the price! Whoo! I was pretty stoked about that, so ya, I'm waiting for it to arrive. The funny thing is (well, I don' know it it's funny or if it's just sick), I have every intent on destroying this book just like I destroyed the leather coat. I plan on using the pages for covers/ end papers in my books. I'm pretty sure it's going to be stellar.

So in my spare time (when I haven't been destroying perfectly good clothing or plotting to destroy beautiful vintage books), I've been tearing down paper and making text blocks. Right now I have six books pending completion. If only my atlas would come.
Le sigh.

It's not like I don't have enough paper though (for covers). I have a ton, it's just not what I need right now.

P.S. I marbled these papers myself. I love marbling paper.

Alchemy!

 The blue end papers are not this blue in person.

The blue flowers outlined with yellow don't look as clean/sharp as the others for some reason.

 

Here's some of the work that went into warming up my foil pressing skills, trying out another method of transferring the graphic, etc.

 This is the alternative transfer method I mentioned above. It's called photocopy transfer. I wasn't sure how well it would work, but I had extra fabric, so I thought I would try it out, for experimentation's sake. As you can see, it isn't the clearest method of transfer, but it's nice to know it works like this.

I cut out a couple of the best practice pieces to test out placement.

 Fun :)

Scrapbook... no, wait...

This is my "Scrap" book. See, I got these lovely fabrics at the Deseret Industries a while back, and I've been thinking for a while how lovely they look together. Maybe I'm crazy, but I think they're a great combo. So I've been trying to think of a beautiful way to use them all together, and couldn't think of anything. Except this, and I'm not sure it if counts as beautiful.

You may recognize the pink fabric from my Mother's day book. All of the fabric for this book was made into book cloth by me. I especially love the beige fabric (the lowest part of the book in the first picture), because it reminds me of 80's prom dresses that you find at thrift stores. You know, the silk moire that looks like wood grain? It's classic. I actually picked up a couple more colors the other day (yeehaw!).

You can see in the picture below that some of the pages are different sizes. It gives the book a more handmade feel, and gives me an opportunity to give all those poor lost scraps of paper a home. They are all very similar in size, and it doesn't harm the strength of the book (or the aesthetic, for that matter).

 I'm happy with the result. The thread is a nice minty green that goes rather smashingly with the blue floral print. On the inside covers I used some rescued dusty pink lokta paper. I can't believe what some people will try to throw away. And at the same time, I can't believe some of the stuff I try to keep, haha sigh.

Check the book out on my Etsy site.

Black Leather and Plaid: A love story

This is the first longstitch book I'll be offering for sale on my Etsy. I'm pretty excited about it because I think it's a great book, and I've solved a couple of problems with this one.

Problem number one: Recycled leather
I would say that the leather I've been using has been great quality, it's just recycled from coats and purses. Coat and purse leather is usually lined with material that may or may not come completely off of the back of the leather. As I have dismantled perfectly good coats and purses, I have found that there is often times sticky residue, or the leather just wasn't made to have it's back side being shown off or rubbing against paper.
Solution: Back the leather with fabric

When I replenished my supply of heat n' bond the other day for making book cloth, I noticed on the package that it said it could be fused to all sorts of things, including leather. I thought that was nifty, then forgot about it until I visited KarleighJae's etsy. She sells some beautiful books, and I noticed that some of them were lined with fabric. I wondered, "How does she do that?" and then 'DING!' duh! heat n' bond!
I wasn't positive, but I decided to try it out. It also helped that KarleighJae had a great video tutorial on how to iron leather.

At first, I didn't think it was working. The corners were peeling off, and it just didn't look like it was sticking. Then I realized my iron had turned itself off (which it does as a safety feature every half an hour). Once I got it back up to heat, it seemed to be doing a lot better (imagine that). I was also immensely pleased when I was trimming the leather later and found it very hard to tear the fabric from the leather. It was possible, but it required a conscious effort.

Then, I had a fear of the edges fraying. They were fine now, but what about two weeks later, after it had been jostled about in a purse or something? I solved this problem by "painting" the edges with gloss medium. The stuff you use with paint to make it shiny. Not the most orthodox approach, I'm sure, but it effectively ceases the fraying, and is not visible unless you look for it.

Problem two: Thick books = a lot of holes
I like books with girth. If I want a girthy longstitch book, I have to punch a lot of holes, right? Punching holes is a pain, especially since I struggle with right angles/ lining paper up to a piece of leather. This book has 11 signatures. There's no way I wanted to punch that many holes, so I only made holes for five. I sewed in the first five signatures, then went back and sewed in the other 6 using the same holes. I feel pretty awesome right now. I think it looks pretty cool, and it solved my problem of not wanting to make any more holes than necessary. The cool thing is, I don't even have to do that. I can just sew under the signatures that are already in place if I want to sew more in. Ya, I know, I'm groovy.

So, that's the book. I sewed a button onto the front so it could have a pretty little button closure. The strap was some leftover material I had, so it worked out perfectly. I think the button and the thread coordinate nicely with the colors of the plaid.

More Cords

I made another cord bound book. This one went a lot better, I think. Firstly, I didn't trim the leather too short, which made it look more finished. I may need to look into paring down the thickness of the leather in the places I'll be folding it underneath itself. Maybe so it won't look so bulky. The first point also plays into my second. Because I didn't trim the leather too short, I was able to make the endpapers the right size and not have to fudge and cut things like I did on the last one. I guess I'm glad I made the mistake in the first place so I could learn from it.

The cover paper I used for this book was some flocked damask paper in a dark rosy magenta color. It's really pretty paper, I've just been looking for a good opportunity to use it. Ever since I bought the black leather coat I've know this would look good.

I used red and black endbands on this. I would like to learn how to make my own endbands so I could match colors and whatnot. It's kind of annoying to me that the only endbands I have access to have really ugly color combos, or the colors themselves are ones that are really hard to match to other materials. Yellow and black? Really? Gold and red? When am I going to use that? Anyways...

Inside the book I used white lokta paper. I left the raw edge on the endpapers because I thought it would go nicely with the torn edges of the text block. I actually tore the end of the endpaper on the back cover. It was fun, because all those beautiful fibers stuck out. It reminded me of my mom's old mulberry paper that she would use for scrapbooking. Good times.