Wednesday, May 20, 2009

Graffiti Blizzard Book

As I said in my last post I made a Celtic Weave Sketchbook for a trade. What I traded for was some graffiti sketch work on a book I made. My local book arts group had our meeting this week and our swap theme this month was Graffiti. I made a blank blizzard book out of craft paper and filled it with 6 atc's for him to decorate any way he wanted too.
Below are several shots of the book in it's finished state. I still feel bad that I didn't get any pictures of the sketchbook I traded him, but I've been told he loved it!
On with the book porn!








Tuesday, May 19, 2009

A Tasty Give Away!

As I have said before I work for Luna & Larry's Coconut Bliss and we make fantastic coconut milk ice cream. This week the wonderful Coconutgal has been reviewing our flavors and we decided to join in the fun and give her some coupons to give away for free pints!
You can find her blog here, and details on the contest here. Sorry to all of my international readers but Coconut Bliss is currently only available in the US. We are still a very small company (7 of us work here in the office) and have just recently gone nation wide here in the states.

In other news my laptop is now back in my hands, much sooner than expected and as I got it back I didn't get much work done this week. I made a celtic weave to trade yesterday but forgot to take pictures of it... Hopefully I'll have time to get some pictures of what I traded it for before I have to give it away too! Other than that this week I need to finish the rest of Leslie's chocolate and ivory folio's as I've been taking my dear sweet time on it.

Wednesday, May 13, 2009

A Short Pause

My laptop and I are going to be separated for what will hopefully be a few short days. My case has cracked in the exact same spot again and it's been leaving marks on my wrist so I decided it was finally time to send it in to be repaired. Sadly as I'll be mailing her off tomorrow I know she won't reach Apple until Friday so at the soonest I would have her back on Tuesday of next week. I'm expecting it to be more like Wednesday or Thursday in reality. The good news is that without the interwebs to distract me I am expecting some time next week to do some serious binding.
Next week you ask? Why not sooner? I have a graduation in Portland Friday evening, a reservation at the Grand Lodge Friday night, and an appointment with the tide pools in Cannon Beach on Saturday morning :)
The bad news, I can't imagine the number of post that are going to be in my reader that I'll need to catch up on!

In the mean time I'll leave you with a few photo's of the DVD folio's I've been working on. The first is a gold and chocolate 1 pocket. While you can't see the paper inside it's a sparkly chocolate paper that matches the ribbon and cloth perfectly. This photographer wanted an elegant simple folio and I think this works fantastically. I'm also working on a few new designs for her that hopefully will involve a flap.
The brown silk and ivory folio are also very elegant and simple. These are still in production but as I said the other day I was staring at the piles of materials and I had to see what one looked like finished.... and they are stunning! I love the flocked ivory damask fabric and the silk cloth, it's a wonderful combination and in retrospect I should have taken a photo of the inside for you to see as well!

Well with that it's time for Lost so I'll see you all when I get my laptop back!

Sunday, May 10, 2009

Happy Mother's Day!

To all the Mom's in the world Happy Mother's Day! Now that I know my Mom has opened her box I can show you what I sent her this year!
It is a Kusudama ball made from the tutorial on Folding Trees; it's a two part tutorial part 1 and part 2.
I cut each of the 60 squares by hand from coordinating scrapbook paper, I had the right sized origami paper but I really wanted the color to be the same overall with different patterns on the petals. I'm really pleased with the results and my Mom loves it so it was worth all the work.
I really enjoy folding the flowers and have a few of them around, but I think I need to create a ball for myself to take to work and hang by my desk. I have a very small desk so I don't have a lot of desktop space to put things on so this would be perfect!The past few days in the studio have been spent doing lots and lots of prep work, mostly cutting and measuring things. This photo shows everything cut and prepped for the order of folio's for Dark Roast Photography. I have one 3 DVD Folio in the press right now as I couldn't wait to see what they looked like! I love these folio's, they are simple, elegant, and I think a great way to preserve such a wonderful day. This picture can also be found on Flickr with notes about what is strewn around my desk with some commentary. As I said awhile back I moved to google reader to keep up with all the wonderful blogs out in the world and they have a recommendations area in the home page. I had never really noticed it until today when low and behold I found myself!
It makes me wonder how many people out there have found my blog via a reader recommendation and how many people actually have my blog on an RSS feed. The blogger gadget says that I have 3 followers but I would like to think there are many more of you out there on RSS readers.
Ah the things I think about while I'm working away in my studio. I also discovered today that while I work much better with music on in the studio I don't actually listen to it. I spent 4 hours working today and when I finished I realized I had been listening to the same album for the whole time!

Thursday, May 7, 2009

Head Fog & Pictures!

I've been falling behind in sharing some of my newest creations. Mostly because I've had a sinus infection and have been living in a serious state of head fog. I'm staring to come out of it today but am still feeling very scattered. I had this whole list of things I was going to accomplish today, I got up at a reasonable hour and just did random things until noon!

Around noon I contemplated lunch and saw an old crochet project laying in the corner and picked up determined to triumph over it. I've got a good hand on it now, I need to make more "yarn" before I can finish it... I realize that is vague I promise to share photo's when I'm all done!

See what I mean about scattered I'm already way off topic! Back to the new books and pictures! Above is a new portable photo album! I love this green velvet paper, the texture is so fantastic and the organza ribbon is the perfect touch!
Next up the new style of folio I'm working on! This one is currently for sale in my shop as it is not the materials I will be using for the next order. This was a trial run to make sure that both myself and Leslie liked the way it looked. The new ones will have the same linen cloth along the spine, but will have a lovely brown silk cloth instead.

This green journal was the first in my "A Couch I Was" series of books. Remember the couch I tore apart in the fall? Well I'm finally starting to use the leather from it. I say was because almost immediately after I listed this one I got a request for a custom order for this journal larger and in sketch book form! The sketchbook is happily on it's way to it's new home but I think I will create another like it as I liked the look of the two buttons!
Phew... 2 more stay with me! This one I also love, I've been making thicker books lately and this one clocks in at 1lb 6oz (.62kg) which is awesome. I think I've said it before but I love holding a good thick book. This book also features a great handmade paper for the covers, I find that I'm becoming more of a snob when purchasing paper. I have been buying more handmade papers and less commercially printed papers. Lastly we have a fun pair of earrings! I love the gold hoops with the little hearts in them and I love how it brings the paper and the hearts together as well. They are from an Italian handmade paper (again see the handmade part) and I love the different shades of blue.

Ok now that I've overloaded all of you I'm going to run to twitter so that I overload others :)

Sunday, May 3, 2009

Twittering

I can now be found on Twitter under KileysBooks. I would love to follow any of you out there on the webs, you can either add me on Twitter or leave a comment here.

You might also notice that I've been working on the side bar on the blog. I have temporarily removed all the links I had as my blog reading is out of hand and many of the links on this page were not current or sites I frequented anymore. There are currently 31 blogs in my reader, but I expect that number to grow. Tulibri has a fantastic list of bookbinding blogs on her blog, and I keep finding more and more blogs to read via her recommendations! I'll work on bringing the links back when I've caught up on a few other things.

I'm off to finish my mothers day present, I had planned to share photo's with everyone but I just found out that my mom reads my blog from time to time so that has to wait for a week!