Yearly Archives: 2012

April 20, 2012 · 3:16 pm

Hanging Books

These hanging books are a lot of fun to make, so I’ve been doing a lot of playing.  I made a batch of ones with hinged covers and have more planned that are soft covers.  The best part of it all is that I have a treasure trove of beads and ribbons and cord in my basement to finish them.  I’ve found some of it, but I know there’s a box some place filled with spools of cord. Here is my current “inventory” plus some different views of one of the books with a hard, hinged cover.

I love the design and texture of the Japanese paper used in this book.  The paper is soft, but the printed side has a smooth finish.  It takes adhesive very well and is really easy to work with.  The only disadvantage is that the finished book is not as resistant to stains and scratches as the Italian papers that have hard finishes.

The hardest part of making these is getting the holes the correct size to be able to thread two thicknesses of the cord, too small and the cord rips the paper, too large and the pages slide around.

I’m hoping to finish the soft cover ones this weekend and begin selling them on Etsy next week. Here’s more information on their construction and a preview of my Etsy shop.

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April 17, 2012 · 8:15 am

Trial: Stamp Book or Card Holder

Back to fooling around with papers and boards.  I tried out a new folder this week.  It was originally designed to hold stamps, but I don’t think stamp collecting is very popular any more, so I may have to put it to a different use.  When I was young, stamps were all the rage and I had a stock book similar to this one. Well, not as pretty: It had plain brown covers and, as I remember, more rows of pockets.

The stamps are held in place by Mylar pockets. I could use paper if it is not necessary to see the entire object in the pocket.

This book is only 4.5″ x 6.5″.  I think a larger size would be more useful.  I need to figure out a specific use, like holding business cards and then design around that.  Just haven’t focused  on particular use.  Suggestions sought and welcomed!

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April 11, 2012 · 3:12 pm

Pain in the Mouth: Real Life Interupts


Sometimes one just has to do what one has to do. Today I had the pleasure of visiting the dentist to have a crown replaced. Physically, we’re talking pain here, it is no where near as bad as having a large cavity excavated or having a new crown done.  It will still wipe me out for the rest of today and most of tomorrow. In two weeks I’ll have the temporary crown replaced with the permanent one.  Don’t know why they call them permanent when I seem to be replacing them all the time. It’s not only a pain in the mouth, but an even larger pain in the wallet.

I had fun yesterday making my new hanging books, but right now I’m not thinking well at all, so I’ll just let you enjoy the picture.

 

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April 6, 2012 · 11:40 am

Off On a Tangent: from box to book

I really thought my next project would be a different style of box, but the road took a twist.  A few days ago I bought a book on how to make 100 different books.  As usual with this type of book, most of the designs explained were in the genre of “Artist Books”. Books in weird shapes, with pop-ups or folded pages, beads dangling or cleverly designed around artwork.  They are wonderful to look at and explore.  Unfortunately, I don’t enjoy making them. My “artist books” tend to look either like a kindergarten project gone awry or something designed by the Mad Hatter on his way down the rabbit hole.

I prefer functional books, just like my preference for functional boxes.  After a lifetime of collecting non-utilitarian objects, I’m all about function and use these days.  Anyway, the book I bought did have a bunch of “real” books with sewn bindings and hard covers.  There were a few that caught my eye and I even tried out one.   (See more in the Book section on this page.)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

While I was plotting out some possible designs, the Arts Center called to say that they needed more towers. So all plans on hold while I make a few more towers for them! Such is life.

Here are the the quickie towers I did over the weekend.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I think I mixed up the yellow boxes and put them into the wrong green backgrounds.  Whoops!  Not sure though and it’s too late to do anything about it.

Here are the two yellow/green towers.  Still not sure.

I also discovered that Etsy has an app that lets me put a gallery from my store on this site.  I’ve put it here as a test.

 

 

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April 3, 2012 · 9:41 pm

Decision Time Again: Which Box to Make?

I’ve been thinking for a while about making some other types of boxes, but I haven’t settled on any one style.  Here are some of the ones I’ve been considering.

 

These are some of the styles of boxes and portfolios I’ve made in the past.  I’ve probably made at least a hundred calmshell boxes in various styles over the years.  Most were made to fit specific books, papers or other objects and I’ve created many different variations.  I enjoy making them, but they are nothing new for me. Another negative is that they use a lot of purchased materials.  The brown and blue boxes on the top row are clamshells.

The first photo on the second row shows a few of the origami boxes I have made.  They are cute and easy to make. On the pro side, the only material they use is my marbled paper.  They are also great for using the perfect parts of an imperfect sheet.  When I marble, I still catch air pockets or stray hairs which ruin parts of the paper.  On the con side, they don’t require any creativity, just good dexterity.  To counter-balance this, I rarely make the top and bottom from the same paper.  Drives the folks where I sell the boxes crazy!

The next two photos show lidded boxes.  These can be made in any size and shape as well as being able to be lined or partitioned.  I’m leaning toward these for my next project, but I’m still pondering.

The matchboxes with the book inside are cute but rather useless.  I tend to put sayings, quotes or lines from poems or songs in the books, but once you’ve read them, what do you do with it?  I much prefer structures that have some useful function.

The miniature books are neat, but again, not really functional.  I have seen them made into jewelry as pins or hung from necklaces and earrings, very nice but not me.  I rarely wear any jewelry anymore.

The last photos are the portfolios.  They can be made any size or shape and are very useful.  Carrying a hand crafted custom portfolio is neat.  The major drawback is that they use large quantities of bookcloth, especially the 9×12 one.  The outside needs to be cloth rather than paper if  the portfolio is expected to be used.  Paper would be prettier, but it wouldn’t wear well.  Unless I could do the hinges and edges in cloth and the center in paper, like a half-cloth book.

So there’s my dilemma.  What to do?  What to do?

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March 30, 2012 · 6:31 pm

Finished Towers

Finally put the towers together and I’m happy with the results.

Four of them are 7″ and one is 6″.  The yellow one in the front was a particularly hard match.  The orange boxes are a heavy textured brunt orange colored base paper that I marbled in browns, reds and yellows. That paper was too heavy to use for the covering of the tower, but nice and sturdy for the boxes. I thought I would never find anything to go with it since the base color radically changed the marbling colors.  I finally was able to get some complementary colors from burnt sienna, yellows and some greens.

The other box I’m really happy about is the one in the back with the bright outside and dark interior.  I had done a bit of figurative marbling and I had no idea how to use it.  Here’s a closeup.

You can learn more about the construction of the towers on my page, Making Towers and more examples on Boxes & Other Creations.

 

Three of these are headed to the Yates County Arts Center and two to Etsy for sale in my shop, Losing her Marbles.

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March 29, 2012 · 12:01 pm

Vacations and the best laid plans

I’ve been on vacation visiting a friend for the past two weeks.  I had great plans of doing a daily blog while I was there and catching up on all sorts of other computer stuff. As you can see, it just didn’t happen. I’ve been home for two days and am feeling overwhelmed by the amount of stuff (of the non-creative variety) that I have to do.  Things like paying all those bills and doing my taxes.  I don’t mind numbers type work and I love charts and graphs, but taxes and bills, just yuck!

I’m building up to a good rant on the taxes.  Not at the IRS, but at the tax software people who want to charge you more and more every year for their software.  And a little bit at the IRS and NYS who think it’s fun to charge you for making their work easier by e-filing. But not right now, too much other stuff to finish before I can have the luxury of ranting!

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March 18, 2012 · 8:19 am

Well, Almost Finished

Took the books out of the press and here they are:

They all looked really nice until I realized that  the back endpaper in the map book was upside down!  My endpapers rarely have directionality and I never noticed.  Sigh.

Towers are in good shape, well, at least so far.  Haven’t finished the boxes for them yet, but have cut and folded the paper so it’s just folding and gluing them into place.

Here’s a look at the outsides:

You can see them all at the page onMaking Towers.

Some of these books and towers will be for sale in my shop at Etsy, Losing Her Marbles.

 

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March 11, 2012 · 10:56 pm

Finished

Well, I did it.  Finished the four books today and even started on some towers.  Good feeling of accomplishment.  The books are in the press overnight so tomorrow morning will be the final verdict.  There’s always  some trepidation when I take the books out for a final check.  That’s when I spot the bit of glue that somehow wound up on the front cover or I notice that the square isn’t quite right or the endpapers are 1/32 of an inch off line. It is quite difficult to salvage a book that isn’t quite right and impossible if it is a real mess.  Better to chuck it and start over.  Fortunately, it doesn’t happen very often.

Tomorrow I’ll take the final pictures and add more to the various pages – Designing & Making a Book.

 

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March 10, 2012 · 10:18 pm

Catching Up

This week I’ve been working on the four books that I’ve been documenting on the Design and Making a Book step two & step three pages. However, working on the books has meant less time for writing about them. Tonight I’ve uploaded a bunch of pictures, but haven’t had time to explain what they are. Will do that tomorrow, I hope.

What fascinates me is how the books change during the process.  I have a picture in my mind of what the finished product will look like, but it seldom is totally accurate.  Materials sometimes seem to have a mind of their own! Papers that I plan on using magically shrink or get cut in the wrong direction forcing me to use alternatives. Sometimes I just don’t like something on the sixth or seventh try.  One of the advantages of working on several pieces at once is that I have time to step away from one choice and come back to it later. Sometimes a paper I am considering for one book, will end up in a totally different place.

The Black Palm book is a good example.  My first thoughts on the endpapers were just wrong.  The second (the tigers) put William Blake into my head and I have been quoting “Tyger!, Tyger!” all week – mainly to myself.  I’m very pleased with the outcome.   I had no plan to use leather on any of these books.  It involves a lot of work to pare it down and I have been preoccupied with a lot of other stuff.  When I was trying to decide what to use as the spine for this book, nothing was working — until I noticed a piece of black leather.  It was just the right size and worked beautifully.  The result is that this is probably my favorite book in the batch and not at all as planned.

 

 

 

 

 

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