Folio's Away

Tuesday morning I pulled the last of Brie's dvd folio's out of the press, shot a few photo's and sent them on their way. It was really rewarding to see them all lined up and finished.

I always try to send a little something extra with all my packages and sales from my shop. If I have the time I always try to personalize what is going into each package as well. For Brie I used a strip of paper that was used to make one of the folio's and her pink book cloth to make a business card holder. The card holder is a Blizzard Book which is a fun little structure, the way this one is put together you can fold it up and tie the ribbon to keep it in your bag, or open it up and lay it on a desk or a counter to display your cards. If I decide to do any shows this summer I will be making one of these to hold my own cards.

Next on my plate is an order for Leslie of Dark Roast Photography her folio's will be designed differently from Brie's and I hope to have a mock up completed this afternoon. Her book cloth has is in transit and I am anxiously awaiting it's arrival. Leslie chose a chocolate brown silk cloth and an ivory damask paper, the combination is going to look fantastic together and I am really excited to get started on them!

Busy Girl

I realized the other day that I didn't say much around here last week, but that's because I was a busy girl! I spent most of the week working on the first folio order and when I wasn't working on those I was working on these fantastic watercolor journals.
These were custom order for a specific paper and I love how they came out. There is always something to be said for a book with some girth to it and watercolor paper is great for girth. This was also my first time sewing the Celtic Weave stitch with the same colored thread. Having 4 needles all with the same color thread was quite a challenge. The first book took me a little over two hours to sew up, however towards the end of the first book I devised a system for managing the 10 needles on the book. The second book greatly benefited from the learning adventure of the first :)
The pair are happily on their way to their new home, if you want to take a peek there are more pictures here.

This week finds me contemplating doing a local show in June, from what I've been told the show is hit or miss and the crowd will either really like or really not be interested in my stuff- no one is really sure which will be the case. I'm going to go check out the May show on Friday to see what I can dig up.
I also have another order for folio's in the pipeline, I'm waiting for the cloth from to arrive. To keep me busy until then I picked up a box making kit at Paper Source this weekend and hope get is assembled to share soon.
Tomorrow I'll be photographing the folio's as a set so hopefully I'll have some fun photo's to share!

Etsy Day!

Today is Etsy Day! Yay!

I love Etsy, the community that is has grown, the friends I have made, and all the wonderful opportunities it has given me. Today I gladly celebrate Etsy day, and invite you do to the same!

Presses and Beach Trip!

I had a fantastic weekend that I didn't talk about at all yesterday! Saturday my husband and I took advantage of the first nice weekend and ran to the coast. We packed a picnic lunch and used our picnic set for the first time. I think we've had it for two years and never remembered to bring it with us!


After lunch we cruised up 101 looking for an area with tide pools as tide was out. We almost never make it to the coast on days when low tide is in the afternoon so we were very excited!

We spend a larger part of the afternoon at a park I can't remember the name of as we had never stopped there before, but we had a great time. We found a few pools and stuck the camera in the water proof case and got some really fantastic pictures. Once we finished with the pools I went back to the beach and dug around in the sand by the river for agates.

Sunday we got up to another wonderful day and got to work outside making me some much needed larger presses for my folio production.

For years I've had two small book presses that can press one or two books at a time as that is all I have ever needed. As I said one of my two presses is too small for the 3 pocket presses so a trip to the man's mall fixed my problem!
We bought two 2'x4' pieces of MDF and sliced them in half to give me 2' square presses. Once we had the 2' boards we drilled 6 holes in each and put in carriage bolts and wing nuts and voila, new presses!

What you can see in the pictures are my two new presses next to my old "large" press. The middle press is currently pressing a round of folios the other two had just been emptied and quality checked.

The box is full of folios who so far have been quality checked, which means I've stuck a DVD in each pocket, closed it up, and tied it closed. I can't wait to have them all finished so I can take pictures of the large stacks all tied up and pretty. Although I do like the look of all the ribbon loose in the box as well!

Sorry for the picture jumble... I guess that is the problem with making the pictures bigger, I now have more images than I have words for!

Building Cases

The last few days in the studio have been spent making color selections and building cases. I had a lot of fun matching up papers to book cloth and it actually didn't take me nearly as long as I had originally thought it would. I built a case out of each of the 4 colors I had to choose from; white, black, off white and pink. I put the cases together in a four corners kinda thing and put a pocket on each color and did process of elimination until I ended up with my favorite combination.

I ordered my cloth from Talas and then was headed through Portland a few days later so I bought my papers before I had samples of my cloth to take with me. I was a little bit nervous when I started matching everything up but it all worked out beautifully in the end.

Once I matched a paper to the color cloth I was going to use I paper clipped some scratch paper with the number of pockets and the color cloth on the front and started to make a list and piles of pockets. I was pretty proud of my organization once I was done with everything and staring at my list and piles :)

Once completed with the list I picked everything up off my bench and got to work making the set number of cases that I needed.
This is only my second very large scale order so I'm still working out a process for production work but I think I've gotten a pretty good rhythm down now. I did learn that I needed more equipment to make larger projects, I usually only have 1 or 2 books in my presses at any given time so the two that I've had served my needs just fine. One of my presses was too small for the 3 pocket folios and the other only held two at a time, so the solution of course was to build new presses!

I'll share some pictures of the new presses, and my fantastic trip to the coast yesterday tomorrow! For now I'll leave you with a peak of the first pink folio out of the press this afternoon!

The sale has begun...

A few posts back I said that I was going to be starting a bit of a sale in the store, and it's slowly starting to begin. There are currently 5 items in the Sale section of my Etsy shop with more to come over the next few days. The discounts are deep, with only 1 less than 50% off.
If you've been interested in something that's been hanging around the my Etsy shop take a peek and check back as it might find it's way in there.

Happy Dance!

I hit 75 sales in my Etsy store today!
I had actually planned on offering some kind of a promotion, but 74 happened earlier this week and before I could think of it, 75 came right around the corner... actually while I was at the post office mailing out order 74! I guess that means I need to get to work so I can have something brain stormed for when I approach 100 sales!

I'm off to wrap up the order so I can drop it off at the post office tonight and avoid the tax lines tomorrow!

More Pockets!

I finished pocket construction last night, and only after I had finished did it occur to me that pocket folding would be a great tutorial... Maybe in the near future I'll work getting that together. Right now I present you with 75 folded pockets from 19 different sheets of paper. The two that I think are my favorite happen to be right next to each other, they are the white with pink cherry blossoms, and the pink & brown stripes. I love how the lines meet up perfectly even though there are two flaps making up the pocket!

The next step in pocket construction will be cutting all the board needed to get ready for case construction. I got a third of the board cut this afternoon. The cutting starts with finding the grain along the parent sheet. The direction of the grain is very important in every step of bookbinding, and everything in bookbinding has a grain to it. Finding grain on book board or mat board means taking the whole sheet and flexing it back and forth, this is easiest when the sheet is still whole in a big sheet. Once I find the grain I take a pencil and mark the grain direction every few inches so once it's cut into smaller pieces I'll always have the grain direction market.

Once I've found the grain it's time to get the board on my table and get it measured to size. I've never met a bookbinder who enjoys cutting mat board by hand as it's a chore. My mat cutter is on the fritz, but I would still say that using it is still cutting by hand as it's still a lot of work. However that's a conversation for another day, today is about making pockets! Today I cut one sheet down into 28 squares that will make up the case and the base that the pockets rest on.

I started by cutting the board into long strips that were then cut down further into squares. I plan on cutting one sheet a day for the next 2 days until I have all 75 squares that I need. As I said I really don't enjoy cutting board and it wreaks havoc with my wrists so I try not to have marathon board cutting sessions. Once the board is all cut I'll sand all the edges so they are nice and smooth for the cloth to cover. I highly advise sanding board outside or with a painters mask on, it creates a lot of fine dust that hangs in the air.
Over the next two days I also plan to make a case in white, off white, black, and pink over the next few days to put the pockets against to judge which pockets go with what color book cloth.

Also on the work bench for this week are two custom watercolor sketch books for a client. She contacted me looking for a specific paper, and I was luckily enough to find a fantastic deal on it in Portland so instead of taking just one, she ordered a second for gift for a friend too! They are going to be Celtic Weave with just white thread so the stitching won't be as noticeable on the page. I'm actually really excited to get started on them as I love that sewing and I've never done it with the same colored thread. She also wants eyelets set in the sewing stations and I love playing with my crop-a-dile, so as you can see it's a very exciting project as well.

Not a big change but I made the pictures larger today, anyone hate it? The pocket pictures were so small you couldn't really see much detail at all.
And to make myself look like the biggest geek in the world anyone out there playing Animal Crossing on the Wii? I just picked it up and have been visiting a few Etsy sellers, I would love to play with any of you that have the game!

Lazy Morning, Treasury Love

I'm have a very lazy morning today, however that seemed to have turned out for the best as I was able to snag a Treasury this morning! The Treasury features artists from both my local Eugene street team as well as the Bookbinding Team. I drew the inspiration for the colors for all the bright and vibrant spring colors outside my studio window making me Sneeze! The list will expire on Sunday morning (April 12th) so make sure to stop by before then.

I'm almost done with pocket production so stop back soon for that update!

Teaser Shot

I've been inspired by the blogging work of Hilke of Buechertiger on her Smiley Oracle production, and am hoping to try to do the same here with the first production of my wedding folio's. I am here today to give you a teaser shot of what is to come, today I finished cutting all the strips of paper to make the pockets with!
I think it's a whole lot of pink, however my husband insists that it's because I'm not a large fan of pink... I'm not sure who's right but either way as I said before it was a lot of fun to buy so much paper in one stop! I have a few sheets of left over/back up so the finished products might vary slightly. Christmas (otherwise known as my order from Talas) should be arriving tomorrow so I can start paring paper to book cloths. I am hoping that I am here to get the shipment as I have a wedding to attend Monday so that will delay my receiving the shipment until Tuesday, and I don't know if I can wait that long!

Next on folio production is matching papers to cloths, and then cutting all the board to size to start making the folio's. I've been putting off cutting board as it's my least favorite thing to do and my mat cutter isn't working properly. I called logan and a replacement piece is somewhere in the mail system so hopefully I won't have to cut all 75 pieces by hand.

Stay tuned for a "fire sale" coming next week, I've got some items I'm tired of seeing around the studio and am hoping to move out. I did a major photoshoot this afternoon after completing the strips and now I need to get through the editing and my Sister-in-law's wedding before it can begin.