Book of Mystery and Intrigue

This is the book I mentioned in my last post. I found some green lokta paper that I forgot I had, and was able to finish it up nicely. The leather is recycled from a lovely coat I got at DI, and the paper is some I marbled myself in Book Arts. I really like this book and this technique. It has great finished results. Every time. I'm actually about to start another one, but I wish I had some different leathers. Colors, that is. I have some that has some kind of faux leather print on it and I'm not sure how it would work. Maybe I'll try it just for kicks and giggles.

This book is reversible! Yeehaw! There is no up or down, so if you want one side or the other to be the front, you can. Cool, I say.

P.S. I LOVE marbled paper. So. Much. (\____________(^.^)____________/) This much, actually.

Etsy Baby!

So, I finally started an Etsy. If you don't know what Etsy is, you are missing out, my friend. It is the coolest place to go and buy and sell things that are handmade and vintage (or supplies). Don't just try to imagine it though -- go and see for yourself. Here.

That said, I've been wanting to get one up since January-ish. My dilemma has been choosing a user name.
 "Really Laurel? Really?" You say, "It's just a user name, it's not that important."
 "But it is!" I protest vehemently. I didn't want something boring like 'laurelhoffman' or 'lhoffman' etc., but I couldn't come up with anything truly memorable. Really, I have a page in my sketch book full of crossed out etsy user names. The thing is, if it was just my user name, I'd be fine with lhoffman or whatever, but I wanted to sell on etsy, and when you sell, your user name becomes your shop name. So lhoffman wasn't cutting it. So I deliberated, and asked my husband (who didn't really care too deeply about the subject), paced the floor, and nothing came.

Finally the semester ended, and I knew I had to come up with a name, because I had decided I was going to get my shop running this summer. A week later, nothing (isn't this story great? If you've made it this far you need to find a hobby, you are way to easily entertained). Then, TADA! As I was posting pics of my books and such on this blog, the idea hit me! Why don't I just name it after my blog?! Admittedly, the blog name was rather random, but I haven't regretted it yet, so it seemed like a good idea. So my Etsy user name is badplatypus. Oh yeah. I figured, it's a bit strange, and has no real correlation to what I would be selling, but I feel like it isn't something like 'lhoffman' that you'll forget it two seconds.

And that, my child, is the tale of Laurel's long and tedious quest to find a stellar Etsy username. Unfortunately, it isn't over. I would have items posted on my page if it weren't for the fact that the bank canceled our debit card while they were sending me a new one. Grr, that's another story.

Literary Masterpieces

Here are a couple of "vases" I made for my independent project for my sculpture class. While they may look like vases at the moment, they certainly are not made to hold water.

The first vase you see was made out of an old magazine. It wasn't hard to make, but it did take a little bit of my time. If you want to know how to make one, try this link.

This next one was made from books I purchased at Deseret Industries, a thrift store here in town. Now normally I would feel really bad destroying perfectly good books, but I felt a little better after I read a couple of articles about how it's hard to recycle books because of the glue in the spine, so any books that aren't bought at thrift stores are just thrown away. So really, I'm making something fun and decorative out of what would just end up being trash. And they were reader's digest condensed books.

This project took a lot more time and muscle than the last one. I cut two readers digest condensed books by hand with a scalpel. My shoulders hurt for a while, and I started to wonder if a band saw might work better. I'm still not sure if it would work or if it would just rip the book to shreds, but it might be good to know for future reference.

This can be done using only one book, but I used two so it would be fuller, and so I could put a test tube in the center for water holding purposes. I have yet to obtain a test tube. Here is a tutorial I used for my guide. Don't be fooled though, I did not find this project to be quick or easy like it said.

Alice and Wonderland

For my Book arts class we did a collaborative book at the end of the semester. We decided as a class it would be fun for each of us to make a page for one of the characters from the books. I chose the Jabberwocky (and I'm still confused as to whether it is a jabberwock or a jabberwocky), even though it really isn't a character, it's just mentioned in a poem. Whatever though.

We were supposed to do a box and a book for this assignment (speaking of which, I should post a picture of my box of books), but since I did a book with a fore edge spine, not to mention the decorative elements, My professor was fine without a box. Whew!

I did more of the cut out book board technique for the card suits on the front cover, and then when they were all covered and whatnot, I gold leafed them! The problem with gold leaf is the glue. You're supposed to wait 30 minutes to an hour for it to get tacky before you put the leaf down, but I only waited 20, and was therefore required to re-leaf a couple of places. I guess it isn't the glue's fault, it's mine. Meh. I also put magnets under the paper and book cloth so the book would maintain it's composure. Terrible book, always flopping about where it shouldn't be. hmph. I tried to put the card suits in order, but I wasn't sure what order that was... let me know if I'm wrong.

Wedding Card book

This is my latest and greatest book. I saw the coolest idea on a blog a while back (this isn't the one, but I couldn't find it again, and you get the idea), and I'm just now putting it to use. See, I've had these wonderful wedding cards sitting in a bag (in a box) in the storage room for a while, and I was looking through them thinking, "gee, it sure is hard to throw something like this away! It's a wedding memento! I'll only have wedding cards once in my life!" and some of these cards are lovely. So that made me think of something we'd talked about in my Business for the Professional Artist class. The idea is, when you send out a promotional piece, make it really special. Make it so groovy that people will have a hard time throwing it away. So, I took my already awesome wedding cards and I made them doubly awesome by binding them into a book! Tada!

I know, I'm awesome. Keep in mind though, this wasn't originally my idea, I just expounded on it (is that even the right word?). I started off by separating my cards into stacks of similar sizes. There are ginormous ones, medium size ones, and eetsy beetsy ones. I started with the medium sized ones. I decided to bind them in a case bound form. 

It was more difficult to bind cards than I had anticipated. first off, each card was it's own  signature, so for this book I think I have like 15 or 18 signatures, which takes a lot of thread and a long time to sew. It's not difficult, per say, except for the fact that when the factory (or whoever makes and folds all these cards) folds the cards, some of them are sliced or scored so they will bend easier. It's nice, they stay shut, which is the purpose, but it is therefore  very easy to pull the thread too hard and rip right through the spine of the card. Grrr! I must have done that like twenty times! Other than that, it was fine.

For the cover (I think this was a jolt of brilliant inspiration) I made my own paper by gluing bits and pieces of the envelopes that the cards came in to a piece of tissue paper, and then gluing it down to my book board. I used tissue paper 1. Because it was what I had at the moment, 2. Because the envelopes were thick enough as it was, I didn't need them layered on top of some thick paper, and 3. Because I could rearrange and then trim the paper before I glued it down. Some of the pieces of the envelopes that I used were stamps, the post office stamps (like the ones that say, Spokane, WA) because I thought it was cool all the places we got letters from, and some of the pieces that said our names on them. Mr. and Mrs. Hoffman, Laurel Hoffman, etc.

The color book cloth I used was not one of my wedding colors, which would have been cool, I just thought it went really well with the envelopes and stamps. On the spine I carved a heart in the book board and then pressed it down in with my bone folder. It was my first try at doing that sort of thing, and I think it went well.

So, I think I've talked enough. Here are some pics of the book, and if anyone wants me to do this for them, let me know, we'll work something out (monetary compensation, cheesecake for a couple of weeks, something along those lines :) ).

Make Your Own Bookcloth, yo.

Here's my groovylicious video I did for Art Business. It's about making bookcloth, which is kind of fun. Enjoy!

Books, books, books!

I finally got a closure attached to my coptic stitch book from a previous post. I ended up hunting the little bugger down at a Michael's craft store. I think it looks pretty dang good, and it sure does the job.
As far as new books I've learned recently, there's the case bound and the cord bound. These were really exciting for me, and I think for the whole class, because they look like "real" books!
First off, there's the case bound. It's pretty basic, sewing wise. The new things about this one are the covered spine, the introduction of end bands (or headbands, you can see they're green on the second picture), and end papers (the lining or shell papers on the inside cover of the book). I struggled the most with the end papers. After doing a couple of books with them I'm wondering if thinner paper would work better than the thick stuff I've been using. On the book with the brown cover and the orange ribbon, the end paper was thinner and it looks beautiful. On the blue book it was scrapbook paper and didn't work so well.

Next we did the cord bound book, which has a leather spine stretched over cords. We used jute for the cording and it worked great. the biggest problem or concern i had with this one is, when I folded the leather down, the glue and the dye from the leather left pink residue on the pages. I'm not really happy with this, but I don't know how to fix it. You can see it on the first picture. We learned with this one how to round the spine, which is a more traditional look, as compared to the flat spine of the case bound book above. It looks cool, but I struggled with it.
This is just the practice dummy for the cord bound book. I'm excited to get the "real" one done. I've got some fun ideas for it, and I think I'm going to use some of my marbled paper that I made in class. I get so excited for this class it's ridiculous.

Book arts = Parkour?

Book arts, I've decided, is kind of like parkour, or free running. Jim, from The Office said,

"This is parkour. Internet sensation of 2004. And it was in one of the Bond films. It's pretty impressive. The goal is to get from point A to point B as creatively as possible so technically they are doing parkour, as long as point A is delusion and point B is the hospital."

Allright, so book binding isn't quite as exciting or dangerous as parkour, but the way I see it, the more creative you are with it, the better. I'm just learning, some of the different bindings and techniques, but I have had a lot of fun trying to come up with creative ways to do this. For example, I just learned how to do a coptic binding, which was way fun. Traditionally, it looks like this.
I played around with the sewing stations template a little bit and this is the result I got.
Before I made this book I decided I wanted a beefy book. Lots of pages. I also wanted small. Evidently they don't work so well together as the book board isn't weighty enough to hold the pages down and together. The center picture shows what the book looks like it it's "resting" position. I think it's kind of funny, but nevertheless, I shall continue to work on it, adding a clasp of some sort. I'm never done with anything.